Tomra : A Day in the Life of Ľuboslav Perončík

1. What is your role at TOMRA Sorting Food?

Value engineer - I am responsible for the collection and management of ideas which lead to reductions in the price of purchase sub-assemblies. These ideas are typically related to engineering changes in mechanical or electrical design.

2. Why did you decide to work for TOMRA?

On a broad level I was attracted to TOMRA because it is a melting pot of different people and cultures working towards a common goal. Whilst working at TOMRA I've been involved in projects with people from American to Germany and Belgium to Norway - it's been fantastic. On a personal level, with regards to my role directly, I decided to work for TOMRA because I can work with world-class technology, see how it's built and how it works around the world.

3. What does your average work day look like?

I usually start work between 7am and 7.30am when I review ongoing projects before typically joining meetings in Senec, Leuven or Eindhoven, communicating with fellow engineers and the production teams. I also regularly visit TOMRA's suppliers to better understand what processes are needed to build component parts and how to improve design to reduce material, energy, and time. This helps us to constantly innovate and reduce cost and lead-times of our products.

4. What's the best thing about your job?

The best part of my job is the feeling I get from my work contributing to the reduction of food waste around the world. TOMRA takes its mission statement of leading the resource revolution seriously and it's great to know that I'm contributing to that leadership. I'm also very fortunate to be working with the latest optics and electronics technologies.

5. What's the skill you'd most like to have?

I do a lot of work with designers so would like to be able to create mechanical designs using 3D tools for printed circuit boards and to do more with schematics.

6. What are you passionate about - professionally or personally?

I have a real passion for things that are well designed and made - it's the engineer in me - in particular cars and sound systems. With cars it can be anything as long as it's well designed and engineered, be it a sports car or off-roader.

7. What's your favorite holiday destination?

I particularly like Greece - the combination of weather, fine food and scenery makes for a very relaxing environment.

8. What would be your perfect day away from work?

I really enjoy live music so a day away at a festival, with some of my favorite bands playing, would be perfect.

9. What's your greatest business achievement?

I successfully managed a project to redesign the Halo; TOMRA's popular sensor-based optical food sorting solution for many fruits and vegetables. The project team helped to improve costs while maintaining the machine's performance.

10. What's your greatest personal achievement?

Starting a family. I have two girls they are easily my greatest achievement.

11. What did you eat for lunch?

All engineers know a machine is only as good as its energy and the same goes for the human body. With that in mind I enjoyed chicken soup with noodles and baked turkey breasts with mozzarella olives and tomatoes. A good balanced meal.