Careers at KS ENGINEERS

Where numerous projects are carried out and products are developed and manufactured, the work at the interfaces becomes all the more important. Our employees in the areas of administration, HR, purchasing, project and process management, warehousing, transportation, fleet management, and shipping support the company’s operations and ensure that all resources are in the right place at the right time and that processes are continuously improved.

As the name suggests, the two core areas of this department are the engineering and commissioning of electrical components for our testing solutions. Another key area of responsibility is implementing legal safety requirements in such a way that there is no danger to people and all of the customer’s functional requirements can be met.

The exciting thing about this field of activity is the varied and challenging tasks. No two projects are alike, as each one is individually tailored to the customer. Project support from the initial inquiry to successful acceptance enables a varied range of work and thus avoids a monotonous way of working.

The Mechanical Engineering department is responsible for all mechanical planning for the plants and test benches. This department is divided into two sub-areas: traditional mechanical engineering and environmental technology, which includes building services and air conditioning technology, conditioning systems, and fuel cell testing technology. The product portfolio ranges from e-axis/motor test benches and battery test systems to fuel cell and electrolysis test benches.

The areas of responsibility include concept development, strength and vibration design of components, schematic design, and implementation, manufacturing, and assembly planning. Tools such as Solid Edge, AutoCad REVIT, Femap, Matlab, Lauterbach, Bearinx, and Hexagon are used for this purpose.

More than five million lines of source code and over 25 years of development work—that’s what goes into our proprietary automation software, TORNADO.

This software enables test sequences to be carried out, multiple test benches to be coordinated, and all measurement data to be recorded and visualized. Tornado is developed as a uniform but very comprehensive software suite and configured for the end customer depending on the application. Development is carried out in C++ and C#, using agile methods and in small teams. Water-cooled, overclocked computers and dual monitors are part of the basic equipment of our developers at the “Home of Tornado.”

Our MSC team works every day to make our test benches even better. Together with our customers, they ensure that the test specimen on the test bench is subjected to the same loads as on the road. The development of power electronics, high-precision control systems, and complex simulation models are among the tasks performed by the MSC department. The department is also known for its new developments.

If you have a solid technical education, enjoy working on complex models in MATLAB/Simulink, or describe FPGAs in Verilog, then Engineering MSC is the perfect place for you.

Once our electrical engineering project engineers have completed their work, all components have been selected, and the E-CAD department has put every single cable harness on paper, the electrical production department gets down to business.

Among other things, our motivated production team assembles, wires, and cables control cabinets, installs machines and drives, and finally prepares them for pre-commissioning or direct shipment. The individual components are both manufactured in-house and sourced from regional suppliers.

The components, which are meticulously planned on the computer, are either manufactured in-house (CNC turning/milling) or purchased from our network of suppliers. Sheet metal parts, steel fronts, bearings, shafts, and substructures are just some of the components that are assembled by our hard-working fitters.

In mechanical production, components weighing tons and tolerances accurate to the millimeter come together before all components are assembled shortly before delivery and commissioning.

Until the turnkey plant is ready, commissioning follows a scheduled process:
Shortly after the mechanical and electrical installation of the plants on site, our automation engineers take over the control of our plants according to the previously planned programs. In this step, our KS TORNADO automation software is also adapted to the customer and their requirements, interfaces are addressed, and all values and settings are parameterized.

Our commissioning engineers have a particularly broad technical overview, are the first point of contact for technical questions, and often work with the best engineers from leading automotive manufacturers on development projects that are usually still confidential.

Technical equipment is highly predictable to a certain extent, but errors or malfunctions can occur in individual cases. That is why we strive to offer our customers the best possible service, even in the after-sales phase. Our customer service team is able to identify technical issues or problems within a very short time and, in most cases, restart the system remotely from Graz or one of our resident locations in Germany. If this is not possible, the KS service vehicle drives directly to the customer to avoid downtime.

Our service technicians have combined knowledge in the fields of mechanics, electrical engineering, and automation and have an excellent overview of the project.

In the field of industrial automation, the DACO project exemplifies the seamless integration of software, hardware, installation, and support. DACO is a state-of-the-art networked system combining control technology and software that enables the web-based recording, monitoring, and control of production processes for complex production machines from anywhere in the world. A team of automation engineers and software developers ensures the continuous development of the system and provides global customer support. The largest customer is a global corporation in the packaging industry with over 100 production sites in more than 30 countries.

We typically supply testing technology to our customers, who then carry out their own test runs. However, our testing services department offers customers the option of delivering their test specimens directly to us, where our test engineers will test them on more than 20 in-house test benches in Graz and Friedrichshafen.

With their specialist knowledge, they take care of planning and supervising the test procedure, setting up the test bench, and evaluating and transmitting the measurement data to the customer.

KS ENGINEERS has its roots in building services engineering. The company was founded in 1972 as a building services engineering company offering electrical installations on the one hand and gas, water, and heating installations on the other. The completion of hundreds of projects, from single-family homes to industrial halls in and around Graz, remains an essential part of the company’s business to this day.

Our many years of experience in the fields of electrical engineering, plant engineering, air conditioning, and ventilation technology also form the technical basis for our further developments in the field of automotive testing.