Lavinia Banu is now doing a lot of things wrong. She opens one program after another on her laptop, the ventilation starts up, hard disk and main memory are working at the limit. Next, she sets the resolution of the video image to HD, starts a chat, speaks into the microphone of her headset, calls up all the functions and other modules of the software.
Banu is happy to advance the quality of the platform with her tests.
The short-term pixilation of the video transmission is intended. "This is a stress test", she says in a calm voice. The program handles it successfully. “The platform regulates itself before it becomes unstable or even breaks down”, Lavinia describes the situation. Doing things wrong and drawing the right conclusions - this method is part of her job. The Romanian-born software engineer has been working at Aachen-based oculavis GmbH as Team Lead of Testing and Quality Assurance since 2017. In this position, she tests whether the company's software solutions are working optimally, especially when the system operates at full capacity. The remote support and augmented reality workflow solution enables machine builders to offer visual assistance and self guidance features to their end customers - in situations where an unexpected failure requires fast support, or a system is put into operation.
I will contact the management, when I think the software version is ready for release”, says , Team Lead of Testing and Quality Assurance at oculavis GmbH.
Lavinia Banu has been interested in computer science since she was a teenager. While her friends went to the shopping malls, she studied programming languages. In 2012, she started her computer science studies in Bucharest, and two years later she moved to Switzerland, where she worked as an intern at Google in the field of software engineering. In 2015, her master's degree took her to RWTH Aachen University, and an assistant job at the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT established the contact with oculavis.
As Team Leader Testing, Banu consults with colleagues to further improve the software.
The new version of the software is about to be released. Major bugs should no longer exist. "My job is to signal the management the readiness of this version", explains the team leader. But will such a complex software ever be completed? "Actually, no", Lavinia comments. She continuously notices improvements in the design or functionality.
Banu studied in Bucharest, since 2015 she lives and works in Aachen.
Nevertheless, it is her task to determine when the product can be used by the customer. "Sure, I take responsibility, but I have a good sense of timing and customer requirements" she says. Machine operators use smartphones, tablets or smart glasses to connect to the machine builder's service and are looking for a solution. Often the network is weak, it's noisy and busy. The real stress test take place on the shop floor. Thanks to Lavinia Banu, the software is optimally prepared for it.
You want to work together with Lavinia? Apply for a job at oculavis!
Download as pdf (German)
You can download the original article here. It was published in December 2020 under the title "Ein Tag mit ... Lavinia Banu" in the VDMA Magazine #12.
