Keech Product Development Officer Alex Hand is celebrating 20 years as part of the Keech Australia team. When Alex joined Keech, the business was based at the original Keech foundry at Mascot in Sydney.  These days, he works from an office on his property 100km from Brisbane, creating new product designs and developing product manuals.

“I’m essentially a CAD designer,” he says. “Keech takes on board customer feedback and looks at what’s happening in the market, and then we continually update and improve our products. My day to day job is to work on new product designs and manuals for everything from how to use the products to how to use the gauges at the foundry to check on castings.”

Alex’s role comes at the start of the new product design process. After he or his colleagues develop new ideas in CAD and create the manuals that go with them, the new products might be tested as 3D prints or other models before going on to field trials. All up, the process from new idea to field testing takes several months.

In addition to developing manuals and working on new designs, Alex is currently involved in a major project to develop an online manual that will cover all of Keech’s more than 10,000 parts. The higly detailed online manual will guide customers to the best product choices for their specific machines.