The people behind our innovations - UNTHA GENIUS
With GENIUS, UNTHA shredding technology now has an intelligent monitoring system for shredders at its disposal. GENIUS was developed in the company’s own R&D department. We are taking a look behind the scenes of a successful, rapidly growing innovation lab.
Start small, then grow your idea further step by step: For Robert Diosi, that’s the secret of successful breakthrough innovations. He is the man behind UNTHA GENIUS, the new intelligent monitoring system for shredders.
An automation specialist and mechanical engineer, he embarked on a career in Digital Research and Development at UNTHA in Kuchl four years ago. His mission: turning UNTHA shredders into smart products using digitalisation. “I started from a blank sheet”, says Diosi: At the time, the UNTHA shredders used all over the world were shredders only, without a “mind of their own”. Today, GENIUS sends a multitude of measurement values and data to the Cloud, making operation and maintenance easier and saving both time and money. “Around 100 units all over the world are already fitted with GENIUS and provide the required data in real time”, says Robert Diosi proudly. For the service teams, GENIUS is a gigantic step towards a new, more efficient age. In many cases, the measuring values make it possible to determine remotely where the root of the problem lies, and to tackle it in a targeted manner, without having to get on an aeroplane first.
Complex development process
“Once the first data point has been set and works as it should, the biggest step has been taken. The rest is a lot easier”, is how Diosi describes the development process. He had to think about what sensors are required at what points in the machine, and how the measurement data can be made available via interfaces. Using EDGE computing within the machine, preliminary decisions are made, and only the most relevant data is sent to the Cloud, where it may be accessed by customers and UNTHA in an efficiently prepared format.
But there is more in store for UNTHA GENIUS, and Diosi has a clear goal: “Together with our colleagues, we are developing our system further, towards Predictive Maintenance.” The use of Artificial Intelligence will also improve GENIUS further and make it even more economical. To achieve this, the UNTHA R&D team, which has already grown significantly in recent years, will continue to expand. Thinking ahead and finding shredding solutions to tomorrow’s questions is the ultimate target of this innovative team. The focus lies on providing UNTHA customers with even more efficient, premium-quality machines, which in future will also come with Predictive Maintenance features.