Knowledge pooling: great potential for the economy

September 2017

The integration of knowledge between different companies is the future of the Slovenian economy. Some have already achieved a breakthrough and innovative solutions.

“Young companies with excellent ideas, a lot of energy and special skills and bigger, development-oriented companies, with the necessary infrastructure and capital can develop together and successfully realize excellent innovative solutions on the market that they would not be able to independently.” That’s what they say in company TPV, d. o. o., which together with the development partner IKU, d. o. o. develops and markets solutions in the field of automation of internal logistics in manufacture and warehouses with automatic guided vehicles (AGV).

With cooperation to national recognition Solutions created by two cooperating companies also bring many benefits to other companies. “Job supply in manufacture is more efficient, synchronous and more reliable. This is reflected in increased productivity. The possibility of error is reduced. The need for human work in logistics and hence labor costs are also reduced. The system provides 24-hour operation, 7 days a week, “explains in TPV. Compared to conventional forklifts, smart solutions consume much less power, which is also noticeable in the number of reduced costs. The average forklift consumes an average of 75,000 kWh per year, and automatically managed vehicles 25,000 kWh per year. “Mentioned above leads to a quick return on investment, which is usually shorter than a year,” they say in TPV. The possibility of injury, equipment and material damage is also reduced. “Our solutions are marketed in Slovenia and abroad. We are currently focusing primarily on the European market. This year we successfully presented our company at the LogiMAT Logistics fair in Stuttgart, and with our offer, we’ve gotten a lot of interest and new demands. Otherwise, we are currently finishing a project in France and preparing new projects, ” are satisfied in TPV. The result of the cooperation between TPV and IKU is also innovative, automatically managed Optimatik 160 vehicle, which has been awarded the national recognition for innovation this year. “It is a vehicle (tunnel version), the key advantage of which is a small height. The vehicle is only 160 mm high, which is unique on the market. The height of the AGV is lower than the standard wheels used for driving industrial carts, and with that, the reconstruction of customer carts is not necessary, which can significantly reduce the costs of the implementation of the system in buyer’s company. ” In TPV, they support networking between businesses. “The vision of the TPV Group is ‘Linking innovative solutions’. An example of a successful partnership is the cooperation with IKU.” Companies have seen great development and market potential in the automatization of internal logistic processes. They are cooperating in many areas, the key role of the partner – the IKU company is in development of software solutions and electronics. In TPV they are convinced that such cooperation is a great potential for the growth of the Slovenian economy.

Slovenia holds enough knowledge, even the leading global solutions “Cooperation among Slovenian innovative companies, that are generally very successful in the wider European and global market, is very positive for the Slovenian economy since it gives them the much-needed reference for further penetration into foreign markets.” Gen-I thus describes the benefits of participating in the Gen-I project The Sun, consisting of solar power plants for self-supply.

“We invited Slovenian high-technology companies, leading in their field to cooperate with us: Bisol for photovoltaic panels, Letter Sol for micro-converters, Sol Navitas for substructures and Kronoterm for heat pumps. The response of these companies was very positive, “they say in Gen-I.

From the beginning, they wanted to cooperate with Slovenian companies: “The selection of components that are the core of Slovene knowledge have magnifying effects on the Slovenian economy, especially compared to alternative providers that import components from abroad.” However, only Slovenian origin of the company was not enough. They wanted top-quality products: “As the solar power plant is a long-term investment, the top quality of the solar power plant has been extremely important to us, which will allow the whole life cycle to function properly, 30 years and more. Thus, we conducted a careful review of photovoltaic component providers on the global market and with in-depth analysis, in which we mainly followed the technical characteristics of the components, the lifetime, the warranty conditions and the flexibility in the delivery, and had taken out the most appropriate ones. Since we found that there is enough knowledge and globally comparable or even leading solutions within Slovenia, we have prepared the configuration of a micro solar power plant based on the written facts above, which is entirely the result of the Slovenian knowledge and experience.” Gen-I is also the lead partner and coordinator in the Active Client project. They bring together Slovenian technology companies that offer smart solutions in the field of energy use and management for household and small business customers. “These are companies Cosylab, Elektrina, Kronotherm, Sitel, PlanNET, GOAP, and in addition, there are two other electrical power grid operators, ELES and Elektro Ljubljana. The purpose of the project is to develop and demonstrate smart solutions for home power management. Demonstration applications will enable these companies a necessary penetration and reference for marketing products on the global market.” 30% increase in team performance in the field I-Rose has in cooperation with Telekom Slovenia developed a Mobile Service Platform (MSP), which enables companies better overview of their operations, faster data flow and the possibility of faster feedback. It provides a better coordination of field activities and better utilization of available resources. Telekom offers MSP as a cloud service. An entrepreneur has access to field information from the office and vice versa, via tablet or smartphone. “The tool is therefore useful for field processes in all business branches and is adapted to business processes and the nature of an individual company,” they say in Telekom. For example, MSP will be now implemented and ready to use in Perutnina Ptuj company. With a smart platform, they will achieve an improvement in the incidence on different points of sales. They will have up-to-date and high-quality information about inventories, the status of shelves in stores and activity records that will be used to negotiate with dealers. Having real-time information and greater bargaining power will also reduce the amount of time spent on marketing activities. The expected saved time is supposed to be 8 hours a week per employee, who has until now used paper forms and reports on the field and entered them into the system manually. With relevant information, they will optimize the team’s performance in the field and improve its productivity. They are estimating that the level of efficiency will rise by 30%. At the same time, they believe that the investment in mobile support will be repaid in about six months. Članek_MSP v podjetju Perutnina Ptuj_Glas Gospodarstva_9.2017