KONECRANES HOSTS ITS SECOND HACKATHON EVENT IN FINLAND

Konecranes will host its second IndustryHack Hackathon event on September 4-6, 2015 in Hyvinkää, Finland. For 48 hours during the event, 12 teams will develop and build new applications and services around the theme: “The Digitalization of Maintenance and Services”. Konecranes challenges the teams to come up with ideas on how to utilize new tools and data to make a service visit more efficient and fluent by optimizing the whole service process. The Hackathon event will combine the knowledge and enthusiasm of coders and designers with that of Konecranes’ technical and business experts.

Konecranes’ first Hackathon event, held at the beginning of February this year, was very successful and generated several valuable and advantageous ideas. One of the main targets of the first event was to see if Konecranes’ already available crane interfaces for collecting, processing and transmitting data are of a type that external developers could hook into and then use as the basis for creating solutions and services.

“Since the first Hackathon, we have had several discussions about new collaborative opportunities with the companies who had teams participating in the event. These discussions have provided us with new insight into the capabilities that start-ups and SMEs have in the field of the Industrial Internet. Certain new ideas presented in the Hackathon have been developed further with two of the teams. One of the companies that participated in the first Hackathon is now a key partner in Konecranes’ research and development projects. We have also hired one of the participants,” says Lasse Eriksson, Program manager, Konecranes.

“Following the positive experience of our first Hackathon, we decided to continue the successful format that combines coders and startups with bigger industrial companies. Except, this time our focus is on the maintenance of cranes,” says Juha Pankakoski, Chief Digital Officer, Konecranes. “We are looking at ways to renew the whole service process and to create a truly new kind of customer experience. We hope that the teams will help create a memorable experience together with Konecranes staff, and that we’ll have many more “Wow!” moments in the demo session.”

At the end of the event, on Sunday afternoon, the results will be presented to a jury and the prize for the best innovation will be awarded.

Further information:
Press:
Juha Pankakoski, Chief Digital Officer
E-mail: juha.pankakoski@konecranes.com or phone +358 20 427 2090

Mikael Wegmüller, VP, Marketing and Communications
E-mail: Mikael.wegmuller@konecranes.com or phone +358 20 427 2008

This press release is also available on our website: www.konecranes.com.

Read more about the Hackathon on www.konecranes.com/hackathon.

Konecranes is a world-leading group of Lifting Businesses™, serving a broad range of customers, including manufacturing and process industries, shipyards, ports and terminals. Konecranes provides productivity-enhancing lifting solutions as well as services for lifting equipment and machine tools of all makes. In 2014, Group sales totaled EUR 2,011 million. The Group has 12,000 employees at 600 locations in 48 countries. Konecranes is listed on Nasdaq Helsinki (symbol: KCR1V).