Innovation event “Hack the Harvester” at Ponsse

During the weekend of 18–20 March, Ponsse held the hackathon innovation event “Hack the Harvester.” The purpose of the event was to obtain ideas and visions from experts outside the field on how to develop operator efficiency, the information provided by the machines and the opportunities for remote management using various mobile and Internet service solutions. Industry Hack coordinated the event together with Ponsse.

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“This was a highly inspirational weekend and an excellent indication of how fast technology moves forward!  The challenges set for competitors focused on the wellbeing of the operator and the profitability of harvesting. Random Forresters, the gifted winning team, stood out from their tough competitors. The winning solution concerned a method of managing a forest entrepreneur's machine fleet and effectively improving business profitability in a way that produces concrete benefits for the entrepreneur,” says Juho Nummela, President and CEO of Ponsse.

Juho Nummela says that Ponsse was positively surprised by the high level of the participating teams. “Most of the teams got right to the point – the potential technology has to make logging companies more profitable. What is more, improving the wellbeing of the operator directly improves the efficiency of work.   Currently, machines are producing massive volumes of data, but it is important to identify which data is significant and where it should be utilised,” Nummela says.