FinnHeat – Green light for the productization
Heat treatment of metals
A small need can turn into an iron entity when the pieces fall into place on both sides of the table. Finn Heat is a heat treatment company from Liminka that focuses on the heat treatment of metal, which is needed, e.g. for stress relief in pressurized pipelines. Heat treatment takes place with the help of ceramic resistors or in an oven, and specially developed electrical equipment is used to control the temperature. Finn Heat is mainly focused on mobile heat treatment services, which are mostly performed at the customer’s place. At Finn Heat’s office in Liminka, there is also the opportunity to carry out small-scale heat treatments in the ovens reserved for them.
From phone call to co-operation
Remote services are often necessary in various industrial processes. The importance of sensors in reducing surprises is critical when talking about larger operating units. If, during the cold season, Oulu Energia’s small pipe failure caused heating to stop in the whole of Oulu, what kind of costs would it incur? Would it be good to anticipate such situations in advance?
For some time, Finn Heat had been spinning the idea of a remotely readable monitoring device that would monitor the temperatures of heat treatment objects and report error situations or if the object approaches critical values. The project got the green light from Business Finland with funding. At this point, PehuTec’s Juhani Leppänen happened to call Finn Heat’s Mika Särkioja, and after hearing about Finn Heat’s need, he offered to do the survey work required for this project.
PehuTec’s earlier IoT solution Wiljami served as a door opener for cooperation, where the sensor unit measures the temperatures during drying and humidity in the grain dryer in real time. According to Mika, PehuTec’s Hannu Kallio-Kokko served as the final seal for the cooperation.
“Heat treatment is a big and special field that is not easy to understand. Hannu knew how to copy right away what we want and what we want to get out of the survey work.”
The power of co-operation led to productization
According to Finn Heat’s Mika Särkioja, the investigation went well. In the workshops, Hannu and Juhani from PehuTec carefully reviewed the options and possibilities. Both parties immediately understood what the purpose of the project was.
“The investigation wasn’t just throwing emails from one party to the other, but concretely we sat down together and set out to find out if this is possible and what the alternatives are.”
Successful investigation work with PehuTec led to productization and implementation. Finn Heat’s Mika Särkioja said in the end that: “If we had set out to do this among ourselves, we would not have been able to create such a clear whole.”
See more of our work
