Improving productivity in manufacturing through entrepreneurship
Velocity Pitch Competition winner Grease Tech brings industrial machinery maintenance into the 21st century
There are more than 90,000 manufacturing plants in Canada making our food, vehicles and parts. It’s an industry that contributes significantly to the company’s gross domestic product, yet some manufacturers still use pen and paper to track lubrication maintenance that is necessary to keep the machines running smoothly.
“Missed lubrication can lead to malfunction often resulting in downtime, which means lost money,” says Jesurun Ramesh, co-founder of Grease Tech and one of four winners of the winter 2024 Velocity Pitch Competition.
To solve this, Grease Tech integrates hardware and software to ensure precise lubrication of machine bearings to reduce human error and costly failures in manufacturing lines.
Ramesh and co-founder Minaal Butt, graduate students in Master of Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology in the University of Waterloo's Faculty of Engineering, are working out of Velocity’s digital space to refine their prototypes and business strategy. They have built a prototype and secured paid pilots in both a local Kitchener-Waterloo meat manufacturer plant as well as Fortune 500 company in Dallas that manufactures and assembles cables for marine, medical and other industries.
"This is a problem in all manufacturing globally and can be easily scalable. We want Grease Tech to be the go-to product for all manufacturers, the industry’s household name." - Jesurun Ramesh, co-founder of Grease Tech.
