Austrian lead-acid battery maker Banner said it expects to make major savings in its production process thanks to the efforts of a master’s student.
Local student Michael Wiesbauer helped Banner to develop a new type of mass refining plant as part of his mechatronics and business management degree thesis.
According to the student, control and treatment systems originally used by Banner for the production of electrodes were out-dated— and “had a high susceptibility to errors that required a lot of manual intervention”.
After implementing changes proposed by Wiesbauer, aided by his professor, David Kronawettleitner, the new system “now runs with high availability, requires no further manual intervention and errors in the actuators or sensors no longer penetrate into production”, Banner confirmed to BBB.
The changes are expected to save the company around EUR500,000 ($608,000) over the next 10 years, Banner said.
Meanwhile, Wiesbauer has moved onto pastures new… and now works as a department manager for Austrian industrial equipment supplier Astebo.
Banner, which is marking 80 years in the business, said earlier this year it had already invested more than EUR50 million in its Leonding manufacturing plant over the past six years— and had committed a further EUR15m to expand production capacity.
