Two Waterloo Engineering graduate students pitched their startup at the winter 2024 Velocity Pitch Competition and won $5,000 to turn their innovative approach to industrial machinery maintenance into a business.
Jesurun Ramesh and Minaal Butt, both currently enrolled in the Master of Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology (MBET) program, co-founded Grease Tech to reduce human error and costly failures in manufacturing lines.
“Missed lubrication can lead to malfunction often resulting in downtime, which means lost money,” said Ramesh.
An average manufacturing plant has 2,000 machinery points, often bearings, that need to be greased. The current process to track, measure and lubricate is manual and can result in parts being missed, which can lead to temporary plant shutdown and lost productivity.
Grease Tech’s product tracks what parts need lubrication and measures the exact amount needed.
“Your startup has a better chance of success if it’s more than just an idea — we knew the problem we wanted our business to address and went for it,” said Butt. “We’ve also benefited from being a part of the MBET community which champions entrepreneurial spirit and provides practical support, the right tools and a valuable network.”
Ramesh and Butt 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.
Go to Students pitch solution to boost productivity in manufacturing for the full story.