Hiab: "Time for Elevation" 

Hiab, part of Cargotec, organised its first fully open innovation challenge “CargoHack3” with recent finals in its Test and Innovation Center in Hudiksvall, Sweden. Hiab published the call for applications in May and

Hiab, part of Cargotec, organised its first fully open innovation challenge “CargoHack3” with recent finals in its Test and Innovation Center in Hudiksvall, Sweden.

Hiab published the call for applications in May and received 35 applications from project teams around the world by the submission due date in June. From among the high-quality applications, eight teams were selected and invited to the final hackathon in early September.

The goal of "CargoHack3 - Time for Elevation" was to explore new ideas and opportunities for digitalisation and connectivity in load handling. The challenges defined were: making load handling easier and safer; securing availability of the equipment; taking the lead in intelligent load handling solutions.

Due to the high quality of ideation and actual development work of the finalist teams, the jury, consisting of representatives from Cargotec, Hiab and a Hiab customer, decided to continue the work with three teams from Sweden and Finland. The selected teams are Slagkryssaren, Perfektio, and Hii-op. “As a member of the jury I have to say that the skill level within the chosen teams was extremely high within their areas of expertise. All teams had exciting ideas, their level of discussion showed their knowledge about the challenges and the outcome surpassed our high expectations, which made it very difficult for the jury to choose the best teams", says Jan-Erik Lindfors, Vice President, New Business Solutions, Hiab.

The selected  teams will continue their cooperation with Hiab, further developing solutions, improving operational safety and efficiency, as well as building on Hiab's recently launched HiConnect platform. Each winning team was awarded a pilot project worth approximately EUR 20,000.

“The feedback about the hackathon and the final event from the participants was overwhelmingly positive. For us in Hiab, the best outcome is that we create tangible results that will benefit our customers with safer and more efficient operations, and to better utilize the insights of our connected solutions. Our next step is to plan pilot projects with our new cooperation partners from CargoHack3 in order to continue on Hiab's pioneering journey", says Stefan Onkenhout, Director, Innovation and Business Development, Hiab.