Coretecs keeps on growing! In November we were glad to welcome Nick Remouchamps to our team as Digital OT Specialist. He brings a strong academic background, practical experience within the industry, and most of all his eagerness to establish solid machine learning skills at Coretecs to the table. High time we introduce him to you!
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Introducing Nick

After Nick obtained his bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering at the KU Leuven, he decided to go to London and get a master’s at the renowned King’s College. A testimonial to his character, if you ask us, since it’s not the easiest school to get into. Nick wanted to make sure his theoretical knowledge would be complemented by practical know-how. Both studies come in useful more than once now, so we applaud his move!

He subsequently started his first job as a PLC Engineer because he was interested in working within the automation business. After a year or so, however, he noticed that he’d done about all he could do. There wasn’t much room anymore to grow. Another clear indication of his curious nature and urge to learn. Right around the time that he was starting to look for something new, he received a message on LinkedIn from Adrien. The content of that message alone would’ve been enough to pull him in, he says.

“I immediately noticed that we’d click, and I enjoyed reading about Coretecs and its innovative Industry 4.0 mission. When we started talking, we all soon realised that we were clearly on the same page. It didn’t take us long to seal the deal, I’m happy to say!”

As Digital OT Specialist he stays close to machines and is concerned with installations, programming, gathering data information, and so on. His previous PLC experience comes in handy quite a bit. Coretecs aims to merge IT and OT more, so for the moment he’s trying to catch up on IT and read as much as he can on the topic. That way, he can think along with the rest of the team when we’re discussing strategic matters concerning the fusion. Something he values highly.
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Nick + machine learning = added value

As Nick wrote his thesis on machine learning in the process industry, he was delighted when we approached him and said he could work with machine learning within our Industry 4.0 adventure too. Apparently, that was exactly the kind of job he was hoping for! As we said, we’re focused on bringing OT and IT closer together at Coretecs, and machine learning is imperative in that sense. Once you extract information from machines, you can unleash machine learning on it, as it were. It will enhance processes by analysing all the data intelligently. That’s how we’re working towards smart industries.

“Machine learning is a tremendously interesting extra layer on the original concept of merging OT and IT. There’s much about machine learning and its industrial application we don’t know yet, so I’m exhilarated to explore it further. I’m sure it isn’t the best option for everything, and it shouldn’t be used excessively, just because it is an innovative technique. However, it excels in some specific cases, such as anomaly detection.”

Think about it, if a machine can point out where things are going south in your processes, you can prevent accidental shutdowns. In other words, you can change and improve things way faster and more efficiently. Nick says he’s glad he can represent the bridge between the more academic R&D world, and the more pragmatic industrial businesses. It has become a bit of a personal mission for Nick:

“Convincing people of the added value that machine learning can bring isn’t easy, as it requires data that is obviously not readily available. Therefore, I try to show them through small proof of concepts what kind of tangible results they could get. It helps them understand that machine learning could propel them towards becoming a truly smart factory.”

Life at Coretecs

While Nick has only been here a short while, he’s already a true ambassador for our company. When asked about us, he remarks that compared to other companies, there’s no hierarchy whatsoever to be found here and that he got ‘Google vibes’ on his first days. That’s probably due to the informal way we eat our lunch together, shoot some stick or play table football in between strategic brainstorms.

It’s also because of our innovative character and mission to change industries, we reckon. Nick indicates he’s grateful to be included so much and that we hand him all tools necessary to grow and evolve. We try to conduct a down-to-earth vision, and we honestly appreciate everyone’s point of view.

“My dream is to continue growing here, alongside the company. I’m aware that I’m mostly an academic person and don’t have enough practical experience yet. I’ll get there though; I’m very motivated to catch up as quickly as possible. I’d love to be a pivotal person in this team and show potential clients all we can do for them, taking away their initial resistance and making them as enthusiastic about machine learning as I am. That's my ambition.”

What can we say: there’s an avant-garde mission at the heart of this company and everyone in the team gets to voice their opinion on how we’ll get there. Growth is ever stimulated and there are no hidden agendas anywhere. We just talk openly and freely with each other. Hopefully, people like Nick can remind us from time to so we never lose that.