At the end of the year, on November 1, 2022, Daniela Kücken took over the management of the service department at Unitechnik. She succeeds Hartmut Krüger, who built up the Service department and is now retiring after 36 years at Unitechnik. The graduate industrial engineer for corporate logistics has five years of experience in project management at a general contractor for automated logistics centers and ten years of expertise in logistics planning and consulting for medium-sized German companies. She has been working at Unitechnik since April 2021 - initially as deputy head of the IT department.

In her position as Head of the Service Department, Daniela Kücken is primarily concerned with the concept of "Predictive Service". This is about more than just solving problems: "In future, we will focus on preventing faults. We want to use the experience we have gained from working with our customers and technology partners to offer solutions and modernizations for existing systems. By taking measures at an early stage, we want to eliminate known and age-related malfunctions and their causes before they have a negative impact on ongoing operations," says Kücken. To achieve this, the department relies on digital concepts and developments in the field of AI. A large amount of data is collected and analyzed on an ongoing basis. In combination with the experience gained from past service activities, this data is used to predict potential system malfunctions. This enables early countermeasures such as repairs or the replacement of parts - but also timely extensions to prevent bottlenecks.

This is intended not least to strengthen the lifetime partnership approach that Unitechnik pursues. "An automated logistics center or an automated production system is a long-term investment that is usually made for decades. Our aim is to proactively support customers throughout the entire service life so that the system adapts to changing conditions and always has a high level of availability," summarizes Kücken.

The service department acts as a personal point of contact for customers. As a system integrator, Unitechnik looks after both its own services and those of its suppliers. This applies to troubleshooting as well as maintenance, spare parts and extensions.