A new social media platform will help machinery operators swap tips about their machines
With Twitter facing serious challenges in the new year, two Aussie entrepreneurs have set up a new social network they hope will give operators, engineers, tradies and manufacturers quick answers to complex problems.
Troy McDonald, a career mechanical engineer and former president of Illawarra Coal, and entrepreneur Brett Baker have jointly developed Torqn, established as a social media site for mining equipment users but with the potential for use across industry.
McDonald says the app aims to be a global connection platform for users, suppliers, and regulators of industrial plant and equipment, creating one hub for sharable information about complex equipment.
“There’s not much information online and whatever information there is, is usually all over the place and hard to find. So, you’re searching for a needle in a haystack,” he says.
Torqn app users sign up to collaborate in groups, called Loops, of people that have the same interest in the mining equipment they use – allowing safety notices to be shared quickly among users.
“If your machine alternator is playing up, you can post on your Torqn Loop to effectively ask for suggestions and solutions,” McDonald says.
Similarly, if an operator has a great improvement idea they can post it into their Loop, and that includes providing valuable insights to the equipment manufacturers to help them improve equipment design or reliability.
A review platform will provide feedback aggregated from a series of user posts for a single piece of equipment – to help companies make their purchase decision.
And the Loop settings can be easily changed – allowing users to connect instantly, rather than building a network of experts over time.
“Social media sites can be used for a range of purposes and it’s easy to imagine lots of use cases for Torqn.”
Baker, who had spent a decade working in the mining industry as a safety and training manager, says during his time in the industry he found knowledge sharing to be difficult.
“Our Mining Regulators do their best to communicate safety alerts efficiently to the industry, but that is limited because they can only publish a safety alert on their website and email the alerts to their contact list that may not be up to date.”
“Best case scenario, maybe a couple of people on a site with 400 employees gets an alert and then they have to decide what to do with the information. It may get lost in the day to day, very busy communications blur as well,” he says.
Baker says that with the app, everyone signed up would get a safety alert immediately and would be able to act on it straight away.
The system is now up and running after McDonald and Baker raised $3 million in seed funding.