By Hessie Jones
Dennis Kuzmenko is the Founder and CEO of Innovate-Ops.
As a professional engineer leading operations of various organizations in the last 20 years, he understands the risks and costs of unplanned downtime to the organization. As he states,
“It has always been my focus. During my career I have tried to find solutions to monitor equipment to enable predictive maintenance. But I could never quite find a solution that was cost efficient and easy to scale. So, I decided to build it myself.”
His experience includes senior operation roles from startup to large corporations. In that time, he noticed the same pattern—making monitoring equipment smarter was a gap in these organizations. Two years ago, Kuzmenko decided he wanted to build this smart solution. He came back to Waterloo. He joined Altitude Accelerator and added,
“It was the first startup accelerator that believed in our vision and helped us as we started developing our solution.”
The Early Solution – IoT Octopus
Innovate-Ops develops a universal hardware solution that can connect across a company’s operations to provide real-time visibility and mitigate risks from the outset.
Kuzmenko recalls he wanted to develop the hardware first—a first generation IoT Octopus device. IoT Octopus had eight sensors that could connect to an IoT device.
By attaching the Octopus sensors to each machinery, the system is able to aggregate connected machinery and provide real-time performance insights: its runtime—in an effort to improve machine efficiency. What Innovate-Ops measures:
- Downtime – “early warning detection is provided before predicted machine failure.” This early warning minimizes the risk and costs of unplanned stoppage into a planned, off-shift service.
- Uptime – the real-time visibility on the health of the production line, provides a “condition-based maintenance to reduce surprise failures on the line’s critical assets.”
- Energy waste becomes more visible – on a machine basis, not as an average across the system. By surfacing idle machines, it cuts ‘avoidable’ consumption per asset.
Integration of the Octopus is plug-and-play and non-invasive and is flexible across legacy and more modern equipment. As per Kuzmenko,
“We had already piloted the technology in smaller facilities early, and they were more challenging production environments within manufacturing and steel. They were dirtier and this meant our sensors needed to be durable enough to withstand those conditions and still be able to work reliably.”
Kuzmenko’s vision was to be able to install their solution within an hour for every piece of machinery and attach one Octopus deployed with multiple sensors.
Finding Early Customers
The team approached a few large manufacturing companies and engaged in free pilots with the goal of testing and feedback and product iteration. Those pilots were successful, and clients were pleased with the results.
The solution has now transitioned to target the maintenance department of these organizations. This resulted in a large order quantity of the IOT Octopus device.
The first commercial deployment was at Purolator Sortation Center. He recalls early engagement with Purolator:
“Purolator posted an Innovation Challenge at Communitech. Their digital lab was also looking for solutions to monitor existing equipment and make them smart. We were selected for that challenge and eventually the company worked with us to integrate our devices in their Ontario facilities. It’s providing them with valuable information and has helped them prevent downtime on their sortation lines.”
Early in the design and development process, Kuzmenko recalls it took them some time to figure out the best method to optimize installment and deployment, as he adds,
“When we deployed our devices at the Purolator facilities, we had already gone through countless iterations. So, by the time we introduced it to Purolator, it it was advanced enough that deployment on our devices much faster.”
Since then, Purolator has asked for the same solution to be deployed at their sortation hub in Vancouver as well as other facilities.
The Vision to Develop a Standard across Facilities of all Sizes
Kuzmenko says that AI has been instrumental in changing the game for Innovate-Ops,
“AI has accelerated what we’re developing because we don’t need deep signals or a deep understanding of the physical performance of systems. We can use AI to complement the signals we are collecting. In the past to take a good quality picture, you needed to buy a $3000 camera. Nowadays, you use your mobile phone with AI embedded to enhance the picture to get the same quality. That’s what we’re doing with the sensors. We are trying to make it very easy and inexpensive to deploy across the whole facility. AI will collect all those signals and deliver the insights for maintenance and production managers. This makes the solution much more accessible and affordable for small companies. All those big players, like Siemens or Keyence are still selling those ‘expensive systems when nobody needs them any longer.”
Currently, to onboard a new client, Kuzmenko says they will typically have bi-weekly meetings that include training maintenance teams on installation. These meetings will also demonstrate the kinds of insights can be retrieved from integration. It is also a briefing opportunity to understand the current performance issues and establish monitoring baselines. He states,
“After a series of meetings, teams will understand how the system works with the signals they receive from our devices.”
As the client list grows, Kuzmenko doesn’t foresee growing the team significantly, adding,
“We almost don’t need to grow our team as much. We can do more things with leaner teams and determine how easily we can train teams and improve our onboarding process. »
The Next Milestone
For Kuzmenko, the next milestone is an important one—to find a few more large customers. They are currently piloting with one of the largest Canadian automotive corporations. They are also raising their seed round to help them scale through key hires in marketing and sales. Ideal customers include companies like Purolator, Linamar, and Magna, as well as other automotive companies—those with 20 to 100 facilities where most equipment is not currently monitored.
He sees AI as critical for companies to create footprint and history of their operations, that is, have more memory and context about the equipment used across their process.
“Altitude Accelerator has been an important part of our journey from the early stages. They helped us sharpen our vision, think more strategically about go-to-market, and navigate many of the challenges that come with building an early-stage company. Geoff Simonett in particular has been a great mentor—always willing to share practical advice, challenge our thinking, and help us make better decisions as we grow. Through Altitude’s different programs, events, panels, and focused sessions, we’ve had opportunities to present and refine our vision with people looking at the business from different angles—product, technology, commercialization, and investment. That combination of perspectives has helped us continuously sharpen our strategy and move from an early concept toward real commercial deployment.”
Through programs such as RevUp, Market Readiness, and Investor Readiness, Altitude Accelerator supports founders by providing access to practical resources, mentorship and capital-readiness pathways at critical stages of growth. Supported by the Ministry of Economic Development and Job Creation, our work is designed to reduce barriers and help founders focus on building solutions that respond to real-world needs.
To learn more: Investor Readiness program, Market Readiness. Founders who apply for Market Readiness will have access to Altitude’s Go-to-Market AI Coach.
