Systematically better
Water is a precious commodity. It forms the basis of life for people and nature. Accordingly, supply and disposal play a key role worldwide in securing peace, growth and prosperity. With our creative and solution-oriented engineering developments, we play an active role in shaping environmental protection.
Our basic conviction for the future is networking. Using IT and automation, we create holistic communication between all machines and systems in the water and energy industry so that they can be intelligently controlled on a large scale. Only when all the equipment in a system works in coordination will the result be optimal. As water is an excellent energy store, we have of course also planned developments for the use of hydropower and wastewater heat.
We take responsibility for our actions beyond the delivery and give the customer the security of having received a real solution. Last but not least, it is our task to make complex things more manageable and therefore simpler through meaningful innovations. This is how we measure our work.
At the company’s sites in Heinrichsthal, Ramsbeck, Hahnstätten and Schliengen, 215 employees work on digitalization in the field of municipal infrastructure and develop solutions for water management structures and operations. The company’s portfolio includes technology in the form of machines & systems as well as IT & automation for the key processes and monitoring of waterworks, sewage treatment plants, stormwater tanks, pumping stations and flood protection facilities, for example. Just a few years after the company was founded in 1981, the HST shareholders focused on IT & automation as a forward-looking addition to machine technology when developing the company. The products developed for process data processing and operational organization are installed in almost 1,000 municipalities throughout Germany.
German technologies and companies are also in demand internationally in water management infrastructures and play a leading role. HST is currently supplying its latest innovations to the conurbations of Asia. In China, HST’s solutions for water management are playing an increasingly important role. In the near future, several hundred thousand storage basins for heavy rainfall will be built there based on the German model. HST’s IT-networked machine technology is being used in particular to equip these reservoirs, as it is more effective and efficient than conventional technologies.
Good news from the future
Sewers and sewage treatment plants adapt to wastewater volumes
May 2035: Emma Lehmkuhl has every reason to be happy. The city treasurer has just learned that her municipality is debt-free. At the beginning of the millennium, the city of 460,000 inhabitants was still in the red. However, her predecessors in the administration made the right decision back then when they opted for smart sewer management when renovating the sewer network.
Even back then, demographic change was already becoming apparent: large cities are growing, small towns and municipalities are shrinking. Wastewater volumes change accordingly. Fortunately, Ms. Lehmkuhl's municipality was able to control these volumes flexibly and just in time. This was also because she was informed at all times about the volume of water in the sewer system and the condition of the pipes and systems using sensors and networked IT from HST.
This allowed the resources in sewage treatment plants and sewer networks to be optimally utilized. Cost-intensive overcapacities or bottlenecks were avoided thanks to the smart control system. All of this saved real money.
Medication can be filtered without leaving any residue
February 2032: The first official Sun Valley based on the American model is opened in southern Germany, and demographic change leaves its mark. In the USA, the so-called Old Towns have long been popular. Places are rare, the waiting lists are long. Everything in these cities is designed to meet the needs of the 70-plus generation: low kerbs, signs with large lettering, flat entrances to stores, etc.
Now, when planning the city in Bavaria, everything that is not immediately visible was also coordinated accordingly. After all, the planners assumed that the city's wastewater would have an above-average concentration of drug residues. Older people often take up to eight different medicines a day. Furthermore, according to the calculation, the volume of water in the city is correspondingly high, as older people are less mobile and tend to stay in their own environment. And if many people are out of town with their families during the vacation season, this has to be absorbed and processed by the wastewater system's control system. Corresponding operating systems have been helping municipal operators to control the sewer network and wastewater treatment plants in a smart way ever since.
Sewer network data available everywhere
July 2018: Manuela Ziegler is standing on a manhole cover, but on her smart tablet device she is surfing through the sewer network below her. She can see which sewers are located where and how much water is currently flowing through them. Virtually, of course. The municipal waste management company employee has to check a stretch of sewer and is calling up all the relevant data to do so.
In the past, this required a call to the control center, which then had to laboriously search for plans and use vague location descriptions to roughly determine where the sewer runs. Now Ziegler can view the sewer network from anywhere in the town of 40,000 inhabitants. The local authority transferred all the information to a data cloud almost four years ago. Initially, of course, there were concerns, but a private data cloud is very suitable and absolutely secure for these purposes. Ultimately, the municipality wanted to concentrate on its core tasks again, namely supply and disposal. The constantly growing technical requirements were too complex for the small administration. The move to the cloud was the obvious choice. Now, all employees of the waste disposal plants are constantly online during their work and can always call up up-to-date geo-positions and technical and operational data. Work processes are optimized and work resources are used more efficiently.
Data flood becomes manageable
October 2021, a large city in Germany: Martin Tröger looks at two curves in the municipal wastewater control center. Today, there are only two that are unusual. Everything else is running smoothly. Tröger knows this from his HST SCADA system, which analyzes independently and is fed by many little helpers: strategic measuring points on the buildings in the sewer network, which supply their data to HST's SCADA system. Tröger used to have to look at all the data curves for the 70 structures, including rainwater tanks and pumping stations, every day and check for unusual events. Even someone as experienced as him still needed two hours to review all 500 curves.
But in 2013, the number of measurement parameters continued to rise. Big data! More and more qualitative measurements, e.g. on wastewater quality, were added, environmental regulations became more complex and EU regulations stipulated an expansion of quantity measurements. Tröger's colleagues from the waterworks, where the entire data volume consists of over 15,000 data points, also opted for HST-SCADA. An enormous time saving and workload reduction. HST-SCADA: the "machete" in the data jungle.
System provider: Seeing the big picture
At HST, working systemically means ensuring expertise in the solution and responsibility for the whole. After all, when customers invest, they want to be sure that they are getting a future-proof, compatible system for their money. They also want to remain independent of specific suppliers so that they can react flexibly to innovations and new requirements. This is understandable – after all, we at HST think the same way.
Freely accessible and flexible
We therefore rely either on open in-house creations or on solutions based on freely accessible and flexible standards.
Safe and reliable
This enables us to create smart connections between systems and machines that make complex processes reliably controllable and repeatable. In this way, processes are optimized both technically and economically. Systems engineering, as we understand it, ultimately allows for a combinatorics that combines economic efficiency and diversity with sustainable safety in products, software and project management.
Better and better
At HST, we create our innovations in the context of our customers’ needs and bring the new developments to market maturity, providing users with significant benefits. At the same time, we do not get attached to products that have been successful once, but rather see this as a challenge to do even better next time. That is our system.
Employees: A lot in front, a lot behind
We value the expertise of each individual and open discussions at eye level, both with each other and with our customers. We have deliberately dispensed with the rigid structure of departments and introduced networked areas because we adapt flexibly to the respective needs of our customers, even across disciplines. In this way, we create scope for an optimal exchange and ultimately an efficient work flow in the interests of our customers.
Erfindergeist with joining expertise
We attach great importance to the creative combination skills and “joining expertise” of our employees: they have an eye for the big picture and logically join together in the right place what belongs together systemically. This has proven itself in our numerous products and over 8000 projects that we have successfully developed and implemented since the company was founded. This, in turn, has only been possible because we have constantly trained ourselves and searched for even better solutions. Over the years, HST employees have developed a spirit of innovation that has made the company an internationally sought-after solution provider.
Culture of recognition
However, new things also require courage and decision-makers who stand up for an idea. To this end, HST has created a culture of recognition and skills development that contributes to the further development of each individual. In this way, we guarantee the best conditions for the success of our projects with you. And that is what we stand for.
Production facility for mechanics, machines and systems
For cost optimization and adherence to delivery dates, for material efficiency and resource conservation
In the new production facility of HST Maschinen- und Anlagenbau in Ramsbeck, near the HST headquarters in Meschede, all stainless steel products for the machine and process engineering division are processed and assembled to the highest standards.
The company has a ‘major certificate of suitability’ in accordance with DIN 18800 Class D and a pickling plant for the surface treatment of large-area structures.
Modern production – Made in Germany
HST therefore develops and manufactures all products in Germany in cooperation with qualified suppliers. The production facilities for machines and systems or electrical engineering are organized as lean functional units without their own administration. The modern production techniques and methods are supported and supplemented by well-trained craftsmen and skilled workers right through to the assembly process.
Flexible, with short lead times
The HST production process, assembly and permanent quality assurance enable short throughput times and flexibility – a good prerequisite for time and cost-oriented construction. In addition to manufacturing its own products and systems, the company also carries out individual contract manufacturing in the field of sheet metal processing and ancillary construction trades. All design services and component developments are carried out using Solid Edge with Synchronous Technology.
Flexible standards with the principle of system technology
By using industrial standards and interfaces, prefabricated modules and process sequences, HST manufactures project-related individual products at minimally higher costs than a standard product, but at significantly lower costs of individual production and relies on so-called “flexible standards”. The principles of system technology apply to HST production: in everything that HST develops and manufactures, the advantage of “flexible standards” is optimally combined with the important benefit for the customer of receiving “individual products with high quality” at a price level similar to that of series production.
Process efficiency is our top priority
It is the bracket – the real variable – and fully includes the sub-aspects of material and energy efficiency
Our products and systems in the field of IT & automation provide us with special tools for evaluating processes. This is the essential prerequisite for continuous improvements to machines, systems or even entire organizations.
Our KANiO software provides you with another tool for condition-based maintenance and targeted servicing. Our employees in the solutions business also offer the necessary services for complete projects and turnkey solutions.
Performance that runs smoothly
What makes HST so exceptional? Is it the innovative products, the majority of which have made HST the market leader for a long time? Is it the successful implementation of well over 8000 projects in 30 years? Or is it the courteous service that our customers appreciate so much?
PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE
The answer is the system and networking. At the heart of our service circle is systems technology, which we bring to perfection. Depending on the requirements, we then implement what our customers need from a single source – whether product, project or service. This ranges from resource-saving heat exchangers and smart control technology to equipping a complete flood project. However, our service does not end with the sale of a product or the acceptance of a project. We feel personally responsible and want to promote the success of our customers in the long term. That is why our range of services naturally also includes operation, inspections, maintenance and repairs.
EXCEPTIONAL PERFORMANCE
Admittedly, we can’t do everything. But what we can do in our market, we can do particularly well. Better than almost anyone else. Put our technicians and engineers to the test.
HST PERFORMANCE COMPETENCE
Everything networked: We have positioned our projects, products and services around our core service “systems engineering”. This allows us to cover all the requirements that customers place on us. A well-rounded solution, as we find.
