#Ÿnsecter – Thomas Verrier, OT Manager

15/12/2021

Get to know Thomas, the one who knows everything about automation

After graduating with a vocational baccalaureate, BTS and professional license, he continued his studies in Robotics at a Computer Science School. “You should never listen to people who say that you can’t go on to study great things after a BEP, professional baccalaureate or BTS.” He says he gained most of his knowledge later in life, through experiences rather than studies. Before Ÿnsect, Thomas tried out lots of company sizes, including VSEs, SMEs, and large groups. “I wanted to join a startup to have an important impact on both the organization and technology of the company.” Starting at Ÿnsect in June 2017, he helped the launch of Ÿnsite, our insect farm in Dole. “The automation wasn’t fully operational when I joined, so I helped with the setup: it was a great challenge to get something new working.” Today, as Operational Technology (OT) Team Manager, Thomas provides the network connection between the machines and the machines with systems in our vertical farms. “The goal is to get them to communicate with each other, as well as with the IT systems. Data historization is important for performance monitoring.”

 

To do his job well, Thomas thinks that you need to be a self-starter, curious and patient.
We’re in the technology business, so we have to be constantly on the lookout for innovations and updates. Computer science is an abstract discipline, and it is sometimes hard for the newcomers to understand the system. You have to be patient and teach people“. Passionate about his job, Thomas enjoys most the creativity needed to design the system: “you have to imagine all the automation and computer systems like a brain with synapses, to design the whole thing so that in the end it works.”

 

For Thomas, Ÿnsect is a big part of his life. For him, Ÿnsect is an ambitious and borderline futuristic company because it works on several big projects in parallel and constantly integrates the latest technologies. “All of these technologies will allow us to have 4.0 farms, with systems that talk to each other, mass data, IOT… ” An explorer in his everyday life, it is of course this value of Ÿnsect that resonates the most with him: “we create things that have rarely been done before, and especially never all in one place. We’re the first to make the largest automated insect farm, which doesn’t happen every day!”