They designed kits for different educational levels. Together with local and international partners created a disruptive proposal
26.02.2019 • 19:01hs • Evolving business
Evolving business
Robots and smart houses: look how Rasti joined the digital transformation
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Rasti is a brand that remained in the popular imagination as a generic of brick games. Born as an alternative to Lego, the company was part of the childhood of millions of Argentines.
But the digital revolution reaches all companies and nostalgia does not allow capturing the attention of children, marveled these days by cell phones, tablets and other digital entertainment devices.
Aware of this, Rasti entered the world of electronics and will seek a place in Argentine schools, both private and public.
The firm, a typical Argentine SME, not only innovates in its product portfolio, but also from the point of view of the business: the robotics kits that it has just launched will not enter the traditional commercial toy store circuit, but instead will they will use to expand their relationship as a State provider.
This happens at a time when the governments of the Nation and the provinces are calling for bids for these types of equipment through their Education areas.
For the firm an opportunity to enter that segment. Until now, I had participated in these processes to provide didactic material to kindergartens or other areas of Social Development.
Now, the company developed three kits from the Arduino Nano open hardware boards and the Skratch free-use software. On this basis, sets were designed with robots equipped with sensors, USB connectivity, Bluetooth and infrared port in order to conform the different modules.
In turn, these sets are complemented by Blink, an e-learning platform in which teachers can upload their projects and students can submit their queries and proposals, as well as allowing monitoring on each of the tasks.
The Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering of ITBA and the company Construitov, dedicated to facilitate the implementation of this discipline in schools, are two other partners of Rasti in this initiative.
Each of these kits will allow work in teams of three to five children, in which each will have a different role: is the one who builds, another who programs and a third who presents the project based on a proposed topic in the classroom .
The objective is that various initiatives can be developed throughout the year and, at the end of the cycle, present them as a whole.
To this the Blink platform is added, which makes it possible to give support for the evolution of the work of the children in a horizontal manner to the different subjects that are involved in these tasks.
As a third aspect, training and follow-up is included for teachers who venture into these robots in the classroom.
Of the three types of existing kits, two are aimed at children from six years old onwards, while the rest is aimed at those who are over nine years old.
The reason for this segmentation is that it is a more complex set, with more sensors and that can even be used in secondary school. In addition, they address three different themes: smart home, sustainable city and inclusive school.
Each of them is divided into five modules that, in turn, have three different degrees of complexity, according to the number of sensors to be included and which will require different levels of programming.
For example, in the smart home it will be possible to work first with a connected garden or with an intelligent energy system. The same with the city and with the school, whose challenges are to find ways of integrating technology from children who have some kind of motor or sensory difficulty.
"We are a SME and we want the kids to learn with Rasti The goal for this year is to reach private schools with this proposal and each of them incorporates about 20 kits, in addition to participating in the tender for educational robotics that they have been doing different ministries, "Daniel Dimare, director of Marketing and Communication at Rasti, told iProUP.
Transformation
In addition to these kits, Rasti advances in the improvement of the processes and faces the digital transformation that this historical moment that the world is going through demands.
"In several cases, it implied innovating in the thrown toys, as long as the proposal of free and didactic game is not affected, and, of course, if it is useful for an augmented fun, like Rasti Castillo de Fuego, which has an application free for Android and iOS, "the executive tells iProUP.
The businessman adds: "Once the boys armed the castle, which includes intelligent nodes in its construction, they see through the app how a dragon, a sorcerer, fire or a medieval warrior appears with which they can interact thanks to the augmented reality "(see video).
A strategy that, later, the firm applied to other products, which included accessories and parts that can be printed through 3D printing technology, as is the case with the Rasti Hot Rod line.
In the strictly operative, for management and production processes, management tools were implemented that allow the company's customers to control the stock of their premises and thus make replenishments more efficient, as well as the use of business intelligence platforms oriented towards Monitor business areas and accelerate decision making.
To the bad context, good face
The company finalized the presentation of robotics kits at a time when small and medium-sized Argentine companies are going through their worst moment during the administration of Mauricio Macri.
Dimare acknowledged that they already suffered several similar crises, although he was confident that now it is a moment that "is transitional".
"This year will be difficult, like 2018, but these products that we present now are oriented to something concrete," he adds.
According to the executive, among the main problems faced by SMEs, what worries him most is the "diminishing purchasing power of Argentines that generates a drop in domestic consumption".
He also listed "inflation, which removes predictability in prices and profits of our products, and variations in the exchange rate, which produces instability in the costs of raw materials and do not allow prices to be maintained in export dollars."
Finally, he criticized "the lack of financing of working capital at reasonable rates, increase in imports of toys, high interest on credit cards for purchases in installments that threaten medium-price products, strong tax pressure and tax overlap. that make the sales amounts to the consumer more expensive ".
Faced with an unfavorable local scenario, the iconic toy brand bets on digital transformation to expand its business and adapt to the rules of the new economy. Everything to maintain its validity in the life of its usual clients: the children.
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