Kistler Group has inaugurated its new office in Pune, marking an expansion of its operations in India. The facility was opened by Michael Raber, Continental Head Asia at Kistler, with support from the company’s regional and global management. The India operations are led by Anmol Ukey, Country Head of Kistler Instruments India Pvt. Ltd.
Kistler is a Swiss company specialising in dynamic measurement technology, particularly in pressure, force, torque, and acceleration sensing. Headquartered in Winterthur, Switzerland, the company operates globally with more than 60 locations and around 2,000 employees.
The company develops, manufactures, and distributes advanced sensors, measurement systems, and software based on piezoelectric and piezoresistive technologies. Its products are applied in diverse areas including automotive development, industrial automation, aerospace, quality assurance, and proof testing in extreme environments with temperatures reaching up to 700°C.
In the automotive industry, Kistler provides solutions for vehicle and crash testing, powertrain diagnostics, and research and development of new systems. For industrial automation, its technologies support process monitoring, joining and assembly testing, and production control. The company also serves the aerospace sector and scientific research through high-precision force and pressure sensing. In manufacturing, its measurement systems are used for quality assurance, reliability, and traceability.
Kistler has contributed to advancements in sensor technology through its development of the charge amplifier, which is essential for piezoelectric sensors. It also cultivates its patented PiezoStar crystals to improve sensor sensitivity and durability in high-temperature environments. Approximately nine percent of its annual revenue is invested in research and development, and the company holds rights to about 700 patents.
Its solutions are used in industry and science worldwide and support major trends such as electrification, autonomous driving, emission reduction, and digital transformation in manufacturing.
In India, the company has also deployed a cloud-based, sensor-driven system to monitor road surface quality during construction. The system was first implemented on the 594-kilometre Ganga Expressway in Uttar Pradesh and is now being rolled out to other major expressways, including the Gorakhpur Link Expressway, Agra-Lucknow Expressway, Purvanchal Expressway, and Bundelkhand Expressway.\
The Uttar Pradesh Expressways Industrial Development Authority adopted the system to address challenges in ensuring construction quality on large-scale road projects. Traditional quality assessment methods relied on manual checks, which lacked the speed and precision required for projects of this scale. Kistler, together with RTDT Laboratories AG, developed the solution to enable near real-time detection of road surface deviations during active construction.
The end-to-end system integrates high-dynamic acceleration sensors, HF-series laser height sensors, optoelectronic speed sensors, and inertial measurement units mounted on test vehicles. These instruments measure road surface profiles, positioning data, and movement across each roadway section. Data is pre-processed locally using edge computing modules before being securely transmitted to the Kistler Cloud, where analytics developed by RTDT evaluate surface roughness through the International Roughness Index and ride comfort using ISO 2631 standards.
Authorities and contractors can access results through a map-based dashboard, which provides road quality assessments per lane and per 100-metre segment. According to Kistler, the system helps detect deviations early, reduces the need for rework, supports long-term maintenance planning, and provides traceable documentation for compliance with safety standards.
