SDA has developed a platform between the factory and the cloud, to which machines and applications from established providers can dock.
(Photo: Software Defined Automation)
Munich The industrial metaverse is the big topic of the future for many companies. With the help of digital twins, processes in the factories can be virtually mapped and optimized with the help of simulations. However, it is often difficult to quickly implement all the knowledge gained from the cloud.
“When there is a small model change, car factories still stand still for two and a half days until all the machines have been reprogrammed,” says Josef Waltl, head and co-founder of Software Defined Automation (SDA). “We need to reprogram the machines much faster and more reliably.”
Automation technicians – of whom there are far too few – are often still out and about in the factory halls with laptops and carry out updates directly on the control cabinet. There is still a great need for digitization on the last mile in the factories.
Henkel is SDA’s first major pilot customer
In order to be able to configure the machine controls more quickly and easily, SDA has developed a platform between the factory and the cloud, to which machines and applications from established providers can dock. “We make the processes in automated factories completely flexible and adaptable in minutes,” says co-founder Axel Scheurer.
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The company calls the approach with which it sells its solutions “Industrial Control as a Service”. So customers pay a regular fee for usage. With the Persil manufacturer Henkel, which uses the technology in its factories, SDA has gained its first major pilot customer.
Now they have also convinced investors in the first major round of financing. The start-up from Garching near Munich raised ten million dollars. Most of this comes from lead investor Insight Partners. Also participating are Baukunst VC, Fly Ventures and First Momentum, which had already invested in a smaller round at the end of last year.
The SDA founders have now also convinced investors in their first major round of financing.
(Photo: Software Defined Automation)
The potential market is large, the founders believe. “If we were to connect just half a percent of all controls in the world, we would have a good chance of a unicorn being valued at billions,” says Waltl. In the medium term, sales in the millions are the goal. If you assert yourself on the market, you can do a lot more. “We occupy a niche in which we are alone so far.” Customer interest is great.
Despite the triumph of the Internet of Things in recent years, productivity in factories has not increased as much as promised. “There is an implementation problem in the last few meters in the factory building – and we want to fix that,” says Waltl.
The company does not see itself as a competitor to automation specialists such as Siemens or Rockwell, but as a complement. The digitization of industry has shown that closed systems do not work. And so everyone cooperates with everyone else.
However, it is not yet clear who will secure the largest part of the added value in the end. For example, Siemens could bring solutions for simpler machine control onto the market. According to a high-ranking Siemens manager, the goal of Industry 4.0 is to automate the smallest possible quantities. This requires the machines to be easily reprogrammed.
So it’s quite possible that Siemens and other competitors will develop their own solutions. “We estimate that we have a technological lead of about one and a half years in connecting controllers from different suppliers,” says SDA co-founder Waltl. The technology should be further developed with the proceeds from the financing round.
The founders of SDA have the advantage that they know the subject from many sides. Both used to work for Siemens, Waltl also worked for the big cloud players Microsoft and AWS.
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