The December 5 Deep Tech Alliance Explore 2024 conference in Paris, co-organized by the DeepTech Alliance and Hello Tomorrow, focused on how collaboration between corporates and deep tech startups can help transform manufacturing as well as the energy, health and public utilities sectors.
The Innovator’s Editor-in-Chief moderated a panel (pictured here) on The Shift to Smart Factories. Panelists included executives from Bosch, Würth Group, FORCE Technology, a technology consultancy and service company, and two AI startups: IPercept and Phantasma Labs.
Read on to get some the key takeaways.
The panel highlighted an example of a successful collaboration between Bosch Hungary and Swedish startup iPercept. Like many large corporates Bosch, a German multinational engineering and technology company, is interested in putting AI into production to make its factories more productive and competitive. Although the machines and production line in its plants are already well-equipped, integrating new sensors and deploying AI technology could further enhance efficiency. While the company has an open innovation department and regularly works with startups and scale ups, its Maklar, Hungary plant had little experience in working with young tech companies.
Through the DeepTech Alliance, a private non-profit association of leading European entrepreneurship hubs that specializes in connecting deep tech companies with large corporates, the innovation manager of Bosch’s plant in Maklar connected with IPercept, a Swedish startup that serves as a kind of fitness tracker for industrial machines, leveraging AI to track mechanical movements to do root cause analysis and predictive maintenance.
Bosch tested the technology on a welding machine used in the automotive steering systems it produces. The objective was not just to tackle unplanned downtime, but to preempt it, leading to reduced costs, improvement in product quality, and elevated customer satisfaction. The pilot was a success, and the Maklar factory is now looking at how to apply the technology to other production lines, explained Matyas Potsa, Director of Innovation Ecosystem at Bosch Hungary’s. He and IPercent CEO Karoly Szipka appeared on stage together to talk about their collaboration.
Poysa talked about how the company tackled challenges that many corporates face when working with young companies: onboarding a young company as a supplier, finding the money to fund the first pilot and change management issues.
Stefano Prosseda, head of Innovation, ISO and AI governance at Würth Italy talked about two collaborations: On the day of the conference Würth Italy announced that it had partnered with German deep tech startup GaussML , which specializes in helping companies optimize their production lines with AI. GaussML says its AI copilot Optimyzer can offer factories 20% faster laser cutting with superior quality; precision-perfect robot welding that is up to 300% faster, and a 10% to 20% productivity boost in injection molding. Its technology will be distributed through Würth under an agreement that will promote both brands to clients. The two companies met through the DeepTech Alliance.
The Würth Group, which began as a wholesaling business for screws and bolts in 1945, has evolved into a globally operating group with more than 88,000 employees that includes 400 companies with more than 2,700 branches and shops in 80 countries. Prosseda explained that Würth, which supplies its clients with tools they need to operate their businesses (it supplies some 130,000 of these tools), has an open innovation program and is interested in increasing its engagement with startups. It wants startups to see the company as a distribution channel that can help them scale up their businesses while at the same time helping Würth offer new products to its clients.
Würth is currently collaborating with Force Technology, a technology consultancy and service company, to define future trends in innovative maintenance that could be included in future products that Würth sells to SMEs. It wants to team up with startups in this field and distribute their technology to its clients.
Michele Colli, head of digital production at Force Technology, explained how he works with manufacturers of all sizes to help them adopt new technologies and business models. Large companies often underestimate the many things that need to be considered when adopting new technologies, including compliance issues and cybersecurity, he said.
Colli also talked about how startups need to adapt their business models when working with SMES. Many startups offer their technology as a service, with monthly recurring fees. Small businesses often have cash flow issues and prefer one off payments, when they have the money, he says.
Rama Nanjundaiah, CEO of Phantasma Labs, talked about how deeptech startups can address pain points for both large corporates and SMES. Factories across the globe are losing between 3% and 20% of their revenue due to inefficient planning of their production processes. Phantasma Labs says it has developed software that helps manufacturing companies of all sizes efficiently plan and schedule their processes. Built on the foundations of Reinforcement Learning AI, the Berlin-based startup says its software generates production plans that are up to 30% better and created 100 times faster than traditional methods.
The uniqueness of the Berlin-based startup’s approach lies in its independence from Big Data, making its technology applicable to not just large corporates but SMEs and mid-caps. Instead of training AI on data Phantasma Labs trains them on simulations, which allows AI to be implemented where it has not been actionable before because of cost constraints and data constraints.
Panelists throughout the day emphasized how working with deep tech startups offers a way for European industries to improve performance and drive new growth. In addition to listening to panel discussions corporates attending the event listened to pitches from deep tech startups and booked meetings with them in a matchmaking room that looked set to foster new collaborations to talk about on stage next year.
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