How Samotics is using AI, sensors and ML to help industries eliminate energy waste and unplanned downtime

Unplanned downtime is one of the largest causes of lost productivity in manufacturing. It is one of the costliest events at any industrial or manufacturing plant after safety or environmental mishaps. Every time production stops, there is a direct impact on the bottom line. Besides unplanned downtime, another serious cause for concern for industrial companies is energy waste due to operational inefficiencies, process-machine mismatches and developing damage.

Many plants rely on reactive, run-to-fail maintenance processes and research shows that predictive and preventive methods result in boosting uptime and keeping production running. Also, companies are often blindsided by whether they are using their equipment in the most efficient ways possible. If you pair intelligent sensors with state-of-the-art AI algorithms, then you can not only eliminate unplanned downtime but also improve your asset availability as well as the efficiency of your assets.

Dutch scale up Samotics is on a mission to eliminate unplanned downtime and energy waste with its solution called SAM4. With robust and high-accuracy failure detection technology, Samotics is showing how transversal technology can help reduce risk, lower costs, save energy, and put an end to unplanned downtime.

Eliminating energy waste and unplanned downtime

Founded in 2015 by Gerben Gooijers and Simon Jagers, Samotics sees energy waste as a data problem – whether it be a result of unplanned downtime, inefficient usage or incorrect selection of the equipment. Simon Jagers says industrial companies have a lot of data but very little of that data is used to optimise energy efficiency and operational resiliency. The scaleup analyses customers’ data and provides actionable insights.

“When starting the company we pitched the idea to Heineken, Strukton and ASML. All of them agreed to start a project,” Jagers says.

During these pilot projects, Samotics learned that they can improve the value of insights if they improved the quality of data. “Our thinking was: If we can make it work, we have a system that is enormously scalable because it does not need to be installed on the asset in the field (as with traditional sensors), but could very quickly and easily be installed inside the safety of the Motor Control Cabinet and/or extract data from existing hardware,” Jagers adds.

This approach worked and Samotics succeeded in delivering accuracy without the need to install sensors on the assets in the field. Samotics entered the market in 2019 and now offers an unrivalled AI technology that helps eliminate energy waste and unplanned downtime for global industrial companies and utilities.

Since 2019, Samotics has been scaling at a fast pace, which is demonstrated by big milestones, including a partnership announcement with ABB and a large tender win with one of the largest water utilities in the UK, Yorkshire Water. Samotics will monitor assets across the full sewage network made up of 1,000 stations, which delivers services to 5.2 million customers and 140,000 businesses.

Addressing slow adoption of technology

A study by the McKinsey Global Institute recently showed how Europe’s lead in industries, chemicals, materials, and fashion is under threat when it comes to adoption of transversal technologies like next-level automation and artificial intelligence (AI).

The slow adoption of technologies by industrial companies and utilities was one of the challenges faced by Samotics as well. “Whereas consumer companies have massively adopted the opportunities offered by new technologies such as the cloud and AI, industrial companies are still lagging behind,” says Jasper Hoogeweegen, CEO of Samotics.

Hoogeweegen says selling a completely new technology to these industries has been quite a challenge for Samotics. However, they were able to overcome this challenge by working with early adopters and developing its product, customer journey, and sales processes.

Another factor that has played a key role in its success, according to Jagers, is their decision to hire a number of highly talented data scientists early on. These data scientists built a truly AI powered model and Jagers says, “Our AI algorithms have been learning since 2016. As the company has scaled, our algorithms have been improving at an exponential rate.”

Rise is a value-add in a dynamically changing world

Jasper Hoogeweegen, CEO of Samotics, says the dynamics continuously change in a high-growth environment and thus, the business challenges they aim to tackle also change when scaling the company.

“Across our different teams, from commercial to product, we felt there was definite value-add for an outside-in view as well as targeted peer-to-peer discussions on relevant topics,” he says.

With the Rise programme, Samotics saw an opportunity to engage with companies in a similar stage facing similar challenges. “We’ve been convinced from the start that we would be able to massively benefit from the Techleap Rise programme and the network surrounding it,” adds Hoogeweegen.

Tim van Leeuwen, CCO of Samotics, also adds that the Rise programme helped them gather valuable input and information from peers coping with similar challenges. “Albeit in different contexts, it is very insightful to be able to have sparring partners on certain growth-related topics,” he notes.

He also says that the Rise programme offered them a strong outside-in perspective. “This has been made possible by the fact that we have been challenged to assess and benchmark ourselves to best practices and other scale-ups on multiple topics, be it with regard to going international, our product, or our go2market strategy,” Van Leeuwen says.

Like their peers from batch #8 of the Rise programme, Van Leeuwen also feels that the programme has enabled them to network with entrepreneurs and the connections will remain valuable beyond the programme. “This should enable us to continue gaining insights from same stage companies who will be facing similar challenges as ourselves moving to the future,” he added.

Becoming industry leader in eliminating energy waste

Samotics is well underway to becoming the market leader in helping industrial companies and utilities eliminate energy waste and unplanned downtime. It aims to do this by offering unmatched insights and helping these companies act upon the improvement opportunities that exist within their operations.

“With its AI powered actionable insights, Samotics can truly help industrial companies and utilities realise their ambitious goals to decrease CO2 emissions and improve operational resilience,” says Hoogeweegen.

They observe that 30 per cent of all electricity in the world is consumed by electric motors and their rotating equipment. From this consumption, Hoogeweegen says 40 percent is wasted in operations and industrial companies lack the insights necessary to understand the cause of this waste.

“If we can help the majority of all leading industrial companies and utilities eliminate this waste, Samotics will be a true success,” Hoogeweegen explains the vision.

Getting to their current stage hasn’t been easy for Samotics, and can largely be attributed to their patience and resilience in developing the SAM4 solution. Jagers sees importance in getting a first working version of a solution in a real customer environment as soon as possible.

“Do not develop a solution from behind your computer screen,” he says explaining the need for solutions to be developed and tested in a real customer environment. “Iterate and improve your solution from there on” is his advice for every aspiring entrepreneur.