Octavic, a Romanian start-up for the digitization of factories, has obtained over EUR 770,000 in European grants in the last year

Octavic, a provider of digital solutions for the manufacturing industry, has been awarded four international European projects in the last year, providing the company with financing of over 770,000€.

The funds are used for the constant development of the original PET (Product Efficiency Tracker) system, which has brought the company a series of international awards and grants and is used by the largest factories in the pharma, food & beverage, tobacco, and automotive industries in Romania.

“These funds allow us to add new functionalities to the solution we offer for the digitization of factories, especially in terms of artificial intelligence, predictive maintenance and smart production planning. The Industry 4.0 market is becoming increasingly competitive internationally, which was also felt in the calls for attracting European funds. We competed with companies from all over Europe and winning projects validates us externally as most innovative,’ said Felix Blaga, co-founder of Octavic.

The main criteria for judging the winners of European projects in the Industry 4.0 sector are the degree of innovation, the impact of the digitalization solution in business and its technical quality. Of all the European companies that sign up for these funds, only 20% receive funding. The system developed by Octavic, PET, already delivers over 50 production processes’ vital information, from the degree of loading of the machines to the causes of the scrap, so that the production managers can reduce costs and become much more competitive in the industries in which they operate.

The most recent project won by Octavic is Innovation Norway, for which the company received a financing of 200,000 euros. The funds are intended for the development of experimental software to help managers identify risk factors involved in production planning, such as the likelihood of certain equipment failing or delays in the supply of materials.

EFPF (European Connected Factory Platform for Agile Manufacturing), an innovation project co-founded by the Horizon 2020 program of the European Commission, provided the company with a financing of 150,000 euros. The amount is used to develop a new predictive maintenance module, so that Octavic customers will have access to real-time data, from performance history information to forecasting the malfunctions of the monitored equipment. The result of these analysis is integrated into risk-based production planning, which allows for process agility by adapting factory operations in real time.

For the 5G-Timber project (Horizon 2020), Octavic joined a team of 16 international partners, including renowned universities in Europe. The company won a grant of 170,000€ for the development of predictability technology based on artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things, intended for the woodworking industry.

Another 250,000€ were secured after winning the DAIS (Distributed Artificial Intelligent System) project, co-funded by the European Commission, which involves 47 partners from 11 countries. Octavic thus contributes to the use of artificial intelligence in distributed systems, by developing software and hardware components that integrate AI and IoT technologies in the industrial field.

Felix Blaga: “We won’t stop here! We plan to apply for other funding calls that will allow us, for example, to build tools for the 3D visualization of high-complexity production processes and other projects involving deep AI and 5G. We are also looking for local investors who could help us keep up with the increasingly sophisticated customer demands. For example, in the context of rising energy prices, we developed a solution to monitor and streamline electrical energy consumption of production equipment. It’s an extension of the PET system that identifies whether machines are consuming too much and how to fix the problem. “

Another functionality developed at the request of customers is aimed at planning the production so that the factories can streamline their monitoring of material consumption and the need for raw materials and thus solve the problem of traceability of stocks. In fact, PET is an original Octavic product, developed in the context of partnerships with universities abroad, which brings unique functionalities to the smart factories market, and which is flexible enough to fit any type of production. The efficiency of the industrial manufacturers who adopted the PET system increased by a minimum of 8% in the first nine months. Even so, the digitization rate of the Romanian factories remains below 5%, due to “the fact that the factories have not yet integrated a Chief Digital Officer, which generates the lack of understanding of how to work with a digital system for production, but also reluctance to change; these factors are added to the reduced investment budgets,” adds the co-founder.

The company ended 2021 with revenues of 300,000 euros and a consolidated customer portfolio in the pharma, automotive, building materials, tobacco, and plastics industries. For this year, Octavic aims to expand in the region and increase the market share in Central and Eastern Europe.

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