TVF invests in ONIQ
aachen, July 21, 2022 – The Cologne-based Industry 4.0 startup ONIQ has raised seed funding for the further roll-out of its process analysis software IQ/A. The venture capital funds TechVision Fonds and coparion are investing over EUR 3.5 million with the aim of revolutionizing process management in the manufacturing industry. The software-as-a-service solution IQ/A analyzes production and logistics processes and reveals hidden inefficiencies. With the help of the software, companies can make their processes more cost-efficient and improve the carbon footprint of the products they manufacture.
Process optimization in real time
ONIQ’s software uses process mining and AI methods developed specifically for production to reveal correlations and problems that often go undetected. Process mining in general has radically transformed the analysis of business processes in recent years and has produced some of the most successful unicorns. In the production sector, however, the technology has hardly been used to date, as the processes and data sources are of a significantly different nature to financial processes, for example. According to ONIQ, however, the application in production and logistics offers considerable potential, which is to be exploited by the specialized IQ/A software. As things stand today, most methods for process improvement and lean manufacturing in the production environment are manual. By using IQ/A, industrial companies now have the opportunity to analyze and improve their processes in a data-driven manner. With this newly gained transparency, production time, planning reliability and product quality, among other things, can be optimized more efficiently.
ONIQ technology also pays particular attention to the CO2 emissions of product manufacturing, as many industrial companies are currently faced with the requirement to create transparency about the CO2 footprint of their goods. IQ/A allows them to fully automate the necessary calculations.
Experienced founding team
ONIQ was founded in 2020 by an experienced founding team led by Yvonne Therese Mertens and Christoph Kosmehl, who previously optimized industrial energy consumption based on AI with the smart energy startup ATHION and successfully led the company to an exit to the BMW & Viessmann joint venture Digital Energy Solutions.
Yvonne Therese Mertens, co-founder and CEO, emphasizes: “Our IQ/A software looks in particular at the most valuable processes of companies, where even small inefficiencies can quickly cost millions of euros. We see enormous potential here, which we can harness with our software. The timing for such a solution is ideal, as the industry is under enormous pressure due to the multitude of crises and must reduce both costs and CO2 emissions. IQ/A helps to combine both goals.”
Investors see high potential in the production environment
ONIQ was also able to convince the new investors with its vision. “Cost-optimized and resource-efficient production is critical to the success of industrial companies. To achieve this, they need digital technologies that create transparency and enable them to take effective measures. Current methods are not able to provide the necessary process knowledge, or they require a high level of manual effort for data integration and analysis,” says Dr. Ansgar Schleicher, Managing Director of the TechVision Fund. “With IQ/A, ONIQ closes this gap and offers companies an innovative solution to meet the diverse challenges in production and logistics.”
Toba Spiegel, Senior Investment Manager at coparion, adds: “Analyzing inefficiencies in production processes allows manufacturing companies to optimize their core business with a high P&L impact. Those who offer a high-performance solution for this have the potential to grow exponentially and build up high strategic value. However, production processes are much more complex than simple business transactions such as order-to-cash or purchase-to-pay, which is why ONIQ has developed software tailored to manufacturing. With its clear differentiation from better-known, generic process mining solutions on the market and its competent and industry-experienced team, we are convinced that ONIQ will establish itself as the market leader in its segment.”
