Miraitek4.0 is a spin-off company of Politecnico di Milano, the top technical university in Italy. Founder in 2019 by a group of researchers and entrepreneurs, Miraitek4.0 is a dynamic, responsive and reliable company supporting customers throughout their entire digital transformation process thanks to its highly skilled team and its special relationship with some of the main automation technology providers.
Miraitek4.0 offers an innovative IIoT (Industrial Internet of Thing) platform that analyses factory data and turns it into ‘true value’ – from simple performance and flow monitoring to energy consumption measurement, to maintenance planning and quality management. The platform’s various applications allow for the collection and analysis of data alongside with the implementation of models and actions to optimize production. All of this is achieved by using modern artificial intelligence techniques and going beyond the functionalities of traditional factory information systems. The information collected can be used by different hierarchical levels within the organization and can be easily integrated with data from outside the production department to obtain a holistic view of the business quickly and easily.
Miraitek4.0 consultancy services range from assessing the digital maturity of business processes, to defining and integrating tools for the digital transformation process of plants and supporting the transition to new business models such as servitisation. The interdisciplinary expertise of Miraitek4.0 team with a strong background in industrial engineering, make it possible to transform the implementation of the platform into immediate economic benefits with impressive return on investment that can be measured in just a few months.
Easy Engineering: What are the main areas of activity of the company?
MIraitek4.0: MIraitek4.0 is targeting specifically the market of machine builders, one of the most relevant European industries. Germany and Italy are dominating this industry since several years, providing top edge solutions and enabling new business factors in their global customers.
E.E: What’s the news about new products?
MIraitek4.0: In this, IIoT is emerging as one of the most disruptive technologies of the last two decades, with collaborative and cognitive automation. The related Industry 4.0 market, was valued at $70 billion in 2019. Expectations for global market growth are at a CAGR of 17%, projected to reach $201 billion in market value by 2026.
Thanks to IIoT, machine builders can easily monitor their solutions globally, enabling new business models and revitalizing the service chain. The adoption of IIoT and the enablement of service-based models seem to be co-aligned, in a kind of emerging relevant market trend.
In this, IIoT solutions based on open standard, properly scalable and user-oriented will be the next killer-application of the shop-floor, for the incoming years. The pandemic crisis has clearly demonstrated how digital solutions enabling on distance activities and remote supervision could make really resilient companies, globally. This will stay with us for longer times.
In addition, the push towards digitalization accelerated by the pandemic is leading manufacturing companies to propose themselves no longer only as suppliers of products, but also as suppliers of solutions that can solve problems. Hence the servitization business model for which it is necessary not only a robust digitalization, in order to monitor, control and manage in an integrated way the solutions offered, but also the ability to rethink by design and then “redesign” the company before acting; here comes the Miraitek 4.0 answer with consultancy and analysis aimed at the best possible implementation of the digital solution.
E.E: What can you tell us about market trends?
MIraitek4.0: For the entire machinery segment, the area in which to compete and accept challenges will increasingly be data processing for the creation of services such as continuous process or product improvement and remote maintenance and support.
Today, a machine is able to provide data throughout its life cycle, creating the conditions for their conversion into money. Every time a machine connected to the production environment is brought into the factory, not only does it introduce technology aimed at creating products, but also data, which, through specific processing and analysis, enable the creation of services ranging from continuous process or product improvement to remote maintenance and assistance.
There is therefore a need, especially for machinery companies, for an evolutionary strategy to deal with the risk of being overtaken by the new digital native players, the so-called newcomers. However, changes are neither immediate nor straightforward, as the emergence of a new technology initially gives rise to hybrid scenarios, integrating new and old business models.
The main motivations driving companies towards new business models are therefore essentially threefold:
- the search for solutions capable of offering efficient, low-cost and rapidly implemented maintenance and technical assistance services;
- the search for solutions to collect information about the operation of an asset and its energy consumption, in order to maximise its effectiveness;
- the search for solutions and ways to offer operational service models, such as turnkey asset management.
E.E: What are the most innovative products marketed?
MIraitek4.0: Miraitek4.0 supports companies wishing to enrich their customer service offering by controlling their machinery and production performance with advanced Industrial IoT software to enable remote monitoring in order to guarantee effective after-sales assistance with short lead times and a high level of knowledge of the problems encountered.
Over the last two years, Miraitek4.0 has been able to support various companies in their journey towards servitisation, providing 4.0 solutions as fundamental Industrial IoT tools. “The Covid experience has been striking” says Sergio Cassinelli, General Manager of Miraitek4.0 “thanks to the machine monitoring system installed at some of our customers, several machinery manufacturing companies have been able to offer their services even during the darkest periods of the pandemic, significantly reducing downtime. For more information on this topic, some of the most significant experiences, in different industrial sectors, are presented on the Case Study page of www.miraitek.com.
“Our customers,” Cassinelli continued, “can visualize machine data in order to offer customers constant remote support, leading to an improvement in after-sales service, with a reduction of more than 20% in terms of service time and a consequent increase in customer satisfaction thanks to the greater efficiency of the entire process.
One of the most innovative applications for plant manufacturers is Mirai4Acceptance, developed to manage remote testing. “This software,” the General Manager explained, “has enabled our customers to sell and test plants even during a pandemic. In fact, Mirai4Acceptance guarantees a dual benefit: thanks to the possibility of performing the entire testing phase remotely, the application brings a significant reduction in testing time and costs. “The main differentiation factor of our software,” Cassinelli explained, “apart from its high reliability, remains its ease of use and remarkable flexibility in customization, which is why many of our customers have chosen us and continue to rely on our solutions even while technologies advance”.
E.E: What estimations do you have for 2022?
MIraitek4.0: GELLIFY and Azimut have recently concluded a co-investment operation in Miraitek4.0 which will allow, thanks also to the ‘gellification’ program, to exploit new synergies for technological and commercial development, as well as to strengthen the technical team in order to be ready to understand and anticipate the new technological trends of the market. Miraitek4.0 has the aim of best supporting the customer and making him competitive on the market.
