Interview: Patrick Knoedler, Sensfix

“An AI-enabled, IoT-connected, automated service lifecycle management platform.” Yes, that’s a mouthful. And yet it perfectly summarises what Sensfix does.

The American company — which also has offices in Poland and South Korea — specialises in streamlining maintenance processes by cutting down the number of manual steps required. In particular, the steps typically conducted by humans.

Let’s say you’re a manufacturing company. By using a mix of Internet of Things-enabled devices and artificial intelligence, Sensfix can remotely monitor your machinery, your packaging and your dispatch operations.

Naturally, there’s far more to it than that simplistic scenario. Or at least, that’s the impression I got when I spoke with Sensfix’s VP of Business Development, Patrick Knoedler, at IFA 2023. Below is my interview with Patrick, with some minor edits for clarity.

What does Sensfix do?

At Sensfix we have developed maintenance software that basically streamlines all servicing, covering all the processes from the input of data up to the ticketing and reporting. All that helps businesses save up to 30% in overall maintenance costs while taking 50% less time (and at a higher efficiency).

When you say maintenance, what are you referring to?

Maintenance of anything, really. Schools, production plants or even households. The more complicated the maintenance of the facility processes, the more you can save.

We have all kinds of different use cases, though. For me, one of the most interesting examples is wastewater treatment plants, where you have a lot of pumps that need to run 24/7. For that, we use a technology we have developed, which is a new, wireless standard for commercial IoT, IP500.

We put sensors in the pump that record sound and vibration, and as soon as the sound and vibration change, artificial intelligence realises it and flags that the motor will need a service within the next two weeks. Then, immediately, the machine automatically creates a ticket for service maintenance. This approach prevents the motor from breaking.

And who are some of your clients?

At the moment, I cannot disclose our clients cause they are under NDA. But, in Poland for example, some of the companies that we work with use our software in production plants where, using cameras, they define a geofence that stipulates that a machine or a robot cannot move outside of a radius of, say, four square metres. As soon as a movement is detected outside that radius, an alarm is triggered.

Tell us about your new product

This camera does all the artificial intelligence analysis within the camera itself, instead of streaming it to the cloud or a server. It’s different from the current approach of IoT devices and then, perhaps a camera. Here you’ve got Internet of Things sensors built into the camera, which adds a different dimension to the data.

Because the camera itself analyses everything, it then only triggers an alert if a predefined event happens. It’s like a sensor that uses eyes.

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