Interview with Andreas Zerfas, CTO of GEC
In 2022, German Edge Cloud (GEC) was one of the first providers of cloud-native software in an area previously served by monolithic solutions for MES and ERP: the smart factory, with its ONCITE Digital Production System (DPS) production platform. Two years later, a veritable market of open, Linux-based platforms has emerged in this environment.
German Edge Cloud is prominently represented in the Smart Automation market overview. For the news portal Industrie-Digitalisierung, this was the occasion for another interview with CTO Andreas Zerfas following the in-depth discussion for the background article on composable software.
Ulrich Sendler: Mr. Zerfas, ONCITE DPS started out as a production platform. How does German Edge Cloud position the system today?
Andreas Zerfas: With the technology and infrastructure of our solution, the customer can master many challenges. Just like you can build anything from a small house to an aircraft carrier with a Lego building set. In the initial phase, this helped us to win a few awards and attract a lot of attention. However, it was difficult for potential customers to see the direct connection to their own tasks. That is why we are now starting from the concrete functionality of a lean, quick-to-implement solution and showing that and how this brings added value in practice and ultimately leads to a new, digital type of automation.
Connectivity and transparency as the first pillar of the smart factory
Ulrich Sendler: Can you give us a specific example?
Andreas Zerfas: The first pillar on which smart production was built at Rittal in Haiger, for example, is connectivity and transparency. Machines and devices in the factory were connected with each other and the product and process data was made centrally accessible by connecting MES and ERP to the system.
We then displayed this data transparently on dashboards for everyone to see. How quickly this pillar alone became very important for the well-functioning smart factory was clearly noticeable, especially during the initial start-up phase, when some data was not available.
In other words, a simple, easy-to-understand approach: How does the factory run, what happens on the shop floor? What data is needed where and for what purpose? And the presentation in clear dashboards that every employee can understand, which hang above the production lines at Rittal, for example, and clearly show everyone where which process is currently running and how well.
Andreas Zerfas, CTO of German Edge Cloud (Photo GEC)
We have concentrated on the data that employees have told us is essential to ensure that production runs as smoothly as possible. Any interested party in the industry can translate this to their own operational situation without much thought.
Ulrich Sendler: Has this also changed your appearance at trade fairs?
Andreas Zerfas: Absolutely. This year in Hanover, for example, we put the specific functionalities in the right light. The showcases were production at Rittal, the Smart Press Shop from Porsche and Schuler, Catena-X and AI solutions with IBM and Google.
The response was enormous. We counted 65% more leads from Hanover compared to 2023 alone. The customer sees how we solve a challenge that they know well and would initially assign to an MES system in a completely different way. They see how quickly our solution can be implemented and understand what a solution like this can do for them.
Ulrich Sendler: In Haiger, as I was able to see for myself in 2023, you didn’t stop at the connectivity and transparency pillar. What was the next step?
Andreas Zerfas: We asked our colleagues where they saw other potential that could be leveraged with connectivity and transparency. The answer was: In times when sustainability is becoming a major issue, especially in industrial production, it would be nice if we could see where electricity, gas, water or compressed air is used in production in a measurable way.
Energiemonitoring with ONCITE DPS (Photo GEC)
Energy-Monitoring and Track & Trace
As with the topic of production, we have developed dashboards – this time together with the plant supervisors and energy experts – which now also allow very effective energy monitoring on mobile devices. With the perspective of energy management.
This pillar is also lean and easy to understand. Interested parties see a functioning alternative to monolithic systems, 95 percent of whose functional scope they don’t even need. Our solution gives them a measurable benefit in a very short time.
Unlike with a monolithic system, the customer only pays for the functionality that they actually use, for example via dashboards in the factory and on the tablet. However, they can scale up at any time on the same infrastructure or book additional functionality.
Ulrich Sendler: You also expanded the range at Rittal after starting in Haiger. How far has ONCITE DPS been rolled out in the plants?
Andreas Zerfas: Eight out of ten locations worldwide were already as advanced as Haiger at the Hanover Trade Fair. The FAZ newspaper reported on how the current status of production at Rittal worldwide can be called up via a smartphone. We use a standard cloud platform. Whether the server is located in Frankfurt, in the USA or in Italy makes no difference to us. This is also due to the fact that we relied on OpenShift from IBM / Red Hat for our solution right from the start.
With this infrastructure, our solution can be used with any cloud platform. At Schuler, for example, another pillar of ONCITE DPS is particularly important: Track & Trace. Schuler uses the data collected at the press during production, for example sheet thickness, surface quality and oil film. This is also a lean solution where a prospective customer can immediately see how he can use the function in his production. Without risk, because data is only used and collected unidirectionally.
GEC: Software provider with a strong partner network
Ulrich Sendler: Please give us an outlook on what the market can expect from ONCITE DPS in the near future.
Andreas Zerfas: Other applications will certainly be added. The customers and their most urgent needs will determine what. For GEC, it is clear that we will mainly be a software provider in the future. We are working on a network of partners for customer service, implementation and usage support.
Partnerships with other providers will continue to play a growing role. We presented two AI examples in Hanover this year. These involved the use of the IBM product Maximo Visual Inspection for visual quality control in control cabinet production. And together with Google, we implemented a minimal viable product in a very short time: a worker assistance system that automatically collects information from various sources. The results – and that is why it is a GenAI project – are output fully automatically in any language, although the application was developed and implemented in German.
Word is getting around about what ONCITE DPS can do. It was the first system to be certified for Catena-X. Now this automotive industry network is spreading, and more and more companies are realizing that they will soon have to prove the route their components have taken in accordance with European and German law, i.e. the supply chain. All the challenges facing the industry in the near future call for a short-term and very effective solution, such as the one we offer with ONCITE DPS.