“Winning teams use Guidewheel’s AI-powered FactoryOps platform to lower costs and get more from their existing assets.”
“The fastest way to improve factory operations.”
Clearly, two confident claims being made here by Guidewheel, its experts on a mission to empower millions of factories around the world to reach sustainable peak performance with reliable industrial solutions. Reducing downtime and energy costs for manufacturers, machine health monitoring, OEE tracking, automated production reporting and cycle tracking, and real-time visibility and alerting capabilities; Guidewheel brings all of the above to the table with FactoryOps, which teams can, quote, “get up and running in just days, at a fraction of the cost of older systems, while delivering concrete ROI in the first few months.”
The more I read about it, in fact, the clearer it becomes just how Guidewheel’s FactoryOps addresses (and resolves) visibility-related issues that teams have; namely, knowing how their machines are running at the right speeds, and ensuring all machinery is a.) being proactively monitored and b.) continuing to produce high-quality products. Guidewheel starts with non-invasive sensors that can be simply clipped onto the power draw of any machine to connect its “heartbeat,” so to speak, to FactoryOps. From there, Guidewheel gathers the requisite intelligence to provide any and all tools that manufacturers need to “take the pulse of progress,” is one way of putting it. General Motors, Johnson & Johnson, U.S. Steel, Igloo, Myers Industries, and Kimberly-Clark (to name but a handful) have all harnessed FactoryOps, thus optimizing production by tapping into true plant capacity, improving utilization by finding “efficiency killers” like long changeovers and unplanned downtime caused by micro-stops, and giving operators an easy-to-use interface for tracking machine performance and code issues accurately.
As mentioned, Guidewheel brings much-needed intel via FactoryOps – now, it seems other interested parties have taken notice.
That’s the news here: Guidewheel has raised $31 million in a reportedly oversubscribed Series B funding round. This was led by Decarbonization Partners, a partnership between BlackRock and Temasek. Ecolab, Rethink Impact, and GSBackers also participated in this round, alongside existing investors Greycroft and Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV).
“We’re excited to support Guidewheel not just because their technology solves an important problem for manufacturers, but because they’ve found a way to build sustainability into the core of manufacturing operations,” expressed Dr. Meghan Sharp, Global Head and Chief Investment Officer of Decarbonization Partners. “By using Guidewheel to help manage their factory operations, customers can not only improve efficiency and reduce costs, but also reduce energy consumption and emissions.”
“A new industrial revolution is taking place that will reshape not only manufacturing processes, but entire business models; its importance in manufacturing has never been clearer,” added Lauren Dunford, co-founder and CEO of Guidewheel. “Equipment in factories often lasts for decades, and a significant number of machines are not yet even connected to the cloud. Historically, the only available solutions have been cost-prohibitive and require specialized skills. Guidewheel changes that by providing a fast, scalable solution that minimizes operational disruption to swiftly connect all machines – across all ages, makes and models – at a fraction of the cost of competitive solutions.”
Edited by
Greg Tavarez
