The IKV spin-off OSPHIM was launched at the end of 2023 following funding approval from the EXIST funding program of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK) and is part of the RWTH Incubation and High-Tech.NRW program. The start-up secured additional funding by winning the RWTH Innovation Award in January 2024 and participating in the RICE Business Plan Competition in Houston, Texas USA. In addition to the "best 60sec pitch" in the "Digital Enterprise" group and the "best company showcase", OSPHIM also won the Goose Investment Prize worth USD 200,000. But this is only the starting point!
OSPHIM stands for "Optimized Systems for Plastics and High-Performance Intelligent Manufacturing". OSPHIM is developing a digital, AI-supported platform to implement injection moulding processes faster and more cost-effectively while maintaining high component quality. In a first use case, OSPHIM is focusing on the automatic selection of optimal setting parameters in the injection moulding process setup. The technology was able to demonstrate a time saving of more than 70% during the initial setup of the injection moulding processes and is based on IKV research on the topic.
The data used by the system derives from injection moulding machines as well as peripheral devices such as temperature control units, dryers, cameras and much more. The infrastructure for data acquisition in production enables users to connect their network-compatible systems to the platform independently and without prior knowledge. OSPHIM does this via an ergonomic, intuitive platform with which users interact. For older interfaces, OSPHIM provides an edge device, OSPHIM-BOX, which also allows non-network-compatible components to be integrated.
Based on the data integration, the platform offers comprehensive analysis of the process data and thus provides valuable insights into the production processes. Standardised services support users and process the collected data so that suitable setting parameter combinations for the process setup can be determined almost automatically. OSPHIM relies on machine learning methods with specially developed algorithms to use data from different sources for efficient and data-driven modelling. Quality data can be recorded automatically, supplemented manually or imported from external sources in order to use historical data for optimisation. This can significantly reduce the effort required for new data acquisition.
During series production, the algorithms developed by OSPHIM continuously monitor the process parameters and their fluctuations. Employees receive real-time assessments of the status of the process and can take corrective action in the event of quality problems in order to minimize rejects. With OSPHIM, its founders have successfully combined the results of years of research with practical application. Yannik Lockner and Mauritius Schmitz bring in their IKV expertise on this topic to the four-member founding team, which is complemented Louisa Desel and Jakob Pesch.
The young company made a name for itself not only at the Hannover-Messe or Kuteno. It also presented itself to the specialist public at the industrial exhibition of the 32nd IKV International Colloquium on Plastics Technology and at the opening of the Plastics Innovation Center PIC 4.0. The most recent transatlantic highlight was its participation in the NPE Plastics Show 2024 in Orlando, Florida, USA in May 2024. Further opportunities to get to know the founders of OSPHIM will be offered at the RWTH Incubation Demo Day on 27 May 2024 in Aachen and at the High-Tech.NRW Demo Day at Wilo in Dortmund on 6 June 6 2024. OSPHIM will also be exhibiting at FAKUMA 2024 this autumn.
Contact
Louisa Desel
Co-Founder & CEO/CFO
louisa.desel@osphim.com