Supply chain start-up in the spotlight: MotionMiners

MotionMiners offers companies automated analysis related to the ergonomics and efficiency of their manual industrial processes. The Motion Mining technology uses mobile sensors (wearables) and beacons to anonymously record manual working processes as they are performed.

Individual process steps are automatically recognized from the data using a self-developed pattern-recognition solution based on deep learning. This data is made available for further analysis, resulting in insights into ergonomics, productivity and efficiency that reveal specific optimization potential. The automatic recording and analysis of work situations can be set up without the need for any IT integration, and the solution does not infringe on workers’ privacy. Customers benefit from reduced analysis-related labour costs and a bigger data pool.

The areas of application for the Motion Mining technology are diverse, particularly within logistics service providers and OEMs in a variety of industrial sectors. The technology has been applied successfully for the analysis of manual processes at Hugo Boss AG, and other customers include Bayer AG and Skoda Auto.

Spin-off from the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics

The start-up was co-founded in 2017 by Sascha Feldhorst (CEO), René Grzeszick (CTO) and Sascha Kaczmarek (COO, see image) as a spin-off from the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics (IML), and currently employs eighteen people. MotionMiners has already won several awards including the Digital Logistics Award 2017, the CET Startup Award 2018, the Karl Kolle Stiftung Startup Award 2018 and Start2Grow. The company has received approximately €1 million of capital in the form of zero-equity federal funding called Exist.