More than machines

Walk through the Selmers workshop and you will mainly see steel, installations and large industrial machines. Yet today, a significant part of innovation happens out of sight: in software, data and digital systems.

In recent years, that development has become increasingly important. “Originally, we are very much a mechanical engineering company,” Lars explains. “We have a workshop where large machines are built: tangible, a lot of steel. But now that we also offer software services, an entirely new discipline has been added.”

That digital side of the business is growing rapidly. Where Selmers formerly primarily supplied machines, the company is now increasingly helping customers monitor production processes and organize them more intelligently through software and digital services.

“You can see the industry moving more and more in that direction,” says Lars. “Customers no longer expect just a machine; they also expect support with their digitization efforts. That’s exactly what we are working on now: how can we create added value for our customers?”

Software as the next step

“We started by developing software to monitor production processes at customer sites,” Lars explains. “That proved successful quite quickly. Several customers with similar production processes are now using the system.”

Soon, demand for data followed. “You see that our customers’ clients are also starting to demand information,” he says. “For example, about the pipelines being produced. We are now responding to that by collecting and making that data available.”

This also changed the way software was developed within Selmers. “In the beginning, we approached it in a fairly traditional way, using programmers and programming languages,” Lars explains. “But programmers often do not know our industry very well, and that created difficulties sometimes.”

Those developments also resulted in FUSE, a platform in which production data and quality information are digitally connected to the product throughout the manufacturing process.

A low-code platform

A few years ago, Selmers switched to a low-code platform, allowing applications to be adapted and further developed much faster. “If a customer wants to change something, for example moving a button or adding an extra field, we can now do that relatively quickly. That makes us far more flexible.”

According to Lars, this approach is now truly proving its value. “You can see that it is starting to gain real traction within our software division. We are quite ahead of the curve in this area. Siemens regularly asks us to share our experiences with their prospective customers.”

Learning by doing

According to Lars, innovation rarely runs completely smoothly and that is simply part of the process. “With software development, you are never really finished,” he says. “It is constantly evolving.”

Sometimes that also leads to unexpected situations. Lars recalls a project in Indonesia where data had to be collected without a stable internet connection. “In the end, we had to work with a prepaid 4G SIM card that regularly ran out of data,” he says with a laugh. “Those are exactly the kinds of things you do not always anticipate beforehand.”

That mindset characterizes the way Selmers approaches innovation. “You simply have to do it and dare to try,” Lars says. “When you are doing something for the first time, you make decisions based on assumptions. That can be exciting, but people here really support each other to make it work.”

For Lars, that is one of the company’s greatest strengths. “If you have a culture where employees are blamed for mistakes, innovation simply will not happen. Here, you are given the space to experiment. Everyone is ready to help one another.”

The next step

“We are already collecting a huge amount of data,” Lars says. “The next step is for companies to start using that data in increasingly smarter ways. That is where the real difference will be made in the years ahead.”