Mannheim, Germany – Elevating Patterns GmbH (EP for short) is starting business at the turn of the year. The company was founded in November 2024 by former employees of SAP, Contact Software and the Fraunhofer IESE Institute and now aims to revolutionize the industrial software market with its Digital Thread platform. The aim is to enable the consistent use of technical product data and its configuration over the entire life cycle of a product and to benefit from the advantages of state-of-the-art database technology, artificial intelligence and cloud infrastructure.
“Legacy solutions in the so-called PLM market are monoliths based on technology that is at least 20 years old. The approach of lifting these rigid and closed systems into the cloud and AI age through just containerizing them is now considered a failure. We know the weaknesses of these approaches and are convinced that there is now an urgent need to create new digital platforms from scratch. Not only against a technological background, but also against an economic one. Germany urgently needs innovation and this is where we want to make our contribution,” says Dr. Michael Pfenning, CEO of Elevating Patterns GmbH.
Mannheim was deliberately chosen as a location in the heart of the German industry. Where else if not here could the deep understanding of industrial processes, which is still Germany’s brand essence, be used to create the latest software solutions. The aim here is not to develop another old-style PLM system, but instead to finally solve a basic problem that still exists: The consistency of product data and a company-wide change process that can truly map the entire life cycle right through to the operational phase. This is referred to as Digital Thread Systems (DTS) – these make it possible to capture dependencies, configuration control and to provide multiple views of product structures.
“There are already a lot of software functions out there – what’s missing is integration and data continuity. In addition technical processes from development and production to the operation of technical systems need one thing above all else, and that is flexibility. A rigid data and process model, as prescribed by many legacy software vendors, is always a compromise. A compromise under which industrial companies suffer. Any software manufacturer that does not consider configurability and extensability from the start will lose in the market,” says Christian Muggeo, CTO of EP.
The plan is to market the company’s own cloud platform in a SaaS2 model and to develop it based on a few basic principles. These include openness and an “API-first” approach, the already mentioned flexibility with an integrated low-code/no-code engine, a strong focus on performance through the use of in-memory NoSQL databases and the deep integration of artificial intelligence. The latter should make it possible not only to manage product data but also to generate it. The decisive factor here is to train private AI models that benefit from the rich pool of product data of each industrial company, but still ensure that the associated intellectual property is preserved.
“The German software industry can do more. It’s time to tackle the big issues and rethink the field of industrial software. Anyone who shares this view is cordially invited to join us,” concludes Dr. Pfenning.