Mr. Scholz, your business model is primarily based on your marketplace, through which you make apps from different providers available. How far has this product come in the meantime?

Scholz : Our Flecs Marketplace has developed considerably over the last two years. We now have a wide range of over 40 industrial apps from various providers available in our marketplace. In addition, over 20 systems are already directly compatible with Flecs. This enables machine manufacturers and operators to easily find and install the software solutions they need for their specific machines.

We have continuously worked on improving the usability and efficiency of our marketplace. This includes the fact that you can now also purchase or sell licenses and subscriptions for apps as well as complete hardware systems such as IPCs and PLCs directly in our Marketplace. This means you can get everything you need for your automation solution from a single source. We thus enable suppliers of control technology or machine builders to open up new sales channels without major implementation effort.

The second important product is the 'Core'. What is it all about and what is new compared to the PLC?

The Flecs Core is a central element of our solution. It enables seamless communication between apps and allows you to control your machine hardware and software from a central hub. This gives you a comprehensive solution that automates the installation and updating of apps on controllers. This means that machine manufacturers and operators now have the flexibility to select and use exactly the software solutions they need for their specific machines. We provide a communication layer that allows all apps to talk to each other and exchange data. And the best part is that our solution is hardware-independent and can be installed on any PLC or standard hardware.

Now, for the trade fair, we have further improved the core and added new functions. One of the most important new features is support for a Whitelabeling Plus function, which allows our customers to customize and brand the Flecs interface and Marketplace according to their individual requirements. This offers even more flexibility and customization options for our customers.

You are now talking about 20 industry partners. What new important partnerships have been added recently?

We have indeed entered into important partnerships over the last few years, which are driving our solution forward. I can perhaps highlight some of the most recent important partnerships:

There is the cooperation with the Nupano platform from Lenze. With this cooperation, we are demonstrating that both systems are completely open and consistent. Nupano users can now use apps from the Flecs Marketplace without any problems, and vice versa.

On the hardware side, we recently announced our partnership with Arduino. Arduino Pro brings in the powerful hardware including a comprehensive ecosystem of open source hardware, Linux system and cloud services. We contribute the easy-to-configure and open source platform that allows industrial users to work with automation solutions for their machines as easily as we all work with the apps on our phones.

And now we are making a brand new app available directly at the trade fair: Helio from KEB is an application that makes it quicker and easier to create intuitive HMIs that are truly responsive thanks to modern web technology.

What is your long-term vision for your company and how do you see the future of industrial automation?

Our long-term vision for Flecs Technologies is to become the largest open source provider of control systems and to revolutionize the world of industrial automation. We want to bring openness, simplicity and flexibility to the industry and enable machine manufacturers and operators to create customized solutions in a simple and efficient way.

Flecs at the SPS: Hall 6, Stand 240