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Summary – Faced with rising expectations, industrial digitalization must go beyond mere shop-floor optimization to turn engineering, cost estimation and compliance into high-value digital services. By centralizing and modulating data in an API-first business platform, you can deploy configurators, simulators and AI-powered decision engines to automate workflows and generate recurring revenue.
Solution: design a secure, modular, open-source microservices architecture driven by API-first and CI/CD to scale your expertise and accelerate the launch of differentiated digital services.
Industrial digitalization is no longer limited to shop-floor optimization or predictive maintenance. It has become a commercial growth lever, enabling manufacturers to monetize their domain expertise beyond production. By transforming capabilities such as engineering, costing, or environmental compliance into industry-specific platforms, online configurators, or simulators, companies can create recurring, scalable, and differentiating digital services. This article explores how to shift from a purely operational mindset to a business-oriented, secure, and evolution-ready approach to accelerate sales cycles, streamline processes, and strengthen customer relationships.
From the Shop Floor to Business Platforms: Extending the Added Value of Your Industrial Data
Digitalization enables you to extract and aggregate dispersed data from machines, sensors, and ERP systems. Turning this data into digital services paves the way for a scalable and differentiating business model.
Centralizing and Leveraging Production Data
The first step is to consolidate data streams from production lines, PLCs, and supervisory solutions into a single source of truth. This centralization helps you identify performance opportunities and break down information silos that hinder agility. By choosing an open, modular architecture, you avoid vendor lock-in and ensure the ability to integrate new modules or open-source components as needs evolve.
A contextualized business platform gives both operational teams and decision-makers instant access to key performance indicators. It can aggregate maintenance, quality, or energy consumption data to deliver dynamic dashboards. Seamless data exchange between modules enhances analytical coherence and eliminates redundancy.
By enriching these technical repositories with calculation models or external APIs, you can offer real-time monitoring applications or advanced planning tools. The chosen technology components must be scalable and secure to handle growing data volumes and regulatory requirements. This approach transforms a simple collection system into a commercial asset.
Custom, Evolving Business Platforms
Beyond data collection, the business platform manages process configuration and personalization according to each client or site context. For example, it can embed a bespoke product configurator directly linked to the shop floor. Business rules and workflows are orchestrated within a single environment, providing a consistent user experience.
Integrating an open-source rules engine preserves flexibility in the face of regulatory changes or special requests. Modules can be deployed independently and updated without service interruption, ensuring business continuity and responsiveness to new opportunities. This technical agility translates into reduced time-to-market for every enhancement.
Thanks to an API-first design, these platforms can interact with existing CRMs, financial systems, or client portals. Architectural modularity guards against technological lock-in and makes it easier to absorb innovations—such as next-generation IoT or AI—without overhauling the entire ecosystem.
Use Case: Maintenance Simulation Platform
A mid-sized Swiss company specializing in packaging equipment developed a web platform that simulates maintenance interventions on its machines. This solution integrates historical failure data, standard component parameters, and engineering rules to estimate the duration and cost of each operation.
The simulator, available by subscription, provides maintenance teams with granular forecasts and optimizes machine-downtime planning. As a result, the company created a new stream of recurring revenue while strengthening customer relationships through a value-added service.
This case shows that by converting technical know-how into a digital application, it’s possible not only to reduce intervention times but also to build a differentiating, scalable business model that combines efficiency gains with revenue growth.
From Online Configurators to Monetizing Your Expertise
Interactive configurators place the user at the center of the journey, offering instant, reliable customization. These tools can be monetized as proactive sales channels, shortening sales cycles.
Designing a Bespoke Configurator
A configurator translates complex business rules and technical constraints into an intuitive interface. User inputs automatically generate quotes, drawings, or bills of materials while ensuring manufacturability. The goal is to package this logic into a web module or mobile app hosted on a scalable cloud platform.
By favoring open-source technologies and modular development, you ensure that any business adjustment can be implemented quickly and cost-effectively. Evolutionary maintenance is simplified, and the entire process remains transparent for internal teams. Recording customer choices creates a valuable repository to refine future offerings.
Once deployed, the configurator can be sold under subscription or licensing models, securing recurring revenue. Feature updates become opportunities to re-engage customers and introduce new options or complementary services.
Simulators and Dynamic Calculation Engines
Beyond configurators, a calculation engine can incorporate sizing algorithms, automated costing, or flow simulation. Such digital services adjust parameters based on predefined scenarios and provide optimized recommendations. Integrating artificial intelligence—for instance, for performance prediction—enhances the relevance of results.
Developing these engines requires close collaboration among domain experts, software architects, and data specialists. Each rule or algorithm is encapsulated in a microservice to ensure application resilience and scalability. Exposed APIs can be reused by other modules or integrated into partner portals.
A well-designed simulator speeds up decision-making and ensures compliance with standards or internal specifications. It also uncovers opportunities for optimization or new service offerings, such as predictive maintenance recommendations or on-demand service proposals.
Edana: strategic digital partner in Switzerland
We support companies and organizations in their digital transformation
Decision Engines to Secure and Accelerate Your Commercial Processes
Decision-support tools leverage AI and business rules to deliver relevant recommendations in just a few clicks. They secure expertise and speed up commercial proposals while ensuring regulatory compliance.
Implementing Decision-Support Tools
Integrating decision modules means formalizing best practices and business requirements into comprehensive rule chains. Each use case—whether costing, risk assessment, or environmental validation—is automated to minimize human error. Results appear as structured reports, ready for stakeholder review.
These tools connect to internal databases, regulatory repositories, and external services to update parameters in real time. A hybrid architecture ensures rule transparency and keeps sensitive data secure within the company’s trust boundary.
With ergonomic interfaces and RESTful APIs, sales teams can trigger complex analyses in seconds, regardless of technical skill level. Instant access to internal expertise translates into smoother customer journeys and more persuasive proposals.
Integrating AI and Regulatory Calculations
Combining AI with rule engines allows you to process qualitative and quantitative data at scale. Machine-learning algorithms detect trends in production and consumption histories, while the rule engine validates each proposal against normative or contractual criteria.
This coupling guarantees regulatory compliance and offer consistency without overburdening legal or quality teams. The system can automatically incorporate legislative updates, reducing errors and speeding up internal repository maintenance.
By leveraging open-source services or certified intelligent components, you retain ecosystem flexibility while benefiting from high performance. A modular approach lets you replace or enhance any component without impacting the entire decision chain.
Example from the Pharmaceutical Industry
A Swiss pharmaceutical player deployed a decision-support tool to accelerate batch approvals and regulatory compliance. This engine combined predictive models on batch stability with internal rules validated by quality teams.
The average processing time for a batch release request dropped from several days to a few hours. The system reduced non-compliance risks and provided full traceability of decisions, meeting stringent health authority requirements.
This initiative demonstrates that automating regulatory expertise not only secures processes but also frees teams to focus on innovation and new product development.
Building Scalable Digital Services for New Business Models
Packaged digital services generate recurring revenue and become strategic assets. They strengthen customer relationships and open doors to partnerships and hybrid ecosystems.
Subscription and Licensing Monetization Models
Adopting a subscription model for digital services ensures visibility into recurring revenue and simplifies financial planning. Modular licenses let clients select desired features while maintaining a clear upgrade path. This granularity delivers a personalized customer experience and encourages gradual adoption.
Hybrid platforms—combining cloud hosting and on-premise deployment—meet data sovereignty and performance requirements. By integrating automated billing, companies can track usage and offer pricing adjustments based on volume or frequency.
Microservices-based architectures enable horizontal scaling of critical components, ensuring resilience and availability even under heavy loads. This technical flexibility directly translates into a more reliable service and higher customer satisfaction.
Hybrid Ecosystems and Open APIs
Digital services gain value when they fit into a broader ecosystem open to partners and customers. Well-documented, secure APIs encourage integration with other business platforms, creating a network of interoperable applications.
This approach lowers barriers to entry for future services or add-on modules while mitigating vendor lock-in risks. Partners can develop extensions or plug-ins, enriching the offering and creating a virtuous platform effect.
API governance and access management rely on proven security standards like OAuth 2.0 or OpenID Connect. This rigor balances openness, performance, and industrial data confidentiality.
Governance and Evolutionary Maintenance
To ensure the longevity of digital services, establish a continuous maintenance and iterative improvement strategy. Agile development cycles combined with CI/CD pipelines guarantee fast, reliable deployments without service interruption.
Proactive monitoring and alerting tools detect performance anomalies and anticipate scaling needs. Key metrics—such as API latency or error rates—are viewable in real time, facilitating informed decision-making.
Living documentation, stored in an accessible repository, accelerates team ramp-up and project handovers in cases of turnover. This governance approach minimizes risk and secures service longevity while preserving the agility needed for innovation.
Transform Your Industrial Expertise into a Competitive Advantage
Beyond shop-floor automation, industrial digitalization offers a tremendous opportunity to diversify and enhance your commercial offering. By structuring production data, designing configurators and simulators, automating decision-support, and building scalable services, you can create new recurring and differentiating growth drivers.
To make this leap and structure a secure, modular, and scalable digital ecosystem, our experts are ready to support you in strategy development and operational implementation.
