About Samotics

In 2015, we launched a mission to eliminate unplanned downtime.

Since then, we’ve evolved our predictive maintenance system, SAM4, into a robust and high-accuracy failure detection technology that’s helping customers across five continents and a wide range of industries reduce risk, lower costs, save energy, and put an end to unplanned downtime.

Company founded

We started in 2015 with a simple idea: if we applied artificial intelligence to the ever-growing trove of machine data, we could detect developing failures earlier and better than would ever be possible with manual systems.

Challenge #1

We quickly hit a roadblock. Yes, existing sensors were capturing massive amounts of machine data. But most of that data was unusable for our purpose. So we decided to build our own sensor system, to capture high-quality data to feed into our algorithms. But what kind of data should that be? We went with the obvious choice, the then-reigning king of condition monitoring: vibration.

Challenge #2

And that led us to our second problem. There are many industrial situations where vibration sensors just won’t work. Pumps and mixers submerged in chemicals or sludge, steel mill rollers carrying 2,000-degree slabs amid spraying water… we couldn’t even install our sensors on some of this equipment, and when we could, the process was cumbersome and the harsh conditions meant the sensors often stopped working. And without consistent data to feed them, our AI algorithms were useless.

Prototypes 1 and 2

Inspired by our work on railway switches, which we monitored using electrical signals, we decided to start using current sensors to monitor other machinery as well. After encouraging test results, we built a custom datalogger and AI software. Prototypes 1 and 2 performed remarkably well in our field lab. We set out to install 250 sensors dubbed “GEN3” at our customers’ sites and expected the same results… but we were disappointed.

GEN3

GEN3 did manage to detect upcoming failures at an early stage. But it also generated false positives—lots of them. The current signal contains a great deal of information about the condition of the connected motor, but some of that information relates to normal changes in load, not developing faults. What’s more, the current signal doesn’t contain enough information about the asset that the motor is driving. We needed a way to eliminate false positives and also capture full data on the whole drive train.

SAM4

So we went back to the drawing board. We added in voltage probes and dubbed the resulting datalogger plus AI software SAM4—for smart asset monitoring, take 4. We put SAM4 through rigorous lab and field testing before deploying it in live environments. At last, in April 2018, SAM4 was ready for prime time. We expected good results… ...and this time, we got them.

Present

Since then, SAM4 has performed amazingly. Across its installed base, SAM4 has consistently detected over 90 percent of electrical and mechanical faults up to five months before failure, throughout the drive train. Because SAM4 works so well, we’ve been able to add new features instead of only solving problems. Today, SAM4 is not only an accurate, robust and scalable system to help eliminate unplanned downtime; it’s also a tool that provides insights into machine performance and energy consumption that help our customers achieve better business outcomes.

Samotics leadership team

Jasper Hoogeweegen

co-CEO

Simon Jagers

co-CEO & Founder

Gerben Gooijers

CTO & Founder

Erik Gaarenstroom

COO

Hans van den Heuvel

CFO

Thijs Bootsma

CPO

Samotics advisors

Jeroen van der Veer

Former Chairman Philips, former CEO at Shell

Dr. Johan Paulides

AE Magnetics

Careers

Help us solve industrial unplanned downtime and energy waste

Samotics is a growing, energetic company where professionalism, a great atmosphere and cutting-edge technology go hand in hand. We’re a close-knit team that’s excited about our ability to help industry become safer, greener and more efficient. If that sounds like your cup of tea, then we’d love to meet you!