"Feeding technology" — Never heard of it? But it's important! The founders of Hofmann & Stirner explain why in our 7 questions.
1. Who are you and what do you do? Please briefly introduce yourself and your company!
Daniel initially completed vocational training in Ingolstadt, then studied mechanical engineering at THI (Technische Universität Ingolstadt) and earned his doctorate at TUM. Florian is also from Ingolstadt and studied mechanical engineering and management at TUM. We knew each other from early childhood and met again by chance at TUM after about 20 years.
Almost all products are manufactured automatically. Feeding technology is responsible for delivering the individual parts to the production line in large quantities and with the correct orientation. Without feeding technology, there is no automated production. We have developed an innovative machine architecture for this, which we design with the help of digital twins and AI. This enables us to build flexible, high-performance feeding systems for 26 target industries.
Hofmann & Stirner: Significantly faster than the competition
2. But that has been around for a long time!
Says the push-button telephone to the smartphone, and the combustion engine to the electric car. Previous vibratory conveyor technology, predominantly welded constructions, has been handcrafted in the same way since the mid-1960s. Each feeding system is a unique, trial-and-error-based piece that only works for a specific product. Such systems may be powerful, but they are not flexible and often prone to failure. Industrial robots, on the other hand, are highly flexible but 5 to 10 times too slow in terms of feeding performance.
We have succeeded in deciphering the physics of vibration conveying technology and, with the help of our own digital twins, developed a novel machine architecture. It consists of a standardized base body and interchangeable tooling for parts feeding. This enables us to achieve a 350 percent increase in performance while maintaining flexibility with setup times of less than two minutes. Thanks to digital physics, we can deliver our feeding system up to three months ahead of our competitors, with zero-hour commissioning. In the future, we will largely automate the tooling development process using AI, leveraging the data from our digital twins.
“The demand situation is good”
3. What are the three main ingredients for your recipe for success?
We can't do anything about the first factor, but we're glad it's there—market pull. Feeding technology, while a key production technology, has been neglected for decades. Core production processes have evolved, while feeding technology has remained stagnant. With our approach combining digital mechanical engineering and AI, we're meeting a pent-up market need.
Another key to our success is our international team. Our technological challenges are demanding and resonate with people from all over the world. With these diverse perspectives, we often find creative solutions.
In short: professional excellence instead of bullshit bingo.
Hofmann & Stirner operate in a billion-dollar market
4. Let’s get down to business: How is business going?
The startup with two founders has quickly grown into a company with nine employees. In addition to the Innovation Lab/Headquarters in Munich, we now have production space in Ingolstadt. There we will establish serial production of our products. Demand is so good that we have postponed a sales representative planned for mid-2019 until 2020. We are currently very satisfied.
5. What does Munich mean to you?
Of course, the international team isn't just interested in technological challenges; Munich's attractiveness plays a major role in the choice of location. Furthermore, we believe Munich offers an excellent infrastructure for startups compared to Germany.
6. How will your startup become the next unicorn? Or will we see you soon at Epic Fail Night?
We don't envision tomorrow's production using the technology of the last century. And that's a billion-dollar market.
7. Isar or English Garden?
English Garden.
