Startup of the month: Synaos

Hi Wolfgang, first of all, could you please describe what SYNAOS is all about? Give us a brief company description.

SYNAOS is building the world’s first holistic intralogistics operating system. It uses artificial intelligence and the latest cloud technology. SYNAOS has built, developed and already provided a software operating system to orchestrate robots, vehicles and people in the factories and logistics centers of today and the future.

Let’s take one step back: Tell us a bit about the founding story for SYNAOS. When and how was SYNAOS born?

Founding SYNAOS was a bold move. Our vision was – and still is – to become the brain for the logistics of the future; in the first step for intralogistics. This is a huge deal.

Lennart, Tobias and I have always been in IT and have been intensively involved with Industry 4.0. That was quite unusual: Normally, it was rather mechanical engineers who did that. Because we were always working with computer scientists, we approached the topic in our own unique way – for us, the focus was always on the software. When we talk about reducing unit costs, factory costs or logistics costs by 30, 40, even up to 50 percent – then software is the central lever that has received far too little focus to date.

Our goal is a truly holistic intralogistics operating system. We create integrated optimization and digital automation of processes – via forklifts, robots and people. That is our vision, which we are implementing with a lot of power.

Tell us a little bit more about the people behind SYNAOS, about the founders and initiators.

The founders of SYNAOS, besides me, are Lennart and Tobias. Lennart studied engineering at ETH Zurich and UC Berkeley. As CPO he is now responsible for product and professional services, while Tobias, as CTO, is in charge of software and engineering. He studied Technology & Management at the Munich Technical University. I studied at the university of Cologne and Beijing and am now the CEO. I take care of the strategic orientation and development of SYNAOS.

Which specific problem does SYNAOS solve for its customers?

With SYNA.OS LOGISTICS – our holistic intralogistics operating system – we take care of all entities on the logistics floor and orchestrate them in a new and improved way.

Our unique real-time optimization analyses more than just data. That’s why our customers can radically improve their entire logistics process – every second, continuously with several thousand calculations per second. Our software enables new quantum leaps into the future of automated logistics and production.

No single hardware manufacturer can supply all types of vehicles for factories and production centers. Our system manages the entire fleet in a flexible and scalable manner – no matter how varied it is. The software from SYNAOS supports enormous vehicle fleets of up to 1,000 vehicles. Additional AGVs can be added easily at any time and adapted to individual needs.

What would you say is the core competence/USP of SYNAOS? What's the secret sauce that puts you apart from anyone else?

We are truly hardware independent by design. Because of that we are not only talking about the VDA 5050 interface – we are implementing it for real as the only company. We are truly cloud native and scalable up to big numbers.

Our customers achieve new dimensions of efficiency through our AI-based optimization. With our unique software solution, we are decreasing the number of required transport vehicles by 30 percent. Order delays decrease by 60 percent, while the intralogistics efficiency increases by 60 percent!

Who are your target customers? Can you describe your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) and maybe provide some reference customers already using your product?

Our ideal customer’s success depends on a high-performance intralogistics. He strives for process excellence and has understood the huge potentials of intralogistics optimization. Scaling is a big issue for him: His fleets are getting bigger and he understands that one has to look at intralogistics as a whole. In an ideal scenario he has several factories and really cares about modern IT-architecture. He is focused on modern IT solutions and has understood the advantages of Software as a service (SaaS) and new deployment scenarios. Therefore, the customer does not necessarily have to rely on an on-premise solution (which SYNAOS also offers). Besides that, we are talking to a lot of companies from different industries such as FMCG, logistics, E-commerce and manufacturing. Our first reference customers include Volkswagen and the online retailer Connox.

Let’s come to the number one topic of 2021 and 2020: How did the pandemic impact intralogistics in general and specifically the development of SYNAOS?

In fact, the pandemic had hardly any negative impact on SYNAOS. We even managed to grow strongly despite everything: Our employee numbers went up, as did our sales and the number of customers.

As far as the intralogistics market in general is concerned, the impact is rather positive, I assume. Resilience became more important in other areas like in E-commerce. There is strong growth there, as we all know. This trend is not broken, but continues to grow.

In other words, it is of great importance to react quickly to unforeseen events – this is where SYNA.OS can help tremendously!

What else would you like to tell our readers?

We always need new customers, money and people. We are hiring! So, if you are interested in our product, let us know. But now for real: We are seeing a huge movement in the market. There is more software, hardware independence is coming up, supply chains are exploding, as every expert knows. But intralogistics wasn’t addressed adequately – and we are changing that. Our software fills a huge market gap and we are happy to show people what we can do there. Let’s talk about it!

Thank you, Wolfgang, for the insights! We wish you all the best and are sure that we're going to hear many great things about SYNAOS in the future!