Continuing Its Investments in Turkey, BMSvision Opened a New Office in Bursa

Interview: Tuğba Karademir

Jan Bogaert, CEO of BMSvision said; “Turkey continues to be a very large market especially in textile and carpet production. In this context, we opened a new office in Bursa. We have started to invest in Turkey by hiring some new staff. We plan to gradually increase the number of our employees in parallel with our growth in the coming period.”

Since its establishment in 1975, BMSvision stands out in the sector with the MES systems it has developed to facilitate production processes, increase efficiency and provide traceability in industrial areas.

The questions of our interview for the November issue of Tekstil Teknoloji magazine were answered by CEO Jan Bogaert and Turkish Sales Manager Sami Battal. Evaluating 2024, the duo shared their views on new investments, Turkey and Belgian textile markets.

How was the year 2024 for your company? Can you evaluate it in terms of your production volume, orders, and export markets?

2024 is proving to be a challenging year from growth perspective. We saw 2 different effects of the current slowdown of production volume at our customers. Certain customers decided to use this time to really expand and speed up their digitalization programs others decided to delay. Mainly the APAC customers decided to increase the focus on using data to improve efficiency, quality and lower energy consumption.

“We focus on combining our textile and plastics domain knowledge with the state of the art technology”

Can you talk about your product portfolio and the features that distinguish your products from your competitors?

BMSvision, dating back to 1975 under the Barco umbrella, has always been focusing on combining in-depth textile and plastics domain knowledge, with state of the art technology and integration expertise. Collecting and corelating reliably data from any type, age or brand of machine, from any OT systems like ERP/SCADA/WMS and from any co-worker remains a cornerstone of our strategy. Using state of the art algorithms or since more recent machine learning tools, to render this data useful to automate processes, guide operators or technicians on industrial scale has always been part of our DNA.

Our portfolio includes applications for advanced monitoring, planning, BI-reporting, traceability, digital document control, quality management, energy management, maintenance management and statistical process control.

“Customers really appreciate they can both buy as well as rent these devices.”

Recently, you introduced a state-of-the-art energy analyzer called the EM/TCP. What advantages does this product offer to users? What kind of feedback are you receiving regarding the product?

Real energy saving, based on collecting and correlating energy data with the operational data starts with reliably collecting the data. Through our almost 5 decades of experience in industrial data collection, we have learned the importance of a robust, industrial data collection network. BMSvision takes the responsibility of the quality of the data through our data collection points –which we call our Data Units. We have extended this capability now also to energy domain through our EM/TCP energy meters. Customers really appreciate they can both buy as well as rent these devices.

 

What are your current export markets, and how do they contribute to your overall business strategy? What specific strategies does BMSvision implement for markets where you see the potential for future growth?

BMSvision has always been a worldwide MES solutions provider. We have recently added cloud capacity and compute capabilities to our MES platform, allowing our customers to work either fully on-premise or fully cloud based or in a hybrid model. These technical capabilities allow us to tailor our MES applications to any type of customer, from a smaller customer taking its first steps down the digital pathway, to multinationals wanting to leverage latest AI & ML models in their automation systems, advanced planning, quality or energy management application.

BMSvision Plans to Direct Turkish Investments with an Office in Bursa

Regarding the Turkish market, what are your thoughts on its current dynamics and opportunities? Additionally, what observations do you have about the trends and challenges within this market?

Türkiye is a very large market, especially in textile and carpet production. It is very open to development and growth in terms of production efficiency and energy efficiency. Especially in this period when profitability is decreasing, efficient work, cost savings and digitalization are becoming more and more important.

In this context, we, as BMSvision, have started to invest in Türkiye by a new office in Bursa and hiring some new personnel. We plan to gradually increase the number of our employees in parallel with our growth in the coming period.

At what stage are digitalization and sustainability in the textile industry currently? What challenges and opportunities are present in this process? What role do BMSvision’s technologies and products play in achieving digitalization and sustainability goals?

As we work with customers worldwide, we see customers in different stages of working more digital or data driven. Certain customers focus on monitoring only which is a typical first step in creating visibility on the production floor, measuring and improving operational efficiency. Next adding co-worker Traceability, ERP integration, Planning, Business Intelligence,…

Working more sustainable is indeed an increasingly more important element in our customers strategy. Reducing waste, ensuring the right quality delivered to their customers and of course working more energy efficient are objectives in which we have an important role.

What is as important as setting the right targets and choosing the right technology, is sharing our experience in getting our customers organization working with the information, the reports and the tools. Helping our customers in managing the change which effects the different parts of an organization. In the end it always comes down to ensuring people are comfortable in using our tools and applications in order to achieve the targeted results.

What kind of activities do you carry out to increase your brand awareness and customer satisfaction? What are the special services and solutions you provide to customers? Can you tell us more about your portfolio of products and services offered exclusively to customers in Turkey?

In 1975, we started installing systems under the Barco brand. As the organization span out of Barco in 2007, we changed our name to BMSvision. A lot of our customers are still referring to us as Barco, since a lot of our HMI equipment (operator touch interfaces) is still present on the production floor, carrying a Barco label.

Since day 1, our brand is known for innovation, integration and commitment. As highlighted, we use state of the art technology in a robust and reliable way, tuned to the textile manufacturing environment. Next, integrating with multiple machines, sensors, appliances, automation tools like AGV’s and OT systems (like ERP, SCADA or WMS) is key. Doing this for almost 50 years, there are very, very little machines we have not integrated with.

Lastly, we are a committed partner for our customers. Typically we are an important part of the operational process and information flow for them. We take this role very seriously. Working over decades alongside our customers in evolving our solution, in linking more automation or just in changing locations or extending to new plant sites. These services are available to any of our customers worldwide.

As a company, do you have new investments and developments on your agenda shortly? Can you tell us about your 2025 targets?

Over the last 2 years we have invested heavily in extending our MES systems with cloud and edge capabilities. Allowing for all our customers to be able to use the latest advancements in domains of AI, Machine learning and neural networks.

What does this really mean: we have created a really flexible solution to extend the core MES applications, like planning or quality management or energy management with the latest algorithms. This means that both new and existing customers can easily add an APS or automated quality inspection based on camera images or load balancing machines in their production hall based on their orderbook and historic energy consumption rates without having to invest in advanced computing power or data scientist themselves.

A lot of our customers are approaching us to create a data-lake as they want to understand how their operational, quality, energy or financial data can be linked to create more insights. We can truly help them in this patch or can provide certain of these correlation techniques ourselves.