Okan Altay, founder and managing director of aoloa-Engineering GmbH:

"Our core competence in the development of solutions in the ICT sector is clearly the interdisciplinary way we work and our holistic understanding of systems"

October 2020. It is Wednesday afternoon and we are sitting comfortably in the sofa corner, which often serves as break corner at lunchtime. Since 2019 aoloa-Engineering is located in the center of Magstadt, directly at the Brauereiplatz. Before that, the company was based in Gerlingen for six years. Okan Altay is the founder and managing director of aoloa-Engineering and thus the visionary who drives the company forward. The aoloa-Engineering GmbH is a provider of customized IoT solutions and engineering services and presents itself with an surprisingly broad field of competence, which one would not necessarily expect from medium-sized company of this size. "Some people may raise an eyebrow with skepticism", smiles Okan Altay, "but that's okay, after all they don't know our history. When I tell it, the question marks disappear. In the following interview, we want to get to the bottom of the questions about the development of aoloa-Engineering and where the journey will lead in the future.

How and when did the story of aoloa begin?
"The story of aoloa begins in 2009, the same year that I was selected for the "Support Program for Young Leaders" in Business & Engineering at Steinbeis University Berlin. After finishing my studies of mechatronics, I myself spent the first years of my career working as an external project employee for renowned customers in the automation sector and gained first-hand project experience. In 2009, I founded aoloa-Engineering, an engineering service provider, with the goal to work on innovative solutions for well-known customers in our core competence mechatronics, in measurement and control technology. Since the technology was still quite new at that time, we dedicated ourselves to the education and training of young talents. We worked in customer projects, but also offered engineering personnel services. We clearly received the largest orders from the automotive industry. Over the years, we have been able to sustainably deepen our know-how and to excel, especially in the areas of the automotive future, with our own range of solutions. I am specifically talking about e-mobility, charging communication, autonomous driving or modern individual measurement systems as well as medical technology. We are increasingly developing into an engineering consulting service provider with our own range of solutions".

What about the slogan "specialized in high level communication"?
"As mechatronics engineers, we are familiar with measurement and control technology, i.e. we are very experienced with measured values, their collection and interpretation. However, under the heading "Industry 4.0" a paradigm shift has taken place. This has placed new demands on us engineers across all industries. Fortunately, we recognized this at an early stage and responded to it by building up more in-house competence in recent years. Especially in the areas of communication and networking as well as Big Data. We have bundled our know-how about transmission paths in our slogan. High Level Communication refers to a communication layer - in short, we are specialists in communication protocols and are not only able to measure and analyze values, but can also establish networks between sensors, machines and people".

What is the core strength of aoloa-Engineering?
"As I said, we are strong in the areas of communication and networking, but we have always kept our engineering and especially our mechatronics reference in mind. Accordingly, our way of working is an interplay of the departments of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and information technology. Our core competence in the development of solutions in the ICT sector is therefore clearly the interdisciplinary way we work and our holistic understanding of systems. This enables us to develop tailor-made solutions for our customers".

And where does the journey lead to?
Measuring, controlling, regulating. This is the central theme of our company's history and remains the core of our activities. The future, however, will be more networked and more intelligent, i.e. data will continue to be measured and analyzed, but we will now look at it in a much more global context, enabling us to make predictions and derive recommendations for action, which will ideally be automated. Big data and predictive maintenance are again the keywords here. In other words, we reverse the cause-and-effect principle, because we find the cause before any effect has even occurred. This is where the future is headed. With us, but also in general. A further mainstay on which we will rely in the future are our own developments. These have been our focus since the end of 2019. For example, we are currently in the final stages of developing our GPS tracker. Among other things, we have implemented a complex security protocol so that the tracker can also be used by security agencies. We are also increasingly venturing into the field of research. This involves innovative product ideas and smart devices, for which we are entering completely new territory in the field of Industry 4.0 together with a Canadian partner, among others. I can't reveal too much at this point, but one thing is certain: we don't stand still.  

The questions were asked by Corinna Schleinschok, marketing consultant at aoloa-Engineering GmbH.

Aoloa Milestones

2009: Foundation as a mechatronic company for system solutions. First projects: Gas analysis systems for special applications, automation (Bosch, Festo), Electric Drive

2011: First automotive customer (Webasto): development, testing, project management

2012: Embedded software solutions for mechatronic systems (Valeo)

2015: ICT projects for Porsche

2016: First own products in the field of measurement and control technology in combination with ICT, founding of the design subsidiary aoloa D&I in The Hague

2018: Subsidiary aoloa T&I in Kual Lumpur

2019: Move to Magstadt

2020: Development of own products, participation in public tenders, research projects