Eskişehir-based engineering firm Modoya A.Ş. is preparing to announce the power of Turkish engineers to the world. Stating that they aim to bring Turkish technology to the world, Ismail Özcan, Member of the Board of the company, says that they want to export their software, hardware and kits.
The engineering firm Modoya A.Ş., which sets out with national feelings and works for domestic technology, stands out with its AGV products, which it defines as OYA. The Eskişehir-based company, which can offer both products and solutions, has rolled up its sleeves to export Turkish technology to the world. Modoya Inc. İsmail Özcan, Member of the Board of Directors, said, “We aim to accelerate the export of Turkish technology in terms of hardware by establishing another center in Europe, through the center there. We aim to make a landing in Europe. We aim to export our software, hardware and electronic kits from Europe to the world.” says.
Mr. İsmail, can you tell us about the structuring of your company?
Modoya Inc. We are an engineering company established in Eskişehir Atap Technopark. We currently have a staff of 12 people. A staff of 90 percent engineers. We work on electronic hardware and electronic software. Although we are 12 people, I can say that we work in many fields in terms of our area of expertise. Our friends work at a fast and intense pace with the passion of seeing results and the love of work. We were established in November 2015 as an SME startup company by receiving SME entrepreneurship support. Then we started a TÜBİTAK project. It was only a 9-month project, saying that I would build an autonomous automatic guidance vehicle, but at the end of 9 months, we obtained a working prototype and sold that prototype. We received a lot of feedback from our customers on the definition and end use of our product, and thanks to them, our first product became industrial. Therefore, we define ourselves as an R&D company.
Your area of expertise is AGVs, you call it OYA (Automatic Guided Vehicle). Why are you launching as OYA?
We work with the love of domestic technology. We have certain national feelings right now. When technology is mentioned in our country, western countries or Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea always come, but Turkey should also be mentioned with technology. The name of our company is a name formed from the abbreviation of Modular Automatic Guided Vehicle. Its English is called AGV, we wanted to say it in Turkish. In this context, we have our own equipment that we have developed on OYA. We are not dependent on abroad. We develop our own brain, namely our main control unit. Its name is Manager, so it can be purchased as a “Manager” in the market. It’s not a PLC or any other computer role, but its name is Administrator. We have scanners that take security. On the sensor developer side, there are companies in Germany and Japan. We develop our equipment ourselves, its name is Bekçi. We have such products that we give their own names. OYA’s trademark registration belongs to Modoya.
You said, “We define ourselves as an R&D company”. Can you tell us about your R&D activities?
Yes, R&D is very important to us. We are a company that can do R&D. My and two other partners’ backgrounds are based on R&D. We are a company that knows the R&D processes, from concept design to commissioning and after commissioning, the life cycle of the product from beginning to end. We have applied to 5 TÜBİTAK projects so far, each of them has been accepted. Frankly, our work in this field is appreciated by our state. It comes into play gradually in our industry-oriented and projects. We are currently continuing a project on laser navigation. To give an example, what does laser navigation do? A sensor laser technology is used to guide the vehicle. There is no local, there is no company that makes it in Turkey. We will be the first domestic developer company. We not only develop the hardware, we also develop the embedded software in it. Therefore, we will launch the product prototype this summer. Then we have the certification process. We are planning to put this equipment on the market in the next 2 years.
What are the technological developments and innovations in the product group recently?
The biggest changes in our product line are on software. Natural navigation is very important in the direction technology of vehicles among domestic software, there are companies that sell natural navigation software from abroad, but we use them and develop our own natural navigation and compact equipment. Apart from this, we attach great importance to the customer interface. Almost all of our products have screens. The on-screen customer-user portal is very important. We can report to the customer, as well as develop the interfaces about the energy consumption, the diagnosis screen, what may have happened if there is a malfunction, in the evenings or in the desired periods. We have now come to a very important point. Our customers can diagnose themselves. In other words, they can add and remove stations on their own, from the battery replacement time to other maintenance requirements, about where the problem may originate.
Let’s talk about the solutions you offer for industrial facilities. What advantages do your solutions provide to the facilities?
First of all, we think the biggest advantage is that OYAs strictly follow the orders given to them. According to OYA, if a factory can adapt the logistics within the cycle time to the cycle time, if the companies can also adapt the cycle times at their own stations, we start to offer one-to-one efficiency. In this sense, we can program OYAs to equalize cycle times. On the other hand, our products send a report e-mail to the person who is described to him in emergencies or at the end of the day. It offers various statistics from how many minutes it is stopped at which station to how much load it carries on it, and finally, it tells and reports where it is inefficient in its red areas. Therefore, the next day, the white collar can come and go to the station with that number and solve whatever the problem is there. Therefore, in this way, we serve to increase the productivity within the factory.
What is the difference between a machine and a solution? You can sell a machine, but I think the solution is a very different thing.
You touched on a very valid point. The machine is a defined product that everyone can use. What to do has its place in the catalogue. We also have products. They are machines and the catalog says what can be done. But during the commissioning phase of this, our customers are also waiting for a solution. As a standard component, there is no work on OYA in the factories that are already sitting in the factories built in Turkey. It is said that a person finds the solution for this by himself, buys the product and leaves. But when the subject starts to become autonomous, even the place where you will pick up the product and leave it must be completely defined. In fact, if you want to produce world-class, everything must have its place, even in the most basic 5S rules. We need to develop solutions such as how to pick up and drop off the product, what will be the tasks it has to do between stations, how to add accessories and even mechanical interfaces to carry the product. We design the first prototype, the interface between our product, our machine and the stations in the factory, and we show that it works. If necessary, our customer can reproduce it himself or have it done by another company. Here, our biggest expectation for our customers is that the customer profile in Turkey follows Europe. As in many things, we follow Europe and the USA. There it is much more developed. OYAs are also developing and spreading in our country. The most important thing we and other companies in the market do is that we raise awareness of many customers.
