Eindhoven, May 21st 2020 – EZ Factory, the supplier of mobile apps used in production environments, has raised a second capital injection of €720,000. Investors see great potential in this innovative start-up, whose customers already include Heineken, the dairy giant FrieslandCampina, and FN Steel, and particularly appreciate its focus on the user’s perspective. With this investment, the company expects to break even by the end of 2020.
EZ Factory was established in 2017 by Randy Appiah and Robert Bouwman, who came from the manufacturing industry and often saw the same problems: malfunctions, cumbersome procedures, delays, and paperwork. They developed EZ-GO, a digital application that facilitates autonomous maintenance, work instructions, inspections, and audits. This makes factories safer and more efficient, allows operators to suggest improvements, and makes results available in a real time dashboard.
Developed from the user’s point of view
‘We believe in a bottom-up approach,’ says Randy Appiah. ‘If you want to improve the production process, you involve shop-floor workers who know every detail of the job. We listened very carefully to operators, team leaders, quality and production managers when developing the app.’
Robert Bouwman adds: ‘The app makes paper superfluous, only shows what is needed, and makes considerable use of photos and video. This makes it very easy to carry out standard tasks such as starting up a line, changing products, and cleaning and inspecting machines.’
Financing
In the summer of 2019, the two entrepreneurs raised €530,000 from angel investors contributing private capital and used it mainly to build up their in-house development capacity. As a result, they can now produce EZ-GO and subsequent apps themselves.
Bouwman says they knew that another investment round would have to follow this spring. ‘We thought carefully about the amount of €720,000. You can raise an enormous amount of money and grow too fast, but we believe in focus and structure, no matter how difficult that may be for us as entrepreneurs. We first want to market the EZ-GO app even better, and further strengthen our position in the sector. We already have an impressive list of clients, and we are talking to other big names. We expect to break even, and outgrow the start-up phase, at the end of this year.’
Trust
Some of the additional funds have come from the original angel investors, who have confidence in EZ Factory’s approach. ‘They see that the app’s scalability adds a lot of value for large international clients with multiple locations,’ Appiah says. ‘The fact that such companies have already opted for EZ-GO underlines this, and investors believe in its market potential and easy rollout capability, and the technology roadmap that puts end users at the heart of the app.’
About EZ Factory
EZ Factory develops innovative and user-friendly apps to support operational teams in factories. These bottom-up tools enable them to work more efficiently and continuously improve processes. Checklists, work instructions, autonomous maintenance tasks and audits become much simpler and more visual, and results are immediately available in a real time a dashboard.
The EZ-GO app is used by renowned companies and it simplifies operators’ work, and boosts safety, quality, and productivity in their working environment.
EZ Factory believes in empowering the people who make the products, and always develops apps from their perspective. Their slogan is “power to the operator”