EU Business News August 2017

24 EU BUSINESS NEWS / August 2017 , SME Instrument Innovator Stratio Seals a Deal with Coachbuilder Sunsundegui Portuguese SME Instrument innovator Stratio has closed a deal with a coachbuilding company Sunsundegui, to introduce their technology in the coachbuilders’ buses. The technology allows for customers to know and be notified about problems, both in the coachbuilder systems such as doors and air conditioning and in the chassis systems such as engine, breaks, suspension and gear. Stratio’s technology will thus allow Sunsundegui’s clients to reduce their fleets maintenance costs and off-road time, while increasing the return on investment of the vehicles. Stratio has developed an automotive grade equipment, to be installed in trucks and buses, capable of performing real-time analysis of vehicle sensors. Using Artificial Intelligence algorithms to identify patterns and deviations, Stratio’s technology can detect faults and wear before they happen, allowing vehicle repair to be handled in anticipation, paving the way for the future of automotive maintenance. Stratio’s path began with a request from one of the company’s existing customers - the City of Coimbra, in Portugal – who had one ambition: to keep their fleet of +100 buses in continuous operation, always on the road. Stratio took the opportunity offered by SME Instrument Phase 1 to run a pilot and verify feasibility and market demand and is now using Phase 2 to boost commercialisation, with a global ambition from start. “The SME Instrument has played a key role in Stratio’s rapid expansion, mainly due to the seal of excellence and trust that the SME Instrument represents to industrial partners and customers”. says Ricardo Margalho, CEO of Stratio. “Having been through the process of submitting a proposal to such a competitive funding Instrument we can say with confidence that the time invested in the writing of the proposals was one of the best investments we have made and that it would continue to be even if our proposal ended up not being selected, as it allowed us to develop and improve our vision, objectives and strategy. That led us to where we are now”, says Margalho. Stratio’s cooperation with Sunsundegui started with the integration of the product in vehicles of a Sunsundegui customer in the north region of Spain. The cooperation goes one step ahead of pure technology integration, as Stratio is also supporting Sunsundegui efforts on leveraging the power of vehicle data, by making the coachbuilder systems’ information (real-time condition) accessible to the engineering teams. Stratio’s technology can be introduced in new buses as an original vehicle equipment and in heavy-duty vehicles already in the market regardless of brand and manufacturing year, as an aftermarket solution. Mutual benefits of ongoing partnerships with coachbuilders and OEMs have propelled Stratio’s success, as the company grew rapidly from research and development, to commercialisation initially in Europe and soon in the United States. ec.europa.eu