Machinery downtime in the heavy machinery industry leads to significant financial and opportunity costs, factoring in late penalties, idle labor, equipment rentals, and administrative expenses. Furthermore, Right to Repair laws require manufacturers and dealerships to provide technical support and parts for machines for up to 10 years.
This is why we are excited to back, Digital Iron, a copilot for dealerships that leverages AI models trained on CAD schematics, machine manuals, and telematics data. The platform offers intelligent diagnostics and parts sourcing to respond faster to breakdowns.
Co-founded by Ciaran Gillen (CEO), a second-time founder, with 18 years of experience in the material processing and equipment sales industry, and Salina Brown (CPO), previously Director of User Experience at HP, Digital Iron automates order processing and summarization, thus helping reduce errors and improving operational efficiency. The integration of enriched dealership, customer, and machine data speeds up diagnostics and increases parts sales, boosting revenue at dealerships.
Ciaran Gillen, Co-founder and CEO of Digital Iron comments:
“Machines break down on average 600 hours every year and there’s an extremely manual process involved in trying to get them back in action. This is because each machine can have anywhere between 50 to 200 documents attached to it and as dealerships could be selling up to 1,000 machines a year they can find it difficult to answer questions to find out what has gone wrong.
“Down time for machines obviously means lost revenue but our platform addresses this by ingesting all the manuals so that when questions come in we know exactly what documents to access to get answers to problems in seconds rather than in days.
On why we backed Digital Iron, Kate McGinn from our investment team comments:
“Digital Iron is tapping an immense opportunity to disrupt a large, underserved, and undigitised market. We’re thrilled to back two heavy machinery wizards, Salina and Ciaran, as they help dealerships offer 10x better diagnostics and parts sourcing.”
We are excited to lead Digital Iron’s $2 million pre-seed round alongside our friends at Concept Ventures, RTP Global, and FJ Labs.
For more information, visit digitaliron.com
