2021 Was Great. 2022 Looks Even Better.


A Holiday Message from John Joseph, former CEO of Datanomix


As we head towards the end of the year, it’s a great time to reflect on all that’s happened over the last twelve months. Overall, 2021 was an excellent year for both our company and the precision manufacturers we serve. With this in mind, here’s a look back at all that happened in 2021 at Datanomix and in the manufacturing industry, as well as look ahead to 2022.

2021 Featured a Perfect Storm of Opportunity

Precision parts manufacturers experienced a wave of market growth across several dimensions. Supply chain and shipping issues precipitated by the worldwide pandemic forced many US companies to rethink their manufacturing strategies, driving a massive reshoring effort that reduced the impact of shipping delays and showcased the inherent quality advantages of America’s precision manufacturing. But not all of the news was rosy as the increased demand led to parts delivery lead times of 8-10 weeks for their customers.

In addition, the massive spike in demand for precision parts sparked one of the largest increases in CNC machine sales in a long time. By September, machine sales had increased by 60% over the same time in 2020, with $600M in new sales in just September, and $4.2B in YTD sales by the end of Q3*. With the low cost of capital and growing receivables, manufacturers invested in every aspect of their businesses, including machine tools, automation, robotics, inspection, analytics, software, and expanding their facilities. And as the workforce evolves, innovative manufacturers are leveraging automation and technology to work smarter and more efficiently and become more attractive to potential hires, especially among younger workers. Thankfully, these market signals continue to look very strong well into the future. 

For Datanomix, 2021 Was Like Being Shot Out Of A Cannon

Interest from manufacturers was strong at the beginning of the year, and meetings turned into winning accounts across the country in rapid succession. In May, we announced a capital raise of $6M to accelerate hiring and go-to-market plans, and we’ve been extremely fortunate to get tremendous support from our new and existing investors to “go faster.” We’ve been able to quadruple the number of employees, with some amazing hires across sales, engineering, customer success, and marketing with an eye towards doubling our employee count again in 2022. And with the raise, we welcomed new board members Bob Davoli and Ralph Verrilli to the team, bringing additional energy and years of leadership to Datanomix. 

Most significantly, 2021 was a year where the question of product-market fit for our software was validated, with strong customer growth and even stronger customer expansion within 60-90 days of the first purchase. In September, several of our largest customers asked us to install not only their current facility, but all of their factories across the country, some with more than a 10X increase in connected machines. There is no better signal that the hard work our team has done to create the industry’s only automated production intelligence platform is paying off for our customers than enabling all of their factories. It turns out that delivering actionable insights into factory performance in real time and over time is an incredibly valuable service to our customers. 

The Keys to Our Success

When we founded Datanomix, we spent 100s of hours with dozens of manufacturers, listening to how they wanted to use data, but more importantly, watching them produce parts to learn their workflows and processes. Our developers had 2 very specific jobs:

  1. No Operator Input™—it’s inefficient, inaccurate, and rarely provides any context. Instead, we use machine learning to provide the analysis and context.

  2. Accelerate and optimize traditional manufacturing workflows, delivering information that provides insights into production without causing interruptions.

The combination of no operator input and a deep understanding of how manufacturers like to work is just a small part of why we’ve seen so many customers switch to Datanomix from first-generation machine monitoring solutions. Datanomix is automatic and it just works!

Innovation Is In Our DNA

But we’re not resting on our laurels. Our development team continues to innovate, developing new solutions and enhancing our existing products. Digital GEMBA was delivered in June, offering users a continuous improvement co-pilot for their factories. Other major additions to the Datanomix platform included the Quote Calibration Report, which helps leadership optimize job quoting, and the Continuous Improvement Hub, a new reporting workflow that delivers clear factory performance indicators and automatically identifies top opportunities to increase productivity and profitability (check out a CI Hub demo video). And our customers continue to be our greatest source of inspiration, providing feedback that helps us improve our products and serve them better.

Technology Should Always Deliver Business Impact

As I talk to manufacturing leaders across the country, all of them are looking for technology that delivers IMPACT. When they make buying decisions on new technologies like Datanomix, they want to understand how it will impact their company’s bottom line. The good news is that with Datanomix, it’s extremely easy to show how our software influences the bottom-line, especially after installing TVs across the factory floor and in the leadership suite:

  • 50% reduction in time-to-resolution
  • 15% productivity boost in parts output
  • 11.7% reduction in time-to-first-part across shifts
  • 27% average improvement in cycle time performance
  • 15% more accurate quoting

Between our customer stories and video interviews, it’s abundantly clear how much our customers love the product and that we’ve touched a nerve when it comes to delivering the data that makes a difference in our customers’ day-to-day operations. 

A Look Into the Year Ahead

As we transition into 2022, we continue to build momentum. Datanomix has set the table stakes for what modern production monitoring should be, and we’re not resting on our laurels. We’ve hired a number of data scientists and software engineers who are poring through machine data to uncover new value for our customers. And our growing relationship with Caron Engineering provides a treasure trove of new data sources to mine from within the machine, enabling data visualizations from the cutting tool to predictive analytics of critical machine tool components and traceable part quality. We will continue to look for strategic partners that will increase the value of our solutions with meaningful manufacturing data.

Datanomix Is Your Visual Control Center

We tell manufacturers that the best way to think about Datanomix is as a visual control center for your factory. With Datanomix, advanced visualizations and reporting deliver a clear understanding of what’s happening in their factory right now while providing the insights to improve productivity and profits over time. All displayed on TVs throughout the factory floor and in the management suite. Actionable insights are always just a mouse click away, and better-informed decisions that increase efficiency and profitability across the entire factory and for the business are built into the system.

What’s most exciting is how Datanomix is helping our customers reinforce a culture of open and honest communication. People intuitively understand that Datanomix is a tool for productivity that will empower the entire factory to build better parts faster, helping to make the factory more successful and fostering a growing sense of pride as cycle times decrease and more parts are built. Everyone is moving towards a common goal, and the results have been nothing short of amazing—an average of 33.5% increase in overall factory utilization within 3 months of installing Datanomix TV Mode on their factory floor! 

I wanted to close this out with a comment from one of our customers who said:

With Datanomix, our employees understand where we are with every job, and our team is invested in improving our production scores each and every day. Datanomix isn’t about “watching over” people—it’s about giving people the tools they need to make processes faster and more efficient. Our culture is about empowering and trusting people, and Datanomix is helping with both of these.

Thank you to our customers, investors, and everyone on the Datanomix team for a successful 2021. Happy holidays, and here’s to a prosperous and exciting 2022.

*Robert E. Morris November Report

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