eschbach Wins German Innovation Award for its Shiftconnector^® AI Suite

Bad Säckingen, Germany, May 14, 2025

Process industry software specialist eschbach has won the prestigious German Innovation Award for its use of artificial intelligence (AI) to drive productivity and efficiency in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries.
Announced on 13 May 2025, the company’s Shiftconnector^® AI Suite was awarded in the categories of Excellence in Business to Business – AI Methods, and Excellence in Business to Business – Information Technologies/Industry Specific and Service Software.

With chemical and pharmaceutical sites generating significant volumes of shift logs, maintenance records and process data across multiple sites on a daily basis, SAMI Search allows operators to instantly retrieve critical data such as incident reports using the power of AI.
Taking it a step further, SAMI Solutions enables users to input operational queries directly into the search bar. Its powerful AI then scans the plant’s digital shift logs and other operational data, instantly drawing on this information to suggest proven, human-validated solutions from past process records — all within seconds.

SAMI Chat, which is the latest addition to the Shiftconnector^® AI Suite, offers a conversational interface, allowing the time to gather and trace root causes to be reduced even further, enabling the fastest possible resolutions. Crucially, all module functions base any responses only on existing plant data, with all potential solutions linked to the original shift or incident log to provide maximum accuracy and traceability.
The platform is designed to enable measurable operational improvements —allowing for up to 10% cost reductions related to quality issues, shortening resolution times by as much as 2 hours, and significantly accelerating root cause analysis by a factor of ten.

Andreas Eschbach, Founder and CEO of eschbach, said: “This is a landmark achievement for the company in what is now our twentieth year of operation. Our Shiftconnector^® platform, developed closely in line with customer requirements, has now grown into a tool which is used by more than 100,000 industrial stakeholders every day. AI has the potential to unlock productivity on a scale as yet unseen in the process industry. From streamlining the effective transfer of knowledge between seasoned and junior colleagues through to significant reductions in downtime and major improvements in OEE, the information is already freely available to operators. However, tools such as the Shiftconnector^® AI Suite can unleash its true potential.”

The jury presiding over the award entries, which included notable industry leaders such as Mara Hummel, Associate Director and Team Leader at Roche, and Dr. Christopher Stillings, Global Head of Strategy & Innovation at RENOLIT Healthcare, issued the following statement off the back of eschbach’s win:

“Efficient shift handovers and the use of operational data remain key challenges in the pharmaceutical and chemical industries, particularly given the increasing complexity of industrial processes. The Shiftconnector^® AI Suite provides a progressive solution by leveraging artificial intelligence to make information from unstructured data sources quickly accessible, accelerate root cause analyses, and propose actionable solutions.

“A particularly notable feature of the suite is its ability to seamlessly link operational knowledge with data-driven decision making through semantic search functions and generative AI. This intelligent and user-friendly software demonstrates a clear focus on industry-specific needs and convincingly illustrates how digital technologies can sustainably enhance the efficiency and safety of industrial processes.”

About eschbach
eschbach, headquartered in Bad Säckingen, Southern Germany, with a subsidiary in Boston, USA, develops software for plant process management. Shiftconnector ^® provides a new level of team communication to ensure safety and improve plant effectiveness. The award-winning solution is trusted worldwide by leading manufacturing companies such as Bayer, DuPont, BASF and Roche. For more information visit www.eschbach.com.
At eschbach, we work with leading companies to provide the only enterprise platform specifically developed for process manufacturers. For nearly 20 years, our team eschbach delivers innovative plant process management solutions that increase plant efficiency, empower continuous improvement and deliver 24/7 plant communications using a secured environment.