AMV Soluciones was born in 2008 due to the passion for mathematics and for facing new challenges. What at first was only a solution to the scrap management of a bronze foundry, quickly began to give excellent results and became ALEA, a system capable of adapting to any type of foundry, achieving savings of up to 20% in production costs.
AMV Soluciones is a global company with clients in 18 countries and 4 continents and they are experts at the foundry sector with more than a decade of experience helping foundries, of any type of alloy, to optimize their processes.
Interview with Alberto Montenegro Correa, CEO of AMV Soluciones
Easy Engineering: How was 2023 for your business, a short summary?
Alberto Montenegro Correa: 2023 has been the consolidation of AMV’s growth after the pandemic. The foundry sector, in which we specialize, is increasingly looking for technology to optimize material, energy and processes, and to preserve know-how. Since 2020, we have had double-digit growth, three years in a row, and we are expanding to new countries on four continents.
E.E: What products/services did you launch this year?
A.M.C: Complementing our global systems ALEA and PRONOX4CAST, in 2023 we launched three new modules: 1) AMV IMP, oriented to the reception, characterization and sorting of scrap entries, to have more and more reliable inputs for efficient recycling, 2) AMV SMART, a Machine Learning based platform that learns from production results to give best practices for material usage, and 3) ALEA PURCHASING MODULE to help buyers of raw materials to make optimal decisions based on production forecast and market availability and behavior. Again, all based on what the foundry and metal recycling industry is increasingly demanding.
E.E: How did the market change, compared to previous years?
A.M.C: The trend that started with the pandemic, in a conservative sector such as the one we work with, was the search for 4.0 solutions to complement and give optimal instructions to their melting and casting equipment. We can think of 2023 as the year of consolidation of that trend, the year from which all companies in this sector have realized that, in addition to good equipment, they also need smart technology to be competitive.
E.E: What are the new challenges in your field of activity?
A.M.C: The challenges are related to adapting to change and making optimal decisions according to the new conditions. In a global scenario marked from 2022 by international conflicts, raw material shortages and energy cost variability, our systems must help our customers to analyze alternative materials and suppliers, and to quickly develop new markets and products.
E.E: How did you overcome these challenges in this more competitive environment?
A.M.C: We have been fortunate to develop over our 15 years of activity a unique mathematical model, specific to alloy production, adaptable to any equipment and workflow. On this model we apply optimization strategies that combine very efficient deterministic algorithms with AI and ML techniques. This model has proven to be extremely powerful in analyzing information and providing new purchasing and production directives to the smelting industry. We have created a standard for this sector and are now in an advantageous position with respect to our competitors, which, logically, we must be able to take advantage of.
E.E: Tell us about product innovation and how will it impact the future?
A.M.C: AMV is a company that was born innovating hand in hand with our customers. Research, development, and innovation are in our DNA: what is new today will be surpassed tomorrow by new, more complete models, new algorithms, and more efficient and user-friendly technologies.
Although global AIs such as ChatGPT have taken giant steps in recent months, they are still far from providing solutions to problems in specific sectors, which is why there is a boom in technology groups that are increasingly investing in vertical systems such as those developed by AMV. The future of the industry necessarily involves solutions such as ours.
E.E: How will product innovation help the customers?
A.M.C: As our software platforms are continuously evolving, our customers will focus more and more on value-adding processes (business plan, market strategy, development of new materials with better mechanical and metallographic properties…), and our systems will be responsible for optimizing the supply chain, providing optimal production guidelines, minimizing rejection and maximizing the profitability of the company.
E.E: What are the industry trends in the markets you are currently active?
A.M.C: The recycling of metals, both ferrous and non-ferrous, is becoming increasingly important in a world that needs more and more circular economy processes, minimizing environmental impact and reducing carbon footprint as much as possible. We are seeing
a boom in new recycling plants, particularly for aluminum in all its formats (billet, ingot, rolling), which also want to start manufacturing in a sustainable and efficient way from the beginning, and turn to us to start their production with our systems.
E.E: What do you think the trends will be next year?
A.M.C: From the perspective of vertical software development companies, such as AMV, we will be focused on optimizing our customers’ processes and on adding value by providing production data analysis with KPIs and improvement directives.
From the point of view of our customers, the manufacturing sector, and the foundry industry in particular, it will be more and more common to implement a global ERP system for the overall management of the company, together with a vertical MRP/MES solution integrated with the plant equipment, for production control.
The idea of an ERP system capable of emulating the production of any sector has become obsolete, in favor of this horizontal ERP+ vertical MRP/MES tandem.
E.E: What is the outlook for 2024?
A.M.C: As I explained in previous questions, the metal sector, particularly the recycling industry, has very good prospects for the coming years and has decided to definitely bet on 4.0 solutions that allow them to be competitive.
Thanks to this, we plan to close our portfolio of new projects for 2024 in January of this year, with an estimated growth compared to 2023 of 26%. As our customer experience expands within the sector, we expect exponential growth over the next five years.