Kaizen Copilot Helps Address Acute Labor Crisis in Manufacturing
Retrocausal, a leading platform provider for manufacturing process management, announced a $5.3M financing round co-led by Glasswing Ventures, One Way Ventures, and Indicator Ventures, along with participation from existing investors Argon Ventures, Differential Ventures, Ascend Vietnam Ventures, Incubate Fund US, SaaS Ventures, Hypertherm Ventures, Stage Venture Partners, and Techstars.
Funding will be used to meet the increased market demand for its proprietary generative AI technology, Retrocausal’s Kaizen Copilot software for Manufacturing Assembly Optimization. Retrocausal’s solution simplifies manual assembly operations and the underlying processes to empower the low-skilled workforce to take on high-skill manufacturing jobs.
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Retrocausal’s industry-first solution is addressing the acute labor crisis in manufacturing. According to the National Association of Manufacturers, by 2030, the manufacturing skills gap, caused by the labor market’s struggle to find workers with highly technical and manual expertise, could lead to 2.1 million unfilled jobs risking over $1 trillion in losses that year alone. Manufacturing now makes up just over 8% of the U.S. workforce, about half of early 1990s levels, the lowest share ever. To fill this gap, manufacturers are hiring temporary operators (growing 16% year-on-year) but losing 15-20% of their revenues on average due to poor quality. With 77% of manufacturers experiencing difficulties in hiring and retention, Retrocausal’s solution emerges as a critical intervention in a field at a crossroads, aiming to reshape the future of manufacturing.
Retrocausal’s Copilot software allows an untrained worker to become productive on a new process within five minutes and deliver the productivity and quality of someone who has had months of training, resulting in 25% greater First Time Yields (FTY) and 90% less assembly-related scrap costs.
Retrocausal’s Copilot extends its impact beyond individual performance. It equips production supervisors and junior industrial engineers with the capability to radically overhaul workstation design and re-balance assembly lines. Production supervisors and junior industrial engineers can improve workstation design and re-balance assembly lines to minimize the operator headcount needed to run a line while eliminating bottlenecks leading to 35% greater value per operator.
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“As a first capital-in investor in Retrocausal, we are excited to see and support the company’s growth as it meets the pressing market need to resolve the manufacturing labor gap and increase manufacturing assembly optimization,” said Kleida Martiro, Partner, Glasswing Ventures. “Retrocausal’s Copilot offering is already deployed at multiple leading automotive, automotive parts, medical device, and HVAC systems manufacturers to great success. These customers are now expanding to additional sites. We are proud to back the innovative team at Retrocausal. Their Copilot software is not just an innovation; it’s a paradigm shift in manufacturing, ushering in a new era of operational excellence and profitability. Their ability to address the industry’s most critical pain points and deliver measurable results is as transformative as it is visionary.”
“We are thrilled to receive the continued support of Glasswing Ventures, new investors One Way Ventures and Indicator Ventures, and our existing investors, in helping us meet the growing demand for our offering,” said Dr. Zeeshan Zia, CEO of Retrocausal. “This latest round will help our team accelerate deployment as we continue to leverage AI to address the manufacturing talent shortage and re-imagine manufacturing assembly processes.”
Retrocausal has been developing multi-modal foundation models focused on manufacturing trained on its proprietary datasets. The company has been granted three patents on its generative AI technology by the US Patent Office (USPTO) and has four pending patents. In April 2023, the company opened a new office in Dallas, Texas to be closer to its manufacturing customers in the Midwest and Mexico. It has also unveiled joint projects with Honda Innovations and Siemens Digital Industries.
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