Company History

A Couple of Snapshots of Our History…

COSMINO AG was established on November 1, 1988, as DATA INPUT AG. Hans Egersdörfer and his son, Frank Egersdörfer, had the idea for offering a solution for processing quality control sheets, consisting of proven hardware and specially developed software.

Many of our customers from those first few years have remain loyal customers today, even though the nature of data acquisition has changed. COSMINO AG is 100% owner-managed and self-financed – with Frank Egersdörfer as CEO.

1991: The First Custom Software

Shortly after its founding, the company releases its own control chart software under the Unix operating system – the forebear, so to speak, of the later Cosmino Suite. The first software is developed for Daimler Benz AG and then offered to the entire automotive supply industry.

1995: Cosmino Domino QS Standard Software

Triggered by the automobile crisis in the early 1990s, the software packages for final assembly in automotive manufacturing are being optimized. This still relied on paper recording in the line, however, the known procedures for generating the inspection documents are revolutionized by IT-supported procedures. The COSMINO solution Domino QS is used, among others, by the company MCC in Hambach in the final assembly of the Smart and in the Juiz de Fora plant of Mercedes Benz do Brazil.

1999: Birth of the CosminoDynaMon Statistical Management System

While these two plant startups are in progress, the first version of the Cosmino DynaMon reporting tool is created, which reports product and process quality data in a timely and generally understandable manner. On this basis, the previously paper-based quality report was converted to a multi-dimensional intranet report with the TA Division at BMW. Cosmino DynaMon has been expanded step by step and counts up to 15,000 accesses per day at peak times for this customer alone.

2001 QUKAM Supplier and Business Unit Management System

MAN Nutzfahrzeuge AG, which has been using a control chart system for more than 10 years, ordered a new supplier and business unit management system. Using the highly integrated software from DATA INPUT AG, guarantee, prototype, process inspection and inventory acceptance processes are supported from that time on. The solution is linked to various systems in MAN’s IT world and processes up to 160,000 goods receipts per month from numerous production sites.

2002 Lean Solutions for PDA and OEE

The Overall Equipment Effectiveness is becoming more and more important in the production industry. The first complete solution with master data, ERP interfaces, data acquisition for operational data (PDA), diagnosis of losses and evaluation of the acquired data occurred in the field of bottling and packaging for a pharmaceutical manufacturer. Since then, other industries have used this solution.

2008 Corporate Benchmarking

The world market leader for laminated paper cups, Seda International Packaging Group, acquires the operational data from all of its plants around the world using Cosmino. The operational data of the plants is then compared in a central reporting system at the company’s headquarters. Seda relies on homogeneous operating systems at all sites, which enables cross-site benchmarking. This benefits the improvement process, as the sites share the improvement successes they have achieved.

2010 Change of Name and Move to New Offices

Due to growth and the increasing internationalization of the market, DATA INPUT AG changes its name to COSMINO AG and moves into a larger building. Nothing has changed in the management or staff.

2011 First Installation in China

For many customers, Cosmino is considered a fixed software component of their production sites. In addition to rollouts in other European countries, Cosmino is also used in North and Latin America. In 2011, COSMINO installed the first software solution in China; further installations followed later.

2012 Beginning of Cosmino MES Plus

Cosmino fulfills the prerequisites of a Manufacuturing Execution System (MES) as defined in VDI Guideline 5600. Previously missing MES functions were developed with customers in previous years and are now proven components of the new Cosmino MES Plus. The stand-alone solutions for OEE and QA remain in place and can be continuously expanded to Cosmino MES Plus.

2014 CosminoEnergyVision

Energy management provides enormous savings opportunities for industrial companies. Therefore, COSMINO AG has developed an efficient energy management system based on the requirements of the globally valid ISO 50001 standard and introduced it at customers in the same year.

2016 Cosmino as Part of the Industry 4.0 Strategy for Numerous Customers

Currently, many long-standing customers made it clear that COSMINO will be part of their Industrie 4.0 strategy. In general, heavy pursuit of automation can be detected in the customer group: The trend is developing away from scanning documents and towards the Digital Factory. The COSMINO AG team is proud to be a long-term development partner of our customers for Industry 4.0.

2018 Production and Material Flow under Control (Just in Sequence) with a French Automotive Supplier

The production of the new flagship plant of a French plastics processor and first tier supplier for the automotive industry is supported by Cosmino MES Plus. The task of the software is to control the production and material flow  for each variant, both at the machines and at the assembly workstations. Material is supplied to the assembly line according to the JIS principle (Just in Sequence).

2020: Future-oriented Concept for Data Acquisition in an Industry 4.0 Architecture

Current Industry 4.0 flagship projects with Cosmino MES Plus are setting new requirements for software operation and software architecture. Based on these groundbreaking implementations, the internal concept phase starts in the Corona year in order to prepare the MES architecture as well as the acquisition dialogs in general for future tasks and to modernize and improve them at the same time.

2021: Further Development of the Digital Twin and Reengineering of the Acquisition Dialogs

The architecture of the digital twins is being prepared for new tasks and is already leading to various new possibilities for some customers. Among them simple data exchange and high-performance real-time control – both highly available and independent of the MES database.

In the reengineering of the data acquisition dialogs, an operating and design concept is developed and prototypically implemented together with external specialists.