DGWorld is a company that’s big on firsts, the company is leaving its footprint in various parts of the world

Since 2013 DGWorld has been working primarily in the sectors of robotics and autonomic technology. The company boasts a strong set of competencies that they have put to use building an innovation hub in the Middle East.  The AI and digitization vision of the leaders in the Emirates and neighbouring countries made Dubai the perfect base for DGWorld.

“Over the years we’ve specialised to become a partner of the first industrial robotics company in the region,” says Matthias Krause, the company’s General Manager. “Our future-oriented solutions intelligently and securely connect all manufacturing machines to the cloud. With our team of experts, we aim to digitize the production line and make the manufacturing process simpler and smarter, in order to increase efficiency, quality and flexibility in a sustainable manner.”

DGWorld is cutting a fresh path for itself, focusing on industrial autonomy and providing the capability to retrofit existing facilities while combining AI, automation and digitalisation to support airports, ports and other industrial sectors. Krause believes this is a critical time for development and innovation in those sectors.

“The key point is that we’re seeing a lot of autonomy on the roads and the development of autonomous driving for cars,” Krause explains. “Early on we understood concepts like automated quay port container trucks, moving in a contained traffic light environment, could help to speed up or support today’s digitalisation aims.”

A New Kind of Tech Hub

However, to play the role Krause wants DGWorld to play in this development, they need the right autonomous regulations put in place to make the implementation possible and more importantly 100% safe.

“We have received great support from the government and institutions in the region. Over the past few years, the drive we see for innovation is incredible, especially in Dubai. However, businesses need to invest more to adapt in the digitization era,” Krause says. “Technology is developing fast; we need to have clear regulations by the government so that businesses invest and work together for a more profitable economy and a better social life.”

For Krause, the key to building the kind of tech culture DGWorld needs is collaboration.

“We engaged with strong partners and customers that believe in these kinds of technologies. Our efforts have made it possible to develop autonomous vehicles and technologies and have them implemented all over the world,” Krause says. “This is just the beginning; I see more room to grow and truly transform the way business is done to become more profitable and efficient.”

The most important collaboration DGWorld has been engaged in has been the collaboration between the company’s own people.

“I think the main driving factor for our company is the knowledge and dedication of our employees and engineers. For us it’s essential to acquire talent at an early stage and understand their needs and requirements to support them in their growth,” Krause says. “We train them in-house over the years, ensuring they’re knowledgeable about technologies that aren’t necessarily that common. You can’t find people with long experience in autonomous vehicles, so you need to bring a lot of different interests together and have people grow in their positions. Then you can benefit from the ideas they want to bring and ask how they’re seeing themselves in the next year. We’re trying to support our teams to give them freedom of choice and in the long run, build new teams.”

A New Reality

Working in the tech sector has always been, essentially, about envisaging the reality of tomorrow and developing the tools that reality will need. Of course, this year “reality” took something of a left turn, thanks to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We are looking into the new reality and what we are understanding is there needs to be a massive push towards digitalisation, automation and AI,” Krause says. “The customers are rethinking their processes. The way we are treating it at the moment is asking ‘How we can transform existing business processes by supporting it with our technologies?’ and ‘How can we actually adapt what we have learned out of the pandemic to enable digitalisation and come closer to requirements?’ I think we’ve seen more customers really looking into the risks and pushing this more actively than they were before.”

Indeed, some of DGWorld’s solutions to the “new normal” everyone is constantly talking about might seem left field, but when you think about them, they make a great deal of sense. The company recently completed a project that enabled one of its clients to launch the RoboCafe in Dubai, which is fully developed by DGWorld and will prepare and serve juices, hot drinks and food without any human interaction. As Dubai reopens for tourism the benefits of such a restaurant concept with regard to social distancing and COVID-19 are obvious.

Looking beyond COVID, Krause has big plans for DGWorld. The company recently entered into a contractual agreement with DP World and UAE Region to equip Jebel Ali Port with a fleet of Autonomous Internal Terminal Vehicles (AITVs), including all related integrations into the ports existing operational processes and infrastructures. DGWorld’s goal is to help make Jebel Ali one of the most advanced and smartest ports in the world and is investing heavily in the best minds, practices and resources to develop applications and technologies to match the port’s operational requirements.

“We definitely foresee growth,” Krause says. “We want to expand and grow the company. We’ve seen a lot of core technologies and our products today expand into international markets. We want to keep investing in our people, in the knowledge to drive our products and solutions. I think we’re aiming to become the market leader for all kinds of autonomy applications in quay ports and airports and even the agricultural sector. We’re looking to new segments and new solutions.”