Purchasing manufacturing machinery and other industrial equipment usually take a heavy toll on the company bankroll. By offering the costly equipment on an automated pay-per-use basis, this headache will soon be alleviated.

As IOTA continues to expand its capabilities with partners, we want to create a flexible solution for organizations to engage in the machine economy. By Partnering with Zühlke, we can explore new models for manufacturing, machine to machine communication, and real-time payments using IOTA.

That is the goal of the newly established partnership between the non-profit IOTA Foundation and Zühlke, a service provider for innovation projects across Europe, combining both business and technology expertise.

“Our collaboration aims to integrate IOTA Foundation’s distributed ledger technology platform, the Tangle, into Zühlke projects which will deliver innovation for manufacturing and machinery components,” said Jens von der Brelie, Director of the Solution Center Industrial and Consumer Solutions at Zühlke, responsible for machine-building industry initiatives. “This enables advances such as the creation of micro-payments functionality, opening the door to new models of machine usage and commercialization.”

The IOTA protocol’s feeless nature allows for constant and consistent transactions of both data and value between machines without costs escalating.

Microtransactions for large-scale industry

This is necessary for any large-scale industrial environment where machines must communicate, but also as a service model where all machinery usage immediately gets logged onto the Tangle, the underlying data structure of IOTA’s distributed ledger technology.

Specific machine-as-a-service models can be set to transact per meter, per minute, or other criteria on which the manufacturer and customer decide on for the occasion. Every step of this process will be recorded on the distributed ledger in an encrypted and tamper-proof manner.

“For the heavy equipment sector, this innovation will deliver a new revenue channel by allowing them to ‘rent’ their equipment to enterprises on the pay-per-use model when not in use,” said Dominik Schiener, co-founder and co-chair of the IOTA Foundation. “For enterprises, this pay-per-use innovation will allow them cost and time-effective access to critical heavy machinery.”

From Hamburg and Stuttgart to Hong Kong and Singapore

The partnership initially focuses on the German manufacturing market where IOTA Foundation is based and Zühlke has more offices than in any other country. Manufacturing is the biggest industry in Germany and is also the world’s third-largest exporter of manufactured goods.

Zühlke has also been expanding into the innovative Asian market in recent years and is eyeing opportunities there and in the UK to create projects with IOTA within manufacturing, and also in the fields of the supply chain, financial services, insurance, and health care.

Zühlke has been at the forefront of innovation since being founded in Switzerland in 1968 and has supported more than 10,000 projects by leveraging on cutting- edge technologies and bringing them to market with top-shelf strategic business advice. The company is now located in Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Hong Kong, Serbia, Switzerland, Singapore and the United Kingdom.

The many modern and ingenious companies, projects and start-ups that Zühlke provides its services to will, in the future, be able to also integrate IOTA’s technology as part of their solution.

“Zühlke has helped over 10,000 projects become reality with our focus on making smart ideas happen through project success,” said Jens von der Brelie. “With partners like the IOTA Foundation, we want to eliminate barriers for the establishment of machine-as-a-service models in which we see high potential for our clients.”

More news on this promising partnership will be published soon. Until then more information can be found on www.zuehlke.com and through IOTA’s Twitter account.