How a university project became a driver of innovation – and why AI at encoway is more than just a trend
Have you already discovered our new page about the encoway LAB? From now on, we’ll be sharing regular insights into the digital solutions our software teams are developing today for the industry of tomorrow. At the encoway LAB, we collaborate closely with customers, partners, universities, and start-ups to create innovative digital tools for the industrial sector. This open innovation work isn’t a side project for us – it’s been part of our DNA since day one. And nowhere is that more evident than in a topic that has accompanied encoway from its founding days to today’s innovation lab: Artificial Intelligence.
How it all began: Our foundation in AI
The story of encoway GmbH didn’t start with a business plan – it started with an AI project. In the mid-1990s, Lenze SE was looking for a digital solution to configure its gear motors. The goal was ambitious: not just configuring individual motors, but entire drive systems with numerous complex components. The software systems available at the time quickly reached their limits – something entirely new was needed.
Lenze found what it was looking for at the Center for Computing Technologies (TZI) at the University of Bremen. There, researchers were working on knowledge-based configuration, intelligent software systems – and artificial intelligence. However, AI back then meant something very different than it does today. Early AI systems were symbolic and rule-based: constraint networks, ontologies, inheritance logic – technologies that aimed to translate human thinking into structured logic.
A team at TZI combined these approaches and developed the “Drive Solution Designer” – a completely new configuration solution. In doing so, they laid the foundation not only for an innovative software product, but also for the Europe-wide market leader in CPQ and product configuration that encoway is today.
AI today – Software innovation in the encoway LAB
Over the past five years, AI technologies have evolved at breathtaking speed. What began with constraint networks has now become generative AI and large language models – and who knows what’s next? We continue to work intensively with AI and apply it wherever it brings real value to our CPQ-solutions.
At the encoway LAB, we live this ambition every day: bringing together people from industry, research, and software development to solve real problems and quickly turn new technologies into practical solutions. For us, innovation means mastering complexity, sharing knowledge, and growing together.
Software innovations from the encoway LAB
Our AI and digital solutions are already in use and transforming how companies think and grow:
Product-to-Market
Our first AI-powered solution for strategically managing product variety. It analyzes your portfolio, identifies low-margin variants, and delivers data-driven recommendations for profitable sales.
Explainable Guided Selling
An AI-based product finder that turns technical data into interactive customer dialogues – and transparently explains how the AI arrives at its recommendations.
Knowledge Pilot
A chatbot with a company-specific knowledge base that provides employees with fast, reliable answers – and continuously grows as your internal knowledge hub.
BOQ-Importer
Our new AI tool for processing specifications – fully automated from text recognition to proposal generation.
Translation ++ KI
A new feature in CPQ Studio that automatically translates product data directly within the system – context-aware and tailored to your company’s terminology.
Curious to learn more?
If you’d like to explore our software innovations and find your personal contact for each project, visit the new overview page for the encoway LAB.