36kR learned that industrial software developer “Zhiyan Industrial soft” (former Zhiyan Hui) has recently completed tens of millions of yuan Pre-A round of financing, this round of financing led by Orient wealth, Westlake Venture Capital and old shareholder Hua 汯 capital with investment, Canglan Capital as the exclusive financial adviser for this round of financing. This round of financing will be used for product development and team building.

The company, which started operations in 2022, provides R&D management support software for advanced manufacturing areas such as aerospace and medical devices, including process modeling engines and navigation tools, as well as product lifecycle management (PLM). Product Lifecycle Management and Quality Management System (QMS) toolset.

Research and development in the field of advanced manufacturing has the characteristics of long process, complex process, vertical supply chain, and high demand for data and process management, and needs to achieve traceability and backtracking of the whole process of research and development. Taking aircraft research and development as an example, there are many links from putting forward the concept to obtaining the airworthiness qualification, and the requirements of each link have corresponding standards, if not strictly implemented, it may face rework, resulting in a waste of resources.

However, compared with Product Data Management tools (PDM) that connect R&D and manufacturing, the supply of R&D tools such as PLM and QMS is still insufficient, and the market penetration rate needs to be improved. At present, the domestic market share is mainly occupied by international manufacturers such as Siemens, Dassault, and PTC, and domestic products are mostly focused on general data management in medium-low complexity or large-scale replication scenarios.

PDM and PLM are different

In view of the above situation, the company plans to enter the market from the segments represented by aerospace, and gradually expand to the main application areas of PLM and QMS such as automobile transportation and industrial equipment.

Our software team has been working in the field of advanced manufacturing for many years, with experience in aerospace, automotive and industrial equipment. Founder Wu Qiong has participated in the research and development and management of several key aircraft models, and has led the whole process and life cycle development of the core avionics system and IMA platform products for C919 domestic large aircraft.

“[Research and development management tools] are basic but do not provide more industry knowledge or match best practices to the development process.” Based on past experience in complex product development, Wu believes that there is still a lot of room for improvement in existing R&D management tools.

In this regard, Zhiresearch soft integration team experience, providing process modeling engine and navigation tool software, as well as PLM, QMS open R & D management tool set “AirEdge”. At the same time, related products can access the existing digital ecology of customers, and realize the switch of product formats with domestic and foreign manufacturers.

Specifically, the process modeling engine and navigation tool can combine industry expertise, practice and relevant regulatory standards to sort out the effectiveness of different process operations, determine whether each operation is in place, and then connect many operations to discover the optimal path of the research and development process. “We want to provide tools for development, not for archiving after the fact.” “Said Wu Qiong.

Based on this, AirEdge is able to navigate customers’ R&D operations, prompting them to complete required actions and target tasks, etc., thereby reducing R&D cycles, reducing costs, responding quickly to market demands, and ultimately increasing profits. In addition, in the specific research and development process, AirEdge can dynamically plan the research and development process according to the actual operation of product development, optimize the allocation of resources, and ensure the optimal solution.

In terms of market expansion, Zhiyan Industrial Soft has deployed head customers in the aviation field, and plans to enter the automotive industry, medical and other scenarios. Since the official commercialization in 2023, the sales of Zhiyan’s soft products have reached nearly 10 million yuan.

Investor perspective

Zheng Ge, Executive general Manager of Oriental Wealth, said: Oriental Wealth has long been concerned about the development of domestic industrial software and investment opportunities. We focus on providing R&D and design toolsets and service platforms for advanced manufacturing industries, and provide domestic alternatives for enterprises. Industrial software itself is the product of industrial technology software, is the best “container” of industrial knowledge, the company’s PLM & QMS products in the optimization of R & D production collaboration at the same time, well the industry know-how package into the software, for advanced manufacturing continued to improve efficiency and reduce costs. Zhiyan Software team has scarce and comprehensive industry experience, and we are looking forward to providing better software products for the development of advanced manufacturing in China.

Shen Lifen, chairman of Xihu Venture Capital, said: With its in-depth understanding of the industry and good research and development capabilities, Zhiyan Industrial Soft provides a single product or a one-stop R & D design tool set for compliance development of advanced manufacturing industries such as aerospace with PLM&QMS products. Westlake Venture Capital will continue to fully assist industrial software enterprises such as Zhiyan Industrial Software in terms of capital, policy and industry. We look forward to gaining a leading position in the domestic industrial software market.