Making projects manageable

John Laslavic’s road to entrepreneurship started in 2001. While working for Siemens Canada, he had a major project fall apart because the many partners involved used computer software and processes that would not communicate. “We couldn’t standardize processes and workflows because everyone had their own custom systems,” he says.

The experience was so frustrating that Laslavic, a longtime engineer and consultant, quit his job and went about finding a way for disparate enterprise systems to interact. In 2016, he started Toronto-based Upchain , which provides a product lifecycle management platform that lets designers, engineers, salespeople and others share and collaborate on complex design data easily across the supply chain.

As well as speeding up work flow, he says, his AI-enabled technology helps factories become more efficient. “We can analyze engineering changes and then give information to robots (on the floor) on how to change their work.”

According to Laslavic, the platform has been gaining momentum with customers around the world, including OHB, a space system company, and ATS, a factory automation operation. Annual recurring revenues jumped by 621 per cent in 2018. “We have an advantage in a niche market that has more than 20 million engineers involved in bringing products to market,” he says. “There’s a blue ocean ahead of us.”