Excogito s.r.l.: Building Industrial MES Systems Faster and Smarter with Jmix
50%
Development time reduced
50%
Operational costs
reduced
50%
System performance boost
Customer
Excogito s.r.l. is an Italian software house specializing in Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) for demanding industrial sectors, including paper production, pharmaceuticals, and medical equipment. The company serves large enterprises with workforces ranging from 100 to 10,000 employees.
Excogito’s product follows a standard framework model: a robust core platform that is deeply customized for each client to match their established workflows and operational practices. The company’s guiding philosophy is to minimize disruption - enabling organizations to adopt powerful new technology while preserving the routines their teams already rely on.
The Challenge
As industrial digitalization accelerated, Excogito faced growing pressure to deliver faster, more secure, and more scalable software. Their existing foundation - Java Swing desktop applications - had become a bottleneck on multiple fronts:
- Operational inefficiencies from outdated architecture
- High development costs driven by lengthy build cycles
- Slow time-to-market that made it difficult to respond to client demands
- Limited scalability for growing enterprise deployments
- Non-compliance with modern security standards required by regulated industries
The conclusion was clear: development times and the costs they generated were becoming unsustainable. A fundamentally new approach was required.
Why Jmix
Before adopting Jmix, Excogito evaluated OpenXava Platform as an alternative. While OpenXava was considered around 2019 for a smaller project, it fell short in key areas: its ecosystem and UI were too basic, and critically it was not based on Spring, limiting integration possibilities.
Jmix offered a compelling contrast. The team selected it for the following reasons:
- Fast development time - dramatically reducing build cycles
- Lower development and maintenance costs
- Strong integration capabilities, powered by the Spring Boot foundation
- Flexibility and deep customization options
- Ease of use for developers already familiar with Java
- Pre-built add-ons including Reports, REST API, Dashboards, and Email
- Open-source advantage with an active community
Implementation & Solution
Excogito used Jmix to build and evolve RDMES - their flagship MES platform. The project involved a team of 5 people, with 3 full-stack Jmix developers, 1 business analyst, and 1 project manager.
Key Features Implemented
- Reporting & Dashboards for operational visibility across production lines
- User Role & Access Control for secure, segmented access in regulated environments
- Custom Data Processing & Analytics tailored to industrial workflows
- ERP integration with SAP, AS400, Zucchetti, and Dylog Open Manager
- Industrial automation connectivity via a custom-built Spring Boot + Apache Camel layer ("Orchestrator") interfacing with Siemens PLCs (OPC UA, S7-protocol, Modbus TCP) and DCS systems from Valmet and ABB
Result
Switching to Jmix produced measurable improvements across the board:
- Development time cut by 50% - enabling faster delivery of client customizations
- Operational costs reduced by 50% - through faster development cycles and reusable components
- System performance and efficiency doubled, directly improving production floor operations
- High time-to-market responsiveness for new client feature requests
Customers find the solution robust and modern. They appreciate the role management features and the integration with automation.
Fulvio Superga, CEO, Excogito s.r.l.
Future Plans
Excogito has an active roadmap for expanding their Jmix-powered platform:
- Automated testing with JUnit to improve reliability and release confidence
- AI-powered features using Spring AI to build custom agents and a chatbot interface for the MES platform
Final Thoughts
Excogito’s journey from legacy Java Swing applications to a modern, cloud-ready MES platform illustrates the transformative impact Jmix can have on a focused software house. By halving costs and development time while doubling system performance, Jmix has become the foundation of Excogito’s product strategy - not just a tool, but a long-term competitive asset.
