AI Consulting & Implementation · DACH Region

AI for machine builders,
you can trust.

We build AI applications that are production-ready - a cleanly structured data foundation, embedded in real enterprise context.

End-to-End
Audit → Go-Live
100%
GDPR · EU AI Act-ready
In production at
Our position

Machine builders sit on vast amounts of valuable data - and can't use it.

In mechanical and plant engineering, quality is built over decades. It sits in service reports, in bills of materials, in operating manuals from 1998 - and in the heads of colleagues who simply know things.

So the knowledge exists. It is just rarely where the decision is being made: at the machine, in the quote, in the handover to the next generation.

That is exactly what we work on. Not a chatbot on top, but a data foundation underneath - so every answer comes from your own documents and you can see where it came from.

Where the industry gets stuck
Barriers to AI adoption, named by mechanical and plant engineering companies. Source: VDMA Software und Digitalisierung survey, 2025. Our approach starts at these four points - not at model selection.
45%
lack of staff capacity
44%
ROI not yet proven
42%
insufficient data quality
37%
shortage of skilled workers
Everyday work · 5 situations

Five situations we find in almost every company.

Whether special-purpose machinery, series production, plant engineering or contract manufacturing: the starting point differs less than you would think. Pick the situation closest to yours.

The answer exists. It just isn't where the technician is standing.

Today
  • Calling colleagues who are out on jobs themselves.
  • Documentation spread across drives, portals and folders.
  • When in doubt, experience decides - and it isn't always on site.
With a system
  • Ask in plain language, on a tablet or over the phone.
  • Answer with a source: document, section, revision.
  • Where the data is unclear, the system says so - instead of guessing.

Fewer callbacks to head office, more time at the machine.

Our approach
4 phases · one clear outcome per phase

Every phase ends with a concrete result your team can build on.

Four clear phases, each with a deliverable your team builds on. After go-live, your team takes over - clean handoff, not dependency.

01
Phase 01

Taking stock

On site: the state of your data, your systems and your workflows. The result is a solid basis for a decision - including when it argues against a project.

Data audit · Use-case matrix · Effort estimate
02
Phase 02

First case in live operation

One use case with your data in your environment. Measured from the first week, not only at the final presentation.

Running system · Metrics · Risk report
03
Phase 03

Live operation

Connected to ERP, PLM, DMS and the service portal. Rights, logging and monitoring are part of it.

Integration · Access control · Monitoring
04
Phase 04

Handover

Your team operates and maintains the system itself. We stay reachable - we are just no longer necessary.

Training · Runbook · Documentation
What sets us apart

Most AI projects don't fail because of technology - they fail because of poor data quality and missing evaluation.

We build benchmarking and quality measurement in from day one. So you always know how well the system really performs - not just whether it responds.

Services
S1 - S2 - S3

Three services. Building on each other. Each available on its own.

S1
The starting point.

Assessment & roadmap

For companies that know AI is relevant - but not yet which case pays off and what is missing from the data foundation.

  • .01
    Data audit
    We look at what actually exists: drawing archive, service reports, bills of materials, ERP and PLM exports. The result is a written report, not a presentation.
  • .02
    Evaluating use cases
    Facilitated, with service, sales, engineering and IT at the table. Assessed by value, data availability and effort - and we say what we do not recommend.
  • .03
    Business case
    Decision-ready for management and shareholders: effort, value, make-or-buy, sequence.
S2
Our core business.

Knowledge systems & AI applications

Systems that turn your documentation, your drawings and your history into something you can query - in the office, on the shop floor and at the customer site.

  • .01
    Answers from your documentation
    Operating manuals, service reports, standards, framework agreements. Every answer with a source and revision. Access rights as they work in your company.
  • .02
    Spare part identification
    A photo or serial number instead of email back-and-forth: matched against the bill of materials and machine record, with installation position and availability.
  • .03
    Making legacy drawings usable
    Paper and scanned drawings are parsed and made searchable by part, standard and material. On your hardware, if that is what it takes.
  • .04
    Integration with your systems
    ERP, PLM, DMS, service portal, Teams. Not a silo alongside your existing IT, but a component within it.
S3
Automation with exceptions.

Processes that understand paper

Workflows that have so far failed on unstructured input - enquiries, drawings, inspection records, complaints.

  • .01
    Enquiry to quote
    Costing support for special-purpose machinery based on comparable projects: hours, material, change orders. The estimator decides, the system justifies.
  • .02
    Technical documentation & translation
    Changes find their documents. Translation suggestions in your terminology. Sign-off stays with the documentation team.
  • .03
    CE & conformity
    Assemble the documents, flag the gaps, keep evidence verifiable - including classification under the EU AI Act.
  • .04
    Service triage
    Incoming reports are understood, prioritised and routed. Escalation to a human is part of the flow, not the exception.
Why codestra

Three ways companies try. Why none of them is enough.

Not sufficient

Build in-house.

Internal teams are often too close to day-to-day operations to consistently implement clean data pipelines, quality assurance, monitoring, and access control.

Our answer

We take no shortcuts from day one.

Years of hands-on project experience - the shortcuts that seem tempting internally end up being expensive later.

Not sufficient

Strategy without implementation.

A roadmap is valuable - but only once someone consolidates the data, builds the system, and hands it over to operations. That's the gap we work in, often hand in hand with strategy partners.

Our answer

We build what the strategy promises.

We know the pitfalls between concept and production - and we deliver the implementation that turns concept decks into real impact.

Not sufficient

Wait and see.

The question isn't whether AI will become relevant, but who builds a reliable data foundation first that others can't catch up to.

Our answer

Every quarter counts.

Every quarter without a structured AI foundation is a quarter of advantage for your competitors.

Compliance

Not an add-on. Standard.

Every system we build is GDPR-compliant and EU AI Act-ready. Governance is built into the data layer, not around it - saving your IT team rework later.

GDPR
Compliant per Art. 5, 25, 32. Data processing in EU region, documented audit trail.
✓ ready
EU AI Act
Categorization and risk assessment from day one. Documentation ready for high-risk classification.
✓ ready
FAQ
Click to expand

Asked directly. Answered without detours.

How do you comply with GDPR and the EU AI Act - and what role do we vs. you take on?+
Typically you are the deployer of the AI system, and we act as data processor and provider of the underlying components. The role split under the EU AI Act and GDPR is fixed contractually: data processing agreement under Art. 28 GDPR, technical documentation aligned with Annex XII of the AI Act, transparent list of all sub-processors. Our RAG architecture follows the German DSK guidance on RAG from October 2025.
Where is our data processed and which models do you use?+
Hosting in your own Azure, AWS, or GCP tenancy in an EU region, or fully on-premise. We are model-agnostic and choose per use case between OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral, Llama, or custom fine-tunes - swapping models after go-live is a configuration change, not a re-implementation project. Your data does not flow back into model providers' training sets, secured both contractually and technically.
How do you prevent hallucinations - and how do we know the system actually works?+
Every answer is traced back to concrete sources; without sufficient evidence the system refuses to answer rather than guess. Before every release, an automated evaluation suite runs against a golden dataset of your real questions - measuring faithfulness, citation accuracy, answer relevance, and more. In production we continuously monitor the same metrics, plus drift in the data base and user behavior.
How does the system integrate with M365, SharePoint, Confluence, SAP - and are permissions respected?+
Standard connectors for Microsoft Graph, SharePoint, Confluence, SAP, and common databases; anything else we wire up via REST or SQL. Permissions are checked against the source system at query time - users only see content they would have access to in the original system. Changes to the data base flow into the index via delta sync or webhook.
Let's talk

30 minutes. One specific topic. After that, you'll know if it's a fit.

No sales funnel. You speak directly with someone who has built systems - not an account manager.

Cologne
Gleueler Straße 81 50931 Cologne, Germany
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