Halocline History

About the com­pa­ny Halocline 

Halo­cli­ne GmbH & Co. KG is a soft­ware start­up who­se VR edi­tor solu­ti­on of the same name enables the crea­ti­on of a rea­li­stic vir­tu­al fac­to­ry. The natu­ral inter­ac­tion in VR makes it pos­si­ble to incor­po­ra­te know­ledge from pro­duc­tion expe­ri­ence into the work with digi­tal data. Three pro­duct stages sup­port users: Halo­cli­ne Assem­bly, Halo­cli­ne Lay­out and Halo­cli­ne Per­for­mance offer pro­duct assem­bly, lay­out plan­ning and pro­cess eva­lua­ti­on in the digi­tal twin of the fac­to­ry. Halo­cli­ne thus pro­vi­des an ans­wer to the gro­wing chall­enge of the indus­try and enables the digi­tal twin of pro­duc­tion to be kept up-to-date in the long term.
At the loca­ti­on Osna­brueck in Ger­ma­ny, Halo­cli­ne GmbH & Co. KG employs almost 40 employees.

New brand identity since November 2020: The Embodied Engineering suite becomes Halocline

The exis­ting pro­ducts Box­plan and Fores­ta­ge as well as the exten­si­on Ergo­­VR-Beta will beco­me an inte­gra­ted pro­duct: Halocline. 

From the begin­ning, we have con­cen­tra­ted on a com­mon goal in pro­duct deve­lo­p­ment: With the help of vir­tu­al rea­li­ty, Halo­cli­ne aims to revo­lu­tio­ni­ze pro­duc­tion plan­ning and make it tan­gi­ble. The reasons for the mer­ger of the alre­a­dy estab­lished pro­ducts Box­plan and Fores­ta­ge are brief­ly sum­ma­ri­zed below:

We have pushed the mer­ging of the func­tions of Box­plan and Fores­ta­ge during the enti­re deve­lo­p­ment peri­od over the last three years. With the rese­arch pro­ject Ergo­VR, which came to an end in Octo­ber 2020, a fur­ther, third sub-stage of pro­duc­tion and assem­bly plan­ning was added: From pro­to­ty­pe con­s­truc­tion to lay­out plan­ning to pro­cess ana­ly­sis, the­re are many rela­ted tasks that we want to com­pre­hen­si­ve­ly map with Halo­cli­ne from now on. The­r­e­fo­re, we deci­ded to mer­ge the pro­ducts into an eco­sys­tem in release 2020.2.

In order to pro­vi­de our cus­to­mers with a cen­tral access to the vir­tu­al fac­to­ry, we are mer­ging our exis­ting pro­ducts and the exten­si­on Ergo­­VR-Beta. Alt­hough we con­ti­nue to rely on spe­cia­li­zed inter­faces in our pro­duct stage, we are inte­gra­ting the gene­ra­ted and used data. For this pur­po­se, we are crea­ting a cen­tral inter­face and empha­si­zing the coher­ent use with a com­mon brand.

We offer the users a uni­form data manage­ment as well as a com­pre­hen­si­ve solu­ti­on for the chal­lenges in pro­duc­tion and assem­bly plan­ning. All exis­ting func­tions from Box­plan, Fores­ta­ge and Ergo­VR are found in the three clo­se­ly rela­ted pro­duct stages Halo­cli­ne Assem­bly, Halo­cli­ne Lay­out and Halo­cli­ne Performance.

The figu­re below shows the chan­ges at a glance:

Foundation in spring 2020: Salt and Pepper Software becomes Halocline

SALT AND PEPPER Soft­ware GmbH & Co. KG beca­me two com­pa­nies: Halo­cli­ne and slashwhy.

In May 2020 the two sis­ter com­pa­nies star­ted their busi­ness ope­ra­ti­ons as suc­ces­sor com­pa­nies of SALT AND PEPPER Soft­ware GmbH & Co. KG. This chan­ge took place in the cour­se of a manage­ment buy­out (MBO) based on a stra­te­gic rea­lignment of the soft­ware com­pa­ny and the SALT AND PEPPER Group. The team of Halo­cli­ne GmbH & Co. KG pre­vious­ly work­ed as a pro­duct deve­lo­p­ment depart­ment under the flag of SALT AND PEPPER Soft­ware. While Halo­cli­ne as an inde­pen­dent com­pa­ny focu­ses enti­re­ly on the deve­lo­p­ment and mar­ke­ting of vir­tu­al rea­li­ty soft­ware pro­ducts, slashwhy GmbH & Co. KG is acti­ve in the area of indi­vi­du­al deve­lo­p­ment of user-cen­­­te­­red soft­ware appli­ca­ti­ons. By sepa­ra­ting the pro­duct and indi­vi­du­al deve­lo­p­ment depart­ments, which were pre­vious­ly ope­ra­ting under one roof, a clear mar­ket focus of the indi­vi­du­al com­pa­nies beca­me possible.