Despite this, Knorr-Bremse announced back in June last year that it had acquired a majority stake in the Spanish mobility services provider Cojali. Who is Cojali and what is the company’s position in the market?
Alexander Wagner: Cojali is one of the world’s leading suppliers of workshop equipment, and specifically in the field of commercial and special vehicles. It is a Spanish company with a successful history spanning more than 30 years, offering customers not only workshop equipment in the form of hardware and software, but also extensive technical support.
How financially sound is Cojali and how does the digital diagnostics provider fit into Knorr-Bremse’s portfolio?
Alexander Wagner: Cojali generated sales of around €90 million in 2022 and achieved low double-digit growth in recent years. In the medium term, we are convinced that the company will reach sales in the hundreds of millions and continue to grow. In terms of the portfolio, Cojali’s flagship is diagnostics. The company is one of the leading providers in this area. The Jaltest Diagnostics multi-brand diagnostic system covers the requirements of an entire commercial vehicle, both the tractor and the trailer, regardless of the vehicle manufacturer’s brand. Moreover, diagnostics is of course the foundation when it comes to big data analysis. It makes it possible to analyze which faults occur on which vehicle in which time period as well as which products are affected by the fault. This gives us a crucial basis for offering even more solutions in the area of digitalization in the future.
Given the know-how of Cojali, will Knorr-Bremse be offering predictive maintenance solutions in the future?
Alexander Wagner: We are currently talking about condition-based maintenance in the context of remote diagnostics. This involves the vehicle reporting faults that we can already cluster according to their urgency using fault codes. The data we generate with Jaltest Diagnostics will then help us to further expand the area of predictive maintenance.
At the same time, Knorr-Bremse already offers NEO, an established workshop diagnostics system. What are the differences between the two diagnostic systems?
Alexander Wagner: The NEO workshop diagnostics solution focuses on the Knorr-Bremse portfolio and therefore also offers fault-guided diagnostics for systems developed by Knorr-Bremse. Jaltest Diagnostics, on the other hand, works across brands and vehicles. As a result, the two system solutions complement rather than compete with each other. We are currently working on an integrated solution with diagnostic hardware for these two diagnostic worlds.
So NEO will not be discontinued?
Alexander Wagner: No, it will remain available to workshops as a module for the Jaltest Diagnostics solution. NEO will then be provided as a software solution, developed further and run on Jaltest devices. NEO will also be available to download for the existing Jaltest end devices under a licensing model. However, the ongoing development of NEO will then be pursued jointly by the two platform partners.