In a factory, IT trouble is felt first at the goods-out bay, not at a desk. Production orders fail to reach the press, labels come out in a layout your car-industry customer rejects, or the box hosting Pantheon or SAP Business One goes silent. Output stops, a truck booked for Germany idles in the yard and contractual late fees begin to accrue. Apply looks after the plant's servers, ERP and network through an encrypted connection, and draws a firm line between office computers and shop-floor equipment. Add our 24/7 support service and the night crew has backup too. Nobody from Apply visits your premises; most of what needs doing is settings and software, and that travels perfectly well down the wire.
We own configuration, servers, data exchange between applications and protection. Physical wiring, control panels and terminals beside the machines remain with your maintenance crew or electrical contractor; they work from written procedures we prepare, and an Apply engineer can join on video whenever useful.
We divide the plant network into zones and write and roll out the firewall policy from a distance, so each PLC, operator panel or line PC reaches only what it truly needs. Documentation is structured along IEC 62443 lines and ready to hand over in customer audits or attach to security surveys from overseas buyers.
Whether you run Pantheon, SAP Business One, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central or Odoo, on site or hosted, Apply handles the host, the SQL instance, backups, patches and permissions. Downtime is planned hand in hand with your ERP consultant and never collides with closing the books, the annual inventory count or the evening before a big dispatch.
Production orders travel to the MES or to line-side data terminals; good parts, rejects and material consumption travel back. We set up those interfaces and keep watch over them, ending the ritual of re-keying a handwritten shift report. Consider a furniture producer in the Savinja valley that records saw and edge-bander stoppages in two different places: after integration, stoppage times arrive directly from the terminal.
Switches, firewalls, hosts and scheduled backups report their health continuously. Should the link to the dispatch warehouse fail at 2:40 a.m., an alarm is raised instantly. Customers with 24/7 support have an engineer on call who usually knows about the fault before the shift lead does and has begun troubleshooting.
Technicians from an Italian or German equipment maker should be able to service their machine, not browse the payroll share. Instead of some screen-sharing utility installed years back and left running, we provide a connection that opens into one segment only, records the session and shuts automatically once the agreed window ends.
Under 24/7 support, a ticket opened at 3 a.m., on a Saturday or during a holiday run is picked up just like one at midday, with reaction times fixed by contract. Without that add-on we work Monday to Friday, 9:00-17:00 Central European Time. Which lines merit overnight cover is a decision we make with you.
Anything that touches the production network is booked into scheduled downtime or maintenance days. No setting is altered while a line is filling an order.
We scan connected devices, read the firewall policy and list everything in the ERP estate, then ask your operations manager one key question: which system cannot afford even ten minutes offline?
The design shows how office and plant networks will be split, which flows are allowed, which devices need quarantining at once and the order of work, aligned to your maintenance schedule.
We start with one hall or one line and move on from there. All settings change remotely; if a patch lead has to be moved, your technician handles it and we check the result live.
Ongoing monitoring, patching inside agreed slots, regular checks of rules and equipment-vendor logins, and a support model built around your rota.
Malware tends to arrive through a buyer's mailbox, not through a lathe. So splitting office and plant networks is the most valuable single measure a manufacturer can take. Take an injection moulding firm of 90 people in Novo mesto that makes plastic parts for carmakers. Someone in procurement opens a bogus delivery note and their PC is compromised. If zone rules are strict, the infection most likely halts at the border: presses keep cycling, only office machines are rebuilt from backup and nothing delays the customer's call-off.
Gladly. Automotive and other industrial buyers ask more and more about segmentation, backup, access control and incident handling, and some request TISAX assessment results. We review the survey with you, identify what is already in place and close what is missing. Comprehensive NIS2 and ZInfV-1 preparation has its own page, and your lawyer can confirm whether the Act applies to you directly.
No. Ladder logic, recipes and commissioning stay with the equipment supplier or your controls engineers. Our remit covers the network, permissions, servers, ERP, interfaces and their protection. That demarcation is documented, so nobody hesitates over whom to contact when a fault appears.
Most tasks are software and settings, and those need nothing more than a secure tunnel. The occasional physical job, like replacing a failed switch or moving a cable, is handled by your maintenance staff following exact instructions with our engineer on a video call. That frequently beats waiting for a technician stuck in motorway traffic.
Such PCs generally cannot be upgraded because the equipment maker's software is tied to an older operating system. The fix is containment: a dedicated segment, no route to the internet, only the connections the machine actually uses, USB ports disabled and a known-good disk image on file. That keeps them safe until the supplier releases a supported build.
It works the other way round: responsibilities become sharper. The consultant handles modules, reports, settings and teaching users; Apply handles the platform below, from host and SQL to backup, speed and accounts. Once this is written down, every upgrade has one named party readying the servers and another applying the new version.
We look after the plumbing. Apply monitors the services through which your ERP reaches your chosen e-invoice exchange or EDI provider and diagnoses the cause when transmission stalls at dispatch. We are not an e-invoice exchange provider and we do not issue digital certificates; we simply cooperate with whichever providers you use today.
Pricing runs from €450 per month plus VAT for Start (up to 10 users), through €990 per month plus VAT for Business, to €1,990 per month plus VAT and upwards for Premium. Anything outside your plan is charged at €50 per hour plus VAT, estimated in advance. Which plan suits you depends mainly on user numbers, the hours that need covering and how quickly your production needs a response.
Give us a short outline of your production, ERP and shift rota. Within one working day we will suggest where segmentation should begin.
Enquiry received
An engineer will write back no later than the following working day. Faults that leave your staff unable to work are always looked at first.
No town by that name here. Check the letters, or settle for the nearest larger place. Our engineers work only over the internet, so Kočevje and Koper get precisely the same treatment.
