CUSTOMER CASE STUDY
WAVE Trockensysteme: Freeze dryer control, reinvented.
How WAVE replaced their traditional PLC stack with Interkey Brain on their first production machine — and cut commissioning from 12 weeks to 2.
ABOUT WAVE
WAVE Trockensysteme GmbH
WAVE designs and builds industrial freeze dryers for pharmaceutical, food, and biotech customers across Europe. Each machine is custom-engineered for specific product requirements — vaccines, biologicals, high-value food products. Precision is not optional.
Company facts
- Founded
- 2018
- Location
- Austria
- Industry
- Industrial freeze drying / lyophilization
- Typical machine
- 200–2000 L chamber volume
- Customers
- Pharma, food, biotech
THE PROBLEM
Traditional PLC programming is a bottleneck.
12-week average commissioning per machine
3 different vendor tools for PLC, HMI, SCADA
Specialized PLC programmer needed for every custom recipe
Every recipe change required a re-validation cycle
Alarms and operator screens drawn by hand in AutoCAD
No way to remotely monitor customer machines
“Every new machine meant three months of PLC programming before we could even start commissioning. We knew the future had to look different.”
THE SOLUTION
One cabinet. Every function. Weeks instead of months.
What was replaced
- ✕Siemens S7-1500 + TIA Portal
- ✕WinCC SCADA
- ✕HMI touch panel (separate vendor)
- ✕Manual wiring diagrams
- ✕Manual alarm configuration
- ✕External PID tuning tools
- ✕Custom Python scripts for recipe management
What Brain delivered
- ✓Interkey Brain Pro cabinet (220 I/O)
- ✓Brain AI generated all PLC code from requirements
- ✓HMI Builder created operator screens in 2 days
- ✓Auto-generated wiring diagrams
- ✓Alarm tables created by the AI agent
- ✓Brain Vision monitors product temperature probes
- ✓Brain Studio Process Designer handles recipes natively
MACHINE SPECIFICATIONS
WAVE Pilot 500 — deployed specs.
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Chamber volume | 500 L |
| Shelf count | 8 |
| Temperature range | −60°C to +60°C |
| Vacuum pressure | 0.01 mbar minimum |
| RTD channels in use | 16 (4 per shelf + 4 reference) |
| SSR outputs | 16 (shelf heaters + condenser) |
| Digital I/O | 24 (valves, interlocks, vacuum gauges) |
| Cameras | 2 (product observation + vacuum pump inspection) |
| Process recipes | 12 pre-loaded |
THE OUTCOME
Measured impact.
“Brain is changing our complete approach to machine programming. We have less cost and so much more to offer to the customer!”
DEPLOYED CONFIGURATION
How Brain fits into a WAVE machine.
Physical layer
- Brain Pro cabinet
- 2× Sense Cameras
I/O modules
- 4× WPRTD (64 RTD channels)
- 2× WPIO (32 DI + 32 DO)
- 1× WPPWR + 4× WPPWS (16 SSR)
Operating system
- Brain OS
- WAVE-custom recipe engine
Intelligence
- Brain AI
- Local LLM via BYOK to their Ollama server
Computer vision
- Product temperature validation
- Vacuum pump visual check
Autonomous monitoring
- Watchdog active
- Responder active (24/7)
COMMERCIAL TERMS
What the deal looks like.
Compared to €52,000+ for the previous stack. WAVE retains a perpetual license on Brain Pro.
WHAT’S NEXT
From pilot to fleet.
Austrian rollout
Deploy to 3 more customer machines in Austria.
EU fleet expansion
Expand to 10 cabinets across EU customers, use Brain Fleet for centralized monitoring.
OEM licensing
Custom Brain plugins for WAVE-specific lyophilization cycles, licensed to other OEM freeze-dryer manufacturers.
“We’re now in conversations with three other freeze-dryer OEMs who want to license our Brain plugins. What started as a way to save time on our own machines became a new product line.”