Black ForestSoftware
Factory Automation · Industry 4.0 · AI · Custom Software · Malaysia

Your factory automation
partner in Malaysia.

We're a software engineering team building factory automation for small and medium Malaysian manufacturers — Industry 4.0 platforms, workflow systems, AI-powered tools, and custom software built around how your team actually works.

We serve
Malaysian SMBs
Focus
Factory Automation · AI
Team size
Small, on purpose
Support
Mon–Fri · MYT · BM / EN
A glimpse of what we ship
01Every KPI your team stares at every morning — on one screen, updated live.
02AI panel calls out anomalies and suggests what to look at next — not a chatbot, a helper.
03Alerts route to the right person on WhatsApp before the next shift supervisor hears about it.
The shape of what we ship

From the floor to your phone.

Sensors on the floor feed an AI core. The AI core powers live dashboards, mobile apps your team actually opens, and WhatsApp alerts the right person gets at the right time.

Factory floorSensors → AIDashboardsMobileAlerts
What we do

Factory Automation. Industry 4.0. AI. Custom Software.

Four practice areas, one outcome: a factory that runs better tomorrow than today. We start narrow with whichever pillar hurts most, then grow from there.

/ Factory Automation
Automate the work that runs your factory.

Approvals, alerts, reports, scheduled jobs, integrations between systems — anything your team does every day, the software can do instead. Our flagship category, and the most common starting point for SMBs.

  • End-to-end workflow automation
  • Approvals routed automatically
  • Reports & alerts on schedule
  • MyInvois e-invoicing integration
Read more Factory Automation
/ Industry 4.0
See your factory, live — with OEE.

Real-time OEE dashboards, sensor integration, device monitoring — your production floor on one screen. We compute Availability × Performance × Quality per machine per shift, with downtime reasons captured in the moment.

  • Real-time OEE per line, per shift
  • Downtime tracking with reason codes
  • Device health & automatic alerts
  • Industry4WRD-friendly builds
Read more Industry 4.0
/ AI
AI that earns its keep.

Modern machine learning and large language models, applied where they actually save money — demand forecasting, predictive maintenance, anomaly detection, AI employees, and assistants your team can talk to.

  • ML demand forecasting
  • Predictive maintenance
  • Anomaly detection on sensor data
  • LLM assistants & document extraction
Read more AI Employees
/ Custom Software
Built around your business.

Web apps, mobile apps, internal tools, customer portals — designed with your team, for how your factory really works. Not an off-the-shelf ERP you bend yourself around.

  • Web platforms & customer portals
  • Android & iOS mobile apps
  • Back-office tools your team will open
  • Built to grow with your business
Read more Custom Software
AI, in real factories

AI that quietly earns its keep.

We use modern machine learning and large language models extensively — both inside the products we ship and inside our own engineering workshop. Our favourite kind of build right now: an AI employee that quietly does the work no one wants, every day.

Flagship
AI employees
Software workers that don't sleep — handling approvals, writing daily reports, watching dashboards, answering team questions. The headcount you can't hire, hired digitally.
Demand forecasting
ML models trained on your own movement history. Purchasing stops over-ordering; the warehouse stops running out.
Anomaly detection
The sensor data notices when something isn't right — drift, micro-stops, quality outliers — before a human would.
Document extraction
Pull structured data out of invoices, POs, delivery orders, and bills. Less typing, fewer re-keying mistakes.
Think of an AI employee as software with a job description. One we built reads every PO email at 7am and prefills the orders into the system before the team arrives. Another reconciles payments to invoices and only flags the ones that don't match. Boring work, gone — and the people who used to do it get to do better work instead.
AI employees · flagship offering

Meet the hires that don't sleep.

Think of an AI employee as software with a job description. Not a chatbot, not a generic assistant — a focused worker that does one job well, every day, without complaining or forgetting. Here are some we've built or are itching to build for SMB factories.

The Ops Clerk
Reads emails. Files orders.

Parses incoming PO emails — Outlook, Gmail, WhatsApp — and prefills orders into your system before the team arrives. Flags anything that doesn't look right. Three hours of morning admin, gone.

The Purchasing Assistant
Watches stock. Drafts POs.

Watches your stock + sales velocity, drafts reorder POs against your supplier list, queues them for one-click approval. Routine reorders stop being routine — they just happen.

The Report Writer
Pulls numbers. Writes the story.

Drafts your daily / weekly / monthly management reports. Pulls the numbers, writes the narrative around them, sends to the right people. Your morning meeting prep writes itself.

The Reconciliation Bot
Matches payments. Flags exceptions.

Matches incoming bank payments to outstanding invoices, only pings a human when something doesn't add up. 40 hours of monthly reconciliation — replaced by a Slack message that says "3 to look at."

The Floor Whisperer
Talk to your data.

An LLM layer over your factory data. "What was OEE on Line 2 last week?" "Which shifts had the most quality outliers?" "How much flour did we use yesterday?" — answers in plain English, with the chart attached.

Custom
Yours, custom-built
Tell us the job description.

If your team has a repetitive task that follows rules but eats hours, it can probably be an AI employee. We scope, build, and test in weeks — not quarters.

Cost-of-hire perspective: an AI employee is a one-off build + small monthly run cost. No EPF, no MC, no bonus, no notice period. Works 24/7 in MYT.Hire one
Made for SMBs

Right-sized for small and medium factories.

Most software vendors want enterprise deals. We don't. We like working with family-run manufacturers and growing SMEs — because that's where Industry 4.0 and automation actually change how a business feels day-to-day.

Small team, direct line
The person who takes your first call is the same one shipping your code. No account manager, no handoffs.
SMB-friendly pricing
We right-size every project for small and medium factories — start with one problem, grow the system as your business grows.
Industry4WRD friendly
We build in a way that's compatible with Malaysia's Industry4WRD assessment and can help you navigate grant paperwork.
We stay with you
A launch is chapter one. We stick around for the next chapters — new modules, new mobile apps, new integrations.
What we can build

A practical menu.

Everything below maps to our three practice areas. Most projects start with one or two of these and grow over time.

Industry 4.0
Smart dashboards
Live views of every line, every machine, from your desk or your phone.
Read more
Industry 4.0
OEE & downtime tracking
Know exactly how much your machines are producing, and why they're not.
Read more
Industry 4.0
Sensor & PLC integration
We plug into what you already have — Advantech, Siemens, custom gear.
Read more
Industry 4.0
Energy monitoring
Per-line kWh, demand peaks, reconciled against your TNB bill.
Read more
Automation
Workflow automation
Approvals, claims, POs — routed automatically with full audit trails.
Read more
Automation
Smart alerts
The right person notified the moment something needs attention.
Automation
Scheduled reports
Daily, weekly, monthly PDFs that arrive before you ask for them.
Automation
MyInvois e-invoicing
LHDN-compliant invoicing, automated inside your existing ordering flow.
Read more
AI
Demand forecasting (ML)
Trained on your own sales & movement history. Purchasing stops guessing.
Read more
AI
Predictive maintenance
Catch the failure signals before the line goes down.
Read more
AI
Document extraction
Turn invoices, POs, DOs into structured data — no re-keying.
Read more
AI
LLM assistants
Talk-to-your-data tools, with your own rules and data boundaries.
Read more
Custom Software
Ordering portals
B2B portals so hubs and customers order directly, with credit & stock checked.
Read more
Custom Software
Mobile apps for staff
Native Android & iOS, built for floor staff — not desk workers.
Custom Software
Inventory & stock systems
Numbers your team trusts, reorders that trigger themselves.
Custom Software
CMMS / maintenance
Preventive schedules, downtime-driven work orders, asset registry.
Read more
How we work

One step at a time — like good factories do.

Industry 4.0 and automation don't need a big-bang rollout. We start small, prove it works, and grow from there. Your business keeps running while we build.

01
A first conversation
Over a call, coffee, or a factory visit. We listen more than we pitch. No sales deck.
02
A right-sized plan
We scope down to what matters first — usually one line, one process, or one team — and propose a plan you can afford.
03
Build, together
Short weekly check-ins, working software you can touch early, and your team involved at every step.
04
Go live, then grow
Launch the first piece. Measure what changed. Decide what to automate next. Repeat.
Frequently asked

Things people ask before hiring us.

Plain answers, no fluff. If your question isn't here, drop us an email.

What does "factory automation" actually cover?

Anything that takes a manual or semi-manual factory process and replaces or supports it with software. That includes workflow automation (approvals, alerts, scheduled reports, MyInvois e-invoicing), Industry 4.0 / OEE platforms (sensor integration, real-time dashboards, downtime tracking), AI employees (software workers with specific job descriptions), and the custom software that sits underneath all of it. We treat factory automation as the umbrella category and work across all four sub-areas.

What is Industry 4.0 for a small or medium Malaysian factory?

Industry 4.0 is shorthand for connecting your factory floor to software so you can see what's happening in real time, catch problems early, and automate the routine work. For SMBs in Malaysia it usually starts with one production line — sensors, a live dashboard, and smart alerts — then grows from there. We build Industry4WRD-friendly versions that fit small and medium budgets.

What is an AI employee?

An AI employee is software with a specific job description. Examples we've built or scoped include: an Ops Clerk that reads incoming PO emails and prefills orders, a Purchasing Assistant that drafts reorder POs, a Reconciliation Bot that matches payments to invoices, and a Report Writer that drafts daily/weekly management reports. It works 24/7 in MYT, no EPF or MC, with a one-off build cost plus a small monthly run cost.

How long does a typical factory software project take?

Most of our SMB engagements ship a first usable version in 4–10 weeks. We start narrow — one line, one process, or one painful workflow — prove it works in production, then grow. Big-bang multi-quarter rollouts aren't our style.

Are you Industry4WRD-friendly?

Yes. We build in a way that's compatible with MIDA's Industry4WRD assessment criteria, and we can help you navigate the application paperwork if you're applying for grant funding.

Do you handle MyInvois / LHDN e-invoicing?

Yes. We integrate the LHDN MyInvois e-invoicing API directly into your existing ordering / invoicing flow so you don't need a separate compliance system.

What languages do you support on the platforms you build?

English and Bahasa Malaysia by default. We can add Simplified Chinese and Tamil for customer-facing surfaces if your end-users need them.

Where in Malaysia are you based?

We're a small Malaysian team. We work with clients across Peninsular Malaysia and East Malaysia, on-site visits where useful, otherwise remote with regular check-ins.

How much does an OEE dashboard or AI employee cost?

Project pricing depends on scope, but most of our SMB engagements start in the low- to mid-five figures MYR for the first build, then a small monthly run/support cost. We scope for a fixed price after a free discovery call so you know what you're committing to.

Thinking about Industry 4.0, automation, or AI?

Let's have a chat. Tell us where your factory is today — we'll tell you, honestly, what's worth automating first, where AI actually earns its keep, and what can wait.

Say hello
Black Forest
Software
est. Malaysia · software with a soul