At electronica 2026, Lucy Barnard caught up with Jason Schick, Vice President of Partnerships and Revenue Operations at TDK SensEI, on the DigiKey stand. They discussed how manufacturers can use AI to improve machine health and predictive maintenance – without having to overhaul their existing infrastructure – and the new edgeRX starter kit now available through DigiKey.
A Physical AI company
Schick leads TDK SensEI’s global partnership strategy, where he helps customers navigate the industrial AI space, while making sure internal stakeholders across product and customer success are supported.
The company itself has its name derived from ‘sensor Edge intelligence’ and is “at its core a Physical AI company.” Schick said that the company’s strength comes from its relationship with parent company TDK: “We have a hardware component, we have a software component, and we have an AI component … We’re using sensors that TDK produces with TDK SensEI’s software and AI technology, and we’re meshing those items together.”
At the show, TDK SensEI exhibited its full platform, which includes the edgeRX machine health product line, the edgeRX Vision quality inspection line, and AI agents due to come online for edgeRX.
Tackling manufacturers’ biggest challenges
According to Schick, today’s manufacturers are under pressure from several directions at once. Customers demanding very high product quality, the need for tight cost control, and ongoing shortages of skilled labour. edgeRX addresses this from a machine health standpoint, combining TDK sensing technology with AI modelling to predict failures and lower costs, while edgeRX Vision focuses on improving product quality.
Crucially, neither requires a rip-and-replace approach. “That’s a common misconception,” said Schick. “With our product lines especially, they’re meant to attach and be secondary to your existing manufacturing assets. So there is no need to redo your manufacturing lines to bring in all new assets.” edgeRX sensors attach directly to existing machines, while edgeRX Vision bolts on to an existing automated optical inspection (AOI) or camera system. “We want to make it as low-cost, low-touch as possible for our manufacturing customers.”
What sets it apart
With no shortage of predictive maintenance solutions on the show floor, Schick said there were three differentiators.
The first is data quality and true Edge AI. TDK’s sensing technology captures physical data such as vibration, heat signatures, motor movement, and acoustics, and the AI models are embedded directly on the sensor. “It lives right on the edge,” he explained, where it avoids the latency issues of models that run in the Cloud or on an on-premises server. The second is that everything – sensor, software, and AI models – is produced in-house by TDK and TDK SensEI. The third is end-to-end coverage of the factory floor, from machine health with edgeRX to product quality with edgeRX Vision.
How the platform works
Once an edgeRX sensor is fixed to an asset, it immediately starts collecting data, with nothing further required from the customer. After around 2,000 data points, which is roughly two to three weeks, an AI model is built in the Cloud and deployed back down to the sensor, where it looks for anomalies and tracks asset health over time. Through the user interface, intelligent alerts explain what is happening, why, and when. That predictive element is key, he said. “There’s a lot of products out there that are more condition-based … But at TDK SensEI, we say that that’s just too late. We want to tell you, the customer, when that’s going to happen.”
edgeRX Vision, meanwhile, is a software AI package built through consultation with the customer. From as few as 10 product images, TDK SensEI can create a model specific to a product line, improving defect detection and reducing false positives. Where a false positive might currently halt a line for minutes while it is inspected, edgeRX Vision can assess it in seconds and integrate with the customer’s operating system to get production moving again.
The edgeRX Starter kit, available from DigiKey
In keeping with the low-cost, low-touch theme, TDK SensEI has packaged an edgeRX Starter kit comprising 10 sensors, one gateway, and six months of free software and AI licensing. DigiKey is the first distributor of the kit, which is something that Schick described as “extremely exciting”.
For smaller manufacturers with no prior experience of Physical AI or predictive maintenance, his advice to “start with your most important business case … Do not start with a technology.” If unplanned downtime or asset failure is the main issue, edgeRX is the answer; if waste and defect rates are the concern, edgeRX Vision is the better fit. Starting with the business case, he said, delivers the most immediate value and ROI, and makes it easier to scale.
In-house expertise, supported by partnerships
While TDK SensEI provides 100% of the solution, supported by its AI centre of excellence in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Schick said that partnerships remain critical. Not every customer wants to use TDK SensEI’s own interface; some want data fed straight into their maintenance management systems, which is where partners such as system integrators come in.
Looking ahead, Schick expects more Physical AI on the factory floor, improving predictive maintenance capabilities, and more agentic, autonomous decision-making “albeit with people interaction and with assistance,” giving “the best of both worlds.”
“I think those manufacturers and those industrial providers who get in now are going to be that much further ahead of the game and be able to take advantage of this tremendous technology,” he said.
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