qoncept
Austrian vendor of AI-assisted steelmaking software, industrial equipment and metallurgical consulting. Its qontrol platform, qurve AI camera and qoupler couplings help melt shops cut raw material costs, stabilise processes and protect operators on the casting floor.
What is qoncept?
qoncept is an Austrian engineering and software house serving the steel industry from Leoben, in Styria. It is not a single product but a portfolio of thirteen products and services grouped into three lines: software and hardware, equipment and devices, and consulting and studies.
The software line is branded qontrol. qontrol MAPS manages and optimises raw materials, deriving the real chemical composition and metallic yield of each scrap grade from routine production data using hybrid machine-learning algorithms combined with metallurgical models, with no additional sensors required. Instead of static master data, it learns with every heat, which reduces out-of-specification risk and the conservative safety buffers that drive up cost. qontrol L2 is a modular Level 2 system that controls and optimises the production process using live data, digital twins, adaptive target values and, in the vendor's own words, sound metallurgical models and artificial intelligence. qontrol MES orchestrates the plant and manages master data as the central link between the ERP and process automation. qontrol LMS tracks ladles, analysing temperature, maintenance intervals and refractory data to extend service life. Alongside these sit qurve AI, a dust-tight industrial camera that detects objects without invasive marking and returns real-time coordinates for cranes and mobile equipment, and qonsole, a rugged operator terminal with a full HD display and glove-compatible input.
The whole platform is built on a web-based, microservice-oriented framework that sits as a hub between plant automation and enterprise systems. Modules can be bought individually or as one solution, and the vendor states it can run locally or cloud-based.
The equipment line is mechanical rather than digital: qouplerG couples gas supply to ladles automatically, qouplerM is a patented multi-media coupler, and qouplerD connects the hydraulic cylinder to the ladle slide gate so steel can be cast without manual intervention or robotics. Bins and silos and general engineering services complete it. The consulting line covers requirements engineering, software architecture, industrial UI/UX, SCADA and MES migration planning, and metallurgical process work from CO₂ reduction to secondary refining. Everything is sold by contract; the site publishes no prices.
What it does
- Characterise incoming scrap automatically and predict the resulting melt chemistry
- Optimise charge mix, alloy additions and energy use across the whole production route
- Control and optimise Level 2 processes using digital twins and adaptive target values
- Orchestrate production and master data as the link between ERP and process automation
- Track every ladle in real time and detect wear or risk before it causes downtime
- Detect and follow objects, railcars and cranes by camera without invasive marking
- Plan production heat by heat or across full campaigns to allocate scarce raw materials
When to use qoncept / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if qoncept is the right fit.
When to use qoncept
- Electric arc furnace melt shops trying to cut the cost of every charge mix
- Steel producers whose incoming scrap quality varies enough to force expensive safety margins
- Plant IT and automation teams that need a working bridge between process automation and the ERP
- Operators of revamp and modernisation projects where flexibility matters more than supplier size
- Health and safety leads seeking to remove manual intervention from the casting floor
When not to use qoncept
- Anyone expecting to sign up online: there is no self-service, no public price and no trial
- Organisations outside steel, metals and heavy manufacturing, which the product scope never addresses
- Developers looking for a public API or developer documentation, neither of which exists
- Small teams without an industrial integration project and a budget to match
- Users wanting a mobile or on-the-go application, as none is published
How to use qoncept
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Identify which line you need: qontrol software, qoupler and silo equipment, or consulting and studies
- Read the product pages, then download the per-product PDF brochures behind the "See how it works" links
- For raw material optimisation, read the dedicated qontrol MAPS page and its whitepaper on scrap uncertainty
- Contact the company through the form at qoncept.at/contact-2, which every call to action points to
- Ask for a demonstration: the MAPS page carries a "book a demo" section that routes to the same form
- Scope the project with the vendor, who also sells requirements engineering and migration planning
- Agree the deployment model, since the software can run locally on site or cloud-based
- Plan the integration into your existing automation layers and ERP using common industrial protocols
- Start with a single module if preferred, as the architecture is explicitly modular
- Coordinate with the Leoben office for Europe or the Coraopolis office for the Americas
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Deep steel-industry specialisation combining metallurgy, mechanical engineering and software in one house
- Artificial intelligence that is genuinely functional, not decorative: a self-learning material model and real computer vision
- Modular architecture, so a plant can buy a single module rather than a whole platform
- Software, hardware and consulting from a single supplier, which simplifies accountability
- A published, quantified benefit for qontrol MAPS of 5 to 50 EUR per tonne of production cost
- qouplerD is presented as a globally unique way to cast steel without manual intervention or robotics
- Fully verifiable legal identity, confirmed in the Austrian commercial register and by an active EU VAT number
Cons
- No public pricing, no plans and no trial: every enquiry goes through a salesperson
- No public API and no developer documentation of any kind
- The privacy policy covers only the marketing website, never the customer production data the software handles
- The GDPR is not mentioned once anywhere on the site, in any language version
- Nothing is published on model training, customer data hosting, retention periods or subprocessors
- No data processing agreement is published or even offered on request
- Site upkeep is uneven: the German version is only partly translated and the main call to action points at a WordPress preview URL
Pricing & Plans
No pricing is published. The site has no pricing page, and a complete enumeration of its sitemap together with a full-text search of the collected pages returned no amount in any currency. There is no free plan and no free trial, neither offered nor explicitly ruled out. The commercial model is contract sales: prospects are directed to the contact form for every product. One figure on the qontrol MAPS page, a reduction of 5 to 50 EUR per tonne, is a stated saving on the customer's production cost and not a price. General terms and conditions for customers dated 2022 are published as a PDF, without any rate card.
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how qoncept handles your data.
GDPR overview
There is no mention of the GDPR anywhere on the site, in any language version, and no compliance claim of any kind. The legal pages refer only to "the legal data protection regulations" without naming them. Rights are described in general terms: free information about which data is held and why, rectification of incorrect data and deletion of data that is incorrect or no longer needed. A privacy contact is named, Sebastian Michelic at the Leoben address with a telephone number, but no email address is given for him. No data protection officer is designated as such, and no Article 27 representative is named, which is consistent with the publisher being established inside the European Union. The company states that it uses 128-bit SSL encryption on the site. Austrian law governs, with Leoben as the sole place of jurisdiction.
Who owns the data?
The published terms address ownership of the website, not of customer production data. qoncept states that all material provided on the site is its own intellectual property and that any reproduction or distribution requires prior written confirmation. On personal data, the company says information collected through the site is given voluntarily and will not be disclosed to third parties without explicit consent. Nothing in the public documents assigns ownership of the process data, melt chemistry records or plant telemetry that the software would handle in production. For an industrial system of this kind, that silence is the notable point: ownership of operational data would have to be settled in the contract, not read off the website.
Reuse rights
The site grants the visitor no reuse rights. Website content may not be reproduced or distributed, in whole or in part and in any medium, without qoncept's prior written confirmation, and the terms make the user liable for damages in case of breach. Personal data submitted through the contact form is used solely to answer the request and is not shared without consent. Server logs, which record browser type and version, operating system, referrer, anonymised IP and request time, are kept without personal reference and are not combined with other sources, although the company reserves the right to review them retrospectively if it is notified of concrete evidence of illegal use. No provision describes what a customer may do with data produced by the software itself.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
The site gives no hosting information for customer data. It states only that the software can be used locally or cloud-based, without naming a country, a region, a cloud provider or a data centre, and no trust or security page exists. No jurisdiction is declared for the processing of production data, and no subprocessor is listed. The only third party named anywhere is Google Fonts, disclosed because the website may load fonts from a Google server usually located in the United States, which concerns visitors to the site and not customers of the software. As a separate technical observation that should not be confused with data hosting, the marketing website itself resolves to an IP address operated by Hetzner Online GmbH in Falkenstein, Germany; this says nothing about where a deployed qontrol installation would keep plant data. Anyone with hosting requirements will have to raise them directly with the vendor.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting qoncept.
- Three separate legal entities share the qoncept brand, and the imprint, the purchase conditions and the contact page do not all name the same one: check which entity your contract binds
- The publisher was renamed from qoncept dx GmbH to qoncept technology GmbH in January 2023, which is why its social profiles still carry the old name
- The site documents nothing about how customer production data is handled, hosted, retained or used, so operational data governance must be negotiated in the contract
- The quoted 5 to 50 EUR per tonne is a projected saving, dependent on alloy content and production route, not a guarantee and never a price
- Optimisation that runs autonomously on charging decisions can erode operators' own feel for scrap quality if crews stop questioning its output
- A self-learning model trained on a plant's own history will reproduce that plant's habits, including its bad ones, unless someone keeps auditing the results
- The qontrol name covers only part of the catalogue, so confirm which modules a quotation actually includes before comparing offers
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
High, and unavoidably so: this is an industrial integration project, not a sign-up. The software must be connected to existing automation layers and the ERP through common industrial protocols, and the equipment and camera lines require physical installation in the plant. The vendor sells requirements engineering, software architecture and SCADA, Level 2 and MES migration planning as services, which indicates the scale of a typical deployment. The modular architecture and the web-based framework are presented as easing integration, and a single module can be adopted first, but expect a scoped project with vendor involvement throughout.
Deployment
Behind qoncept
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
Is qoncept a single product?
Where is the artificial intelligence in this offering?
How much does it cost?
Is there a free trial or a free plan?
Does qoncept offer an API?
Can the software run on our own infrastructure?
Who is behind the product?
Is there a mobile application?
What does the site say about the GDPR and customer data?
Which industries does it serve beyond steel?
Should you pick qoncept?
qoncept is a genuinely specialised supplier rather than a generic AI product, and that is both its strength and its limit. The company combines metallurgy, mechanical engineering and software development in one house, and it shows: the qontrol MAPS material model that learns real scrap chemistry from routine production data, and the qurve AI camera that identifies ladles and tracks cranes without invasive marking, are working applications of machine learning to a hard industrial problem, not marketing vocabulary bolted onto a conventional product. The published claim of 5 to 50 EUR saved per tonne is unusually concrete for this market, and the legal identity behind it is solid and fully verifiable.
The reservations are documentary rather than technical. There is no published price, no plan and no trial, so no reader can judge the commercial fit without talking to a salesperson. More significantly for an industrial software vendor, the legal pages cover the marketing website and stop there. The GDPR is never mentioned, no data processing agreement is offered, and nothing is said about where customer production data would be hosted, how long it would be kept, who would subprocess it, or whether it might train the vendor's models. A plant considering qontrol will have to settle all of that in the contract, because the website will not answer it. Smaller details reinforce the impression of a site maintained less carefully than the products: a partly translated German version, and a main call to action that points at a WordPress preview URL.
For a melt shop with variable scrap quality and an appetite for process optimisation, qoncept is a credible and well-focused candidate. For anyone outside heavy metals, it is simply not addressed.
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