Meet Loïc: founder turning factory floor know-how into the future of manufacturing

Loïc is originally from Switzerland but grew up in Singapore and the UK. He studied Mechanical Engineering at the University of Bath, worked in vertical farming in London, then moved into operations at the Nestlé Purina plant in the UK, before relocating to Auckland. In Auckland, he continued working for Nestlé whilst completing a postgraduate certificate in AI. He co-founded RossOps with Joshua Wyllie in December 2024.

Where it started 

Spending time on the factory floor and behind operational data, one thing nagged at Loïc. The most valuable knowledge in any factory wasn't in a manual or a system; it was in people's heads. When those people weren’t on shift or left the company, that knowledge left with them. 

There’s a specific moment Loïc traces the beginning of RossOps to. A packaging line at a plant where he was working in the UK went down for an entire weekend, only to be fixed instantly when the new shift arrived for a few dollars' worth of spares. Because they’d seen a similar event in the past, they had what is called ‘tribal knowledge’ of that equipment. This kind of knowledge asymmetry happened countless times across other lines, shifts, and even other plants. 

Loïc’s observation turned into RossOps, an AI-powered platform that helps manufacturing teams capture what they know as they work, so that nothing important falls through the cracks. 

One of those people who had extensive tribal knowledge and could fix in minutes what took others hours was a reliability manager called Ross. He'd seen enough to always know where to look. After visiting other sites and reaching out to the wider network, Loïc realised every factory had its own Ross, and almost none of them had a way to hold onto what they knew and make it available to the wider team. If there were a way to make this knowledge available on demand, it would enable them to be as effective as Ross without them needing him to be there or bothering them at 2 a.m. The company is named after him. 

The Context Gap

At its core, RossOps is tackling what Loïc calls the "context gap." A new engineer might know exactly how cooling systems work in theory, but they won't know the quirks of this cooling unit, on this line, in this factory. RossOps captures that context through brief voice notes or short texts logged in real time, requiring only seconds from frontline staff. Then AI automatically structures and categorises the information in the background, making it searchable by the whole team when and where they need it. As Loïc puts it: "A 15-second voice note telling you what settings to run a product by, or to check the load cell upstream when your downstream mixer is tripping, can be more valuable than a 50-page manual written 15 years ago when the asset was implemented." 
 
It’s a problem getting bigger, not smaller. Experienced workers are retiring in large numbers, taking decades of plant-specific knowledge with them, while younger workers now stay in roles for only a few years on average, down from decades a generation ago. Knowledge is leaving faster at both ends of the workforce.  

A Member of Auckland’s Startup Community 

RossOps has now become a part of Auckland's startup community, and the University of Auckland connection is a big part of that. RossOps won Velocity’s $100k Challenge (supported by the Centre of Innovation and Entrepreneurship and UniServices) in 2024 and this achievement drove them to commit to the company full time. David Zhu, the company's first graduate engineer, came on board through the University of Auckland's Venturelab Incubator while finishing his Bachelor of Computer Science and Statistics. He started as an intern and grew into a full-time role as the team scaled. It's a great example of what programs like Velocity make possible: students getting real experience, and startups getting great talent. 

Now RossOps are co-located at the University of Auckland's Newmarket Innovation Precinct. For Loïc, being part of the Newmarket Innovation Precinct has been about more than just desk space. It's the credibility that comes with being embedded in a serious innovation environment, and the network that’s built around relationships with the other companies in the space. Many introductions were made through other startup residents - it’s a win-win.

What's next 

Things are moving fast. The team started out in late 2024 and raised $1 million shortly after. Apollo Foods, one of their earliest customers, recently hit its biggest production week ever, having shifted from a five-day schedule to 24/7 with RossOps alongside them. RossOps’ platform is now live across other industries such as wood processing and plastics manufacturing. 
 
The long-term goal is to become the operational layer for manufacturing: the system every factory runs on to remember, decide, and act.