Tjeerd Veenstra
Managing Director“I want a customer still to call us after five years. Then we have done it right.”
t.veenstra@vds-automation.nlWe are VDS. We make your plant visible, from sensor to steering.
A technical company from Leeuwarden, founded out of irritation with reports that nobody ever acted on. We are small and we intend to stay that way: a team of people who stand in plants themselves, build things themselves and answer the phone themselves when something is not right. Down to earth, stubborn about quality, and still there once it is running.
Involved, also after handover
Our own IoT hardware & software
Technical and business insight
Small team, short lines, staying power.
You do not get an account manager between you and the technology, but the people who do the work themselves.
What drives us is curiosity about how a company really works. That is why we would rather walk into the plant than email a questionnaire. And it is why we stay involved once something is running: your company changes, and we want to know where it is heading.
What you wonder before you let us in. Answered honestly.
You are making an important part of your plant depend on a relatively small supplier. Asking those questions is exactly right. These are our answers.
Continuity
Will you still be here in two years?
VDS has been running since 2020, grows steadily and is financially healthy. Our customers stay for years, not for projects. Continuity is not a promise but our business model: we only really earn if you stay.
Proof
Have you done this before in my sector?
Probably. We work for 25+ manufacturers in food, chemicals and metal and have connected more than 110 machines and sensors. From confectionery production to metalworking.
The people
Who are the people, and how deep does the knowledge go?
You work directly with the people who build it. Business and technical knowledge sit in the same people here, with no account layer between you and the technology.
Reliability
And if something goes wrong?
Your data stays yours, in your own environment. One point of contact who knows your plant, also after handover. If there is a problem you do not call a helpdesk, but the people who built your system.
What we stand for
Our mission
To let manufacturers steer on facts instead of assumptions, by bringing operational knowledge and real-time data together in one place, understandable for everyone from the shop floor to the boardroom.
Our vision
A manufacturing industry that gets smarter at every layer, in which technology strengthens the people on the shop floor, and deciding on data is a matter of course.
Our story
Started on the shop floor. Still where we like to be.
VDS was not born on a whiteboard, but among the machines. What began with one problem in one plant grew into a team that now makes plants visible across the Netherlands.
2020
Started at the kitchen table
Tjeerd works in industry and sees the same thing in plant after plant: the data is there, but nobody can get at it. In the evenings he builds the first dashboards. VDS still exists alongside a day job.
2023
The leap, and the first colleagues
There is more demand than there are evenings. Tjeerd resigns and goes all in on VDS. Within a year there are colleagues and an office in the heart of Leeuwarden.
2024
Building it ourselves, out of necessity
More and more often things stalled on machines that would not give up their data. Buying what we needed was not an option. So we started making our own IoT hardware, and the software around it.
2026
From supplier to permanent partner
Customers no longer call about a project, but about the next step. Four plants at one customer, 110+ machines connected, and a team that knows those plants by now.
"Our biggest compliment? Customers who still call us after five years. Not for a new project, but because by now we know their plant better than many of their own staff."Tjeerd Veenstra · Managing Director
Trusted by manufacturers
Our team
These are the people who build it
Specialists who combine technical expertise with practical business knowledge. Multidisciplinary, with short lines. You work directly with the people who build it too.
Johannes Wibbens
Head of Operations“The best moment: an operator pointing at your dashboard and saying there it is.”
j.wibbens@vds-automation.nl
Keimpe Veenstra
Consultant Data & Digitalisation“What I like building most is something someone takes a decision on tomorrow.”
k.veenstra@vds-automation.nl
Esther Bentveld
Marketer“I walk along in plants and translate their day-to-day problems into clear content.”
e.bentveld@vds-automation.nl
Theo Molenaar
Consultant Data & Digitalisation“Data only becomes interesting when someone on the floor can do something with it.”
t.molenaar@vds-automation.nlFind us in Leeuwarden.
Do drop in, the coffee is ready.
Address
Lange Marktstraat 1
8911 AD Leeuwarden
Introduction · no obligation
Now you know who we are.
Now you know who we are.
We would like to hear who you are.
A cup of coffee and an hour about your plant. Or let us walk along for half a day with a Quick Scan, and within a week you will know where the gains are.