We didn't arrive at automation. We walked here through the factory.
Biomedical R&D. Structural design. Manufacturing process engineering. QA. Factory IT. Every stage taught us something a pure software studio misses — and every project inherits all of it.
lifeline · ten years of operational systemscontinuous
⚕Biomedical R&D
Computer-vision dissertation. Medical imaging pipelines.
▦Structural design
CAD. Tolerances. Things that cannot fail.
⚙Manufacturing
Process engineering · QA · lean production.
⌁Factory IT
SyteLine · Infor ION · ERP integration.
◆Shadow-Gen
Automation & AI as infrastructure.
2014
⚕Biomedical R&D
Computer-vision dissertation. Medical imaging pipelines.
2017
▦Structural design
CAD. Tolerances. Things that cannot fail.
2019
⚙Manufacturing
Process engineering · QA · lean production.
2022
⌁Factory IT
SyteLine · Infor ION · ERP integration.
2024
◆Shadow-Gen
Automation & AI as infrastructure.
5 stages · one through-lineevery engagement inherits all of it
About
The people who actually show up.
Small by design. No account managers, no slide-factory. You work with the engineer building the thing and the operator making sure it lands. That's it — and that's why projects actually finish.
01 · Founder · Process & Automation Engineer
Rafal Fila
Engineer across biomedical R&D, structural design, manufacturing process engineering, QA, factory IT and lean production. Allergic to processes that look fine on a slide and fall apart on the floor.
What this means for you
You work directly with the engineer building the thing. No account managers, no discovery theatre.
·MBCS · Chartered IT Institute
·UMN Carlson — Information Systems
·Computer-vision engineering dissertation
02 · Operations · Client Delivery
Martyna
Runs delivery end-to-end — discovery, scope, handovers, training. The reason engagements finish on time with happy teams, not with a half-built tool and an open ticket.
What this means for you
Your team is trained, documented, and owns the automation before we step away.
·Delivery & client operations
·Discovery facilitation
·Handover & training
Recent build
200+
paper inspection forms a month
Photographed on a factory floor — bad light, tired hands, creased paper. Now processed end-to-end by AI. Days of reporting turned into minutes. Running quietly in production for over a year. Every build we ship comes with error handling, logs, documentation, and a handover Loom — so your team owns it, not us.
Origin
Why this studio, specifically.
The short version of how Shadow-Gen exists.
At one point I was rebuilding a stage-gate form for the 200th time — same spreadsheet, new coat of paint, every quarter. Someone senior would ask for a report; someone junior would spend Thursday night making it; nobody remembered it by Monday.
That was the week I realised the real work wasn't the forms. It was everything the forms were quietly compensating for — no integration, no single source of truth, no way for one system to tell another what just happened.
Shadow-Gen was set up to fix exactly that. Not with new software. With the software you already paid for, finally doing the thing you thought you were buying.
Method
Five rules we won't break.
Not a framework. Not a PDF. Just the things we kept learning the hard way and decided to stop re-learning.
01
Walk the floor first
We spend time where the work happens, not in a Miro board. Every engagement starts with mapping what's actually happening — not what the org chart says.
02
Fixed scope. Fixed price.
No retainers that silently renew. No hourly billing. You know exactly what you're paying for and what you're getting before we start.
03
Build on what you already have
Your ERP, your CRM, your spreadsheets. We make them do the job you thought you were buying. New platforms only when genuinely unavoidable.
04
Leave your team in control
Documentation, Loom walkthroughs, a handover session with whoever will live with this thing. Your team owns the automation before we're gone.
05
Tell you when we're not the right fit
If the problem needs a product specialist, a CFO, or a lawyer — we'll say so, and help you find one. Free of charge.
◇ Book a call
Give us 30 minutes. We'll tell you exactly where the money is hiding in your operation.
No slide deck. No generic discovery questions. We'll walk through your actual workflows, name the single highest-leverage thing to fix next quarter, and give you a rough ROI estimate — whether or not you work with us after.