About

ClosedLoop is a one person software company registered in Münster, Germany. Abel van der Wielen runs it.

What the work is

I build data pipelines for industrial companies: extraction from documents, normalisation, and analysis you can trace back to the source. The pattern repeats across industries. The information a company needs already exists, but it exists as paperwork. Invoices, delivery notes, certificates, data sheets, forms filled in by someone at a supplier three steps up the chain. It is readable by a person and useless to a system.

Turning that into something queryable is less glamorous than it sounds and harder than it looks. Layouts vary per supplier. Units are inconsistent. Half the fields are missing and the missing half is the half that matters. A number that cannot be traced back to the document it came from is not evidence, it is a guess with a decimal point.

Why I write here

Most of what I learn doing this is not written down anywhere. The published material is either vendor marketing or academic work that skips the part where the PDF is a scan of a fax. I write the notes I wanted when I started.

Articles are long, specific and English. There is no schedule. If it is useful you can read the archive or get new pieces by email.

Background

MSc Strategic Entrepreneurship, Rotterdam School of Management. Before and alongside ClosedLoop I have worked on demand forecasting and data implementation for a B2B software company, which is where most of the pipeline habits come from.

The company

ClosedLoop UG (haftungsbeschränkt), registered at the Amtsgericht Münster under HRB 23654. Full details in the Impressum.

Email: abel@closedloop.green