If your organization makes or designs products, it uses materials. Information about these materials is vital, often with multi-million dollar impact. In other areas of product engineering, digital transformation is already highly embedded – for example, CAE, CAD and CAM are now ‘must haves’ for every manufacturing enterprise. Software technology to manage and effectively apply materials information had lagged behind – but this is changing, rapidly.
Delivering effective materials information management requires a systematic approach, supported by the right software. This must not only manage the diverse data sets required to define a material in an engineering business, but enable those data to be linked, shared, controlled and applied in a way that builds the material intelligence of the organization.
This is the goal of materials information management systems such as Ansys Granta MI™.
This article discusses the use of such solutions and the business benefits they deliver across sectors including aerospace and defense, automotive, medical devices, and industrial and electrical equipment. It concludes with a checklist of issues you may want to consider in managing the materials information in your own business –whether you are considering this as a senior executive or as a manager of a technical function within the business.