Introducing GRANTA MI

For a summary, read the Product Overview (PDF, 353 Kb)...

The accurate, efficient, and secure use of materials information is essential to engineering businesses. Yet few have successfully implemented robust systems to ensure best practice in managing and applying such data. The Material Data Management Consortium (MDMC) is a collaborative project of world-leading organizations, established to identify and solve the key practical challenges limiting this best practice. The MDMC and our other enterprise customers guide Granta's development of GRANTA MI.

GRANTA MI is built specifically to handle the peculiarities of materials information. It creates a single corporate information resource, capturing and enriching data from in-house testing and design, proprietary sources, and external references. For materials experts, GRANTA MI provides tools to analyze and maintain this data and to certify and publish approved information in a secure and controlled manner. Engineers and other professionals then access the information that they need within their routine workflows, assured that it is relevant, traceable, and the best available.

GRANTA MI customers include leaders in:

Aerospace and Defense
Energy and Nuclear
Medical Devices
Defense
Motorsports and Formula One
Materials Production
Domestic and Industrial Equipment

More from our customers...

A complete solution

GRANTA MI is a comprehensive system. At its heart is a database, but it also consists of analysis and administration tools, tools to search, view, and manipulate information easily, reference data, and technology to integrate the benefits of materials information management into your workflow (read a detailed system description).

A critical issue identified by our customers was that the system needs to be more than simply a collection of useful tools. It must provide a complete solution. The experience of these engineering organizations shows, for example, that it is of limited use having a superb means to capture test data if that data disappears into a ‘black hole’ database that no-one accesses. The best materials property analysis tools in the world are a wasted investment if they generate results that are not deployed effectively to the engineers who need to use them.

In defining such a solution, the MDMC identified a four-stage materials data lifecycle (CAPTURE - ANALYZE - DEPLOY - MAINTAIN, see below) and drove the development of GRANTA MI to meet critical needs at each stage.

The materials data lifecycle

Capture

The first requirement is a database that copes with the idiosyncrasies of materials information, handling specialist data including materials types, single point property data, and design curves. GRANTA MI is designed for such materials information.

Next, the database must enable access to all of the materials information that you need in a single place. GRANTA MI offers access to a wide range of external reference sources. But its real strength is its ability to also manage all of your in-house materials information, whether from testing, quality assurance, design, or elsewhere, and to integrate these varied sources.

How do you get such data into the database — particularly in real engineering environments where that data typically comes from many sources and in multiple formats? Databases are often insufficiently flexible to deal with this complexity. From raw test output to reference information, GRANTA MI can capture data directly from a very wide range of sources. And GRANTA MI's knowledge capture tools mean that you can quickly and easily integrate new formats, ensuring that GRANTA MI slots seamlessly into your organization’s workflow.

The relational structure of GRANTA MI allows links to be created during import, capturing relationships with other pertinent pieces of information. So, for example, connections could be created automatically between an imported stress-strain curve and its test frame, load cell, extension measuring device, test operator, or materials pedigree. Ultimately, all data and analyses are safely stored in your GRANTA MI database, fully indexed and traceable, with complete control and accessibility for subsequent analysis, deployment and maintenance.

Handles the specifics of materials information
A single, consistent source for all of your in-house materials information
Integrates access to external reference sources
Easy import and export
Link related information to ensure traceability and knowledge capture

Read the detailed system description for more information on the database and data content.

Example: For a tensile load-extension curve, unaltered data is imported into GRANTA MI and stored. Simultaneously, where dimensional data is recorded in the original file, the stress-strain response can be calculated and stored in the same place. Links are then generated between this record, the record for the batch number of the original material, and the project code.

Analyze

GRANTA MI provides easy access to an outstanding portfolio of materials analysis methods and an environment to manage and apply these analyses more efficiently and effectively than ever before.

Any data within GRANTA MI is available for interpretation or manipulation by any of the methods in the system. This ever-growing library studies behaviors including:

tensile
compression
fatigue
creep, and
fracture.

For non-standard analyses, GRANTA MI’s open architecture enables quick customization, easily integrating your in-house materials and statistical approaches, almost independent of the technology used (examples include VBA, C++, Excel, and FORTRAN).

The context for any analysis result is recorded via the automatic generation of links for every object in the database. For example, these record the pedigree of individual data points used in any analysis and in evaluating summary statistics. Any statistically-based data-point is thus linked to each and every piece of the original data in the population used to derive it. Such traceability is critical to organizations pursuing ‘best practice’, since it ensures knowledge is not lost and enables rapid diagnosis of problems, helping to manage corporate liability. This holistic approach to the available data also allows for much richer analysis.

Simple access to powerful materials analysis methods
Flexibility to allow a wide range of approaches and integrate in-house methods
Full traceability to capture knowledge, reduce risk and manage liability in the design process

Read the detailed system description for more information on the Windows applications.

Example: An engineer may analyze the hysteresis loops from a single test using the standard tools in GRANTA MI, resulting in a detailed understanding of the elastic-plastic performance of that material under a specific set of circumstances. Using another set of tools, the engineer can compile the data from multiple tests to model the behavior of the material over a range of situations in the form of SN or EN curves. Where information of this nature has been compiled for many materials in many situations, a further set of tools is available to interrogate the entire database to identify subsets or shortlists of materials suitable for use in products or components, or to compare with new or existing data.

Deploy

One of the most important objectives of GRANTA MI is to ensure that the information it captures and creates is delivered effectively to the people who need to use it. This could be anyone in the enterprise who deals with materials data — suppliers, purchasing departments, stock control, and quality assurance staff. But a key focus is the engineers who use materials data in engineering simulation and design. The critical issue is that information is made as easy as possible to access for these engineers — that this access fits naturally into their workflow.

GRANTA MI does this for you. First, data is prepared, certified, and published by materials experts, ready for the users who need it, whether this is a group of in-house engineers or a larger international community of subscribers. Where required, data security is tightly controlled by GRANTA MI’s fail-safe Access Control system. Data owners can limit access as necessary.

Engineers can then access this data simply via their own PCs’ web browsers. GRANTA MI:Viewer is a web browser-based application that lets you browse, search, chart, plot, tabulate, check, and conduct property-based materials selections, comparisons or trade-off analyses — all on your desktop. Furthermore, users can easily export data for desktop analyses within their standard computer-aided engineering software: GRANTA MI’s translators ensure that the correct formatting is available for users’ special requirements.

Easy access to the information you need
Fit to the workflows of key users - e.g., engineers
Secure and controlled
Scalable and robust across thousands of users

Read the detailed system description for more information on the Web browser application.

Finally, GRANTA MI's powerful capabilities for deploying data to individuals are only useful if they can service all of the people who need to access data simultaneously. GRANTA MI is a true enterprise system. It is robust and scalable, able to maintain speed and reliability when accessed by hundreds of engineers at the same time.

Maintain

Finally, there’s the need to maintain your data and systems in dynamic enterprises where data, people, and the business environment regularly change.

One requirement is to easily re-apply analysis methods to updated data populations in order to refine existing design information. Capturing all of the data and its context in a single place makes such analysis much more straightforward. Similarly, you will want to make sure that you are accessing the most up-to-date versions of external data sources. GRANTA MI supports this delivering regular data updates to GRANTA MI users.

The capture of contextual information helps to protect against loss of knowledge and expertise when people leave. This knowledge, previously only in people’s heads or ‘locked up’ on paper in their notebooks is rendered accessible, searchable, and much easier to analyze.

Support continual update of dynamic data
Access regularly-updated external sources
Preserve corporate knowledge
Respond to changing standards, operating systems, user needs
Share the cost of essential developments

A final issue is maintenance of the information management tools and systems themselves – whether this is the data in the databases, the methods in the analysis suite, or interaction with a changing IT environment. A ‘commercial off the shelf’ system like GRANTA MI ensures support, maintenance, and update by a third party – Granta Design. This is much simpler, more cost-effective, and sustainable than in-house systems. GRANTA MI customers share the cost of developing against new requirements that arise over time, rather than having to bear the full cost themselves.

Summary

GRANTA MI is the leading system for materials information management in engineering enterprises. You can control, analyze, and apply critical data in the engineering process. Developed in collaboration with top industrial engineering organizations, GRANTA MI lets you increase quality, save time, and reduce risk.

Key Benefits:

Meets the specific requirements of best practice materials information management
Controls data for accuracy, consistency, audit, traceability, and security
Commercial-quality enterprise software, unique in its field: robust, scaleable, and maintained
Supports the complete materials data lifecycle.