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Optimizing Materials and Manufacturing Choices Across the Enterprise

 

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Industrial & Consumer Equipment Automotive & TransportationHi tech Materials Producers

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Materials strategy white paper

   
 

THE MATERIALS STRATEGY CONSORTIUM

A collaborative project that drives the development of software for systematic materials selection, substitution, and cost optimization. More...

   

(View / print this example as a PDF document, 165Kb)

This page explains how Granta helps organizations take a strategic approach to improving materials choices across their business. See also information on our tools to enable individual materials selection projects.

  • Make better, more consistent materials choices enterprise-wide

  • Meet strategic objectives such as avoiding cost, designing to comply with regulations, and enabling global manufacturing

  • Improve business processes relating to materials, particularly in multi-site, multi-business enterprises

  • The Materials Strategy Consortium offers further competitive advantage by developing software to meet your specific needs

The problem

To succeed, manufacturing enterprises need to do much more than simply deliver products that excel at their required function. They must meet wider product design objectives that allow them to address strategic drivers such as cost, environmental legislation, and global manufacturing. Materials choices are central to these objectives. Sustainable success requires strategies that ensure these decisions are optimized not just for individual designers but across the enterprise. The right materials strategy, effectively implemented, can be worth millions of dollars.

Granta helps manufacturers of consumer appliances Granta supports makers and users of plastics Granta helps manufacturers of industrial equipment Granta supports makers and users of metals and alloys Granta software manages data on processing as well as materials properties

But defining and implementing such strategies can be very difficult for a typical manufacturing organization with products that use many different materials and support many applications, with operations split across many businesses or sites, and with life further complicated by the impact of new regulations in areas such as the environment, health, and safety.

First, there is simply the challenge of finding all of the necessary materials information within a large, diverse organization. Then you need to apply this information to make decisions in a systematic, repeatable manner. A particular challenge here is the lack of tools and approaches that combine consideration of the engineering performance of materials with their economic and environmental properties. Finally, you want to enable designers, enterprise-wide, to apply the approach easily and consistently.

 

Assembles all necessary materials information in one place

Analyzes this information using 'cost per unit of function' principles

Captures expert analyses in easy-to-use browser-based tools for re-use by designers

Enables better and more consistent decisions

   

Granta's solution

Granta has developed an innovative materials strategy solution to address these challenges. It draws on the rational materials selection methodology developed by Granta's founder, Professor Mike Ashby, and already widely applied to support individual materials selection projects (see separate example solution). Our materials strategy solution is based on the GRANTA MI materials information management system.You can:

  • Assemble the necessary data using GRANTA MI's materials data management features to consolidate data from testing, QA, production, and other sources. This data can be combined with materials reference information - Granta's MaterialUniverse data module, for example, provides engineering, eco, and economic data on materials.

  • Apply this information using the Enterprise Materials Optimizer (GRANTA MI:EMO), a simple-to-use web-browser-based tool that ranks materials quantitatively for design objectives specified by the user through a simple 'wizard-style' interface. 'Cost per unit of function' principles allow engineering properties and cost (whether financial or environmental 'cost') to be combined in this ranking.

  • Configure GRANTA MI:EMO to include your organization's most common design objectives and to apply your own 'business rules' when ranking materials. An example business rule is to prioritise those materials or suppliers designated as 'preferred' by the business. In this way, you give designers a tool to aid creativity, while also providing guidance on corporate strategy and helping to ensure consistency.

The development and application of this solution is supported by the Materials Strategy Consortium, a collaboration of leading manufacturing enterprises. Members are able to guide software development, ensuring that their needs are met, and receive added benefits of networking and training.

Questions answered!

This solution helps to answer questions such as the following.

Scenario

Questions answered

Material cost is a high proportion of our product cost and markets are volatile and inflationary. This threatens our profitability.

How do we assess material and process alternatives? How do we ensure we use the most profitable? How do we track trends? How do we know when to switch?

We are experiencing materials failures in our products.

How do we determine what other material(s) we can substitute with minimal changes? How do we find grades that offer similar characteristics without failure? How do we assess their impact?

We manufacture in different countries.

How do we find local substitute materials?  How do we determine ‘equivalence’ to the existing material?  How do we evaluate the impact on quality, cost, consumer experience, or regulatory compliance?

A vendor has offered us a new material option.

How do we evaluate it systematically against existing options? How do we determine which products will gain if we switch?

We use many different material suppliers and grades.

Can we optimize to a list of preferred suppliers and materials? Can we apply more objective criteria to these decisions, taking into account both technical and economic factors?

Environmental legislation is imposing new requirements on us.

How can we minimize the cost of compliance, and maximize the benefits from any required changes - in terms of product marketing, cost, and performance?

Related example solutions

Further information

Download our white paper on materials strategy

Information on GRANTA MI - see, particularly, MI:EMO

The MaterialUniverse data module

More on the Materials Strategy Consortium