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Manage Materials Information

Materials information is central to the activities of engineering enterprises and materials producers. They need accurate, up-to-date, and complete information to enable design, make the right decisions on materials usage, and optimize product performance.

But this information can be complex - for example, even a fundamental mechanical property such as a material's response to stress can vary with parameters including composition, temperature, time, and direction. A system to store and analyze such data must not only handle this multi-dimensional nature, but must deal with domain-specific issues such as specialist unit systems and the need to understand relationships between properties.

Adding to the challenge is the fact that, in most organizations, this data is not static, but ever-changing. New data is added from testing, quality assurance, production, or updated reference sources and this data must be constantly analyzed to create and refine the organization's materials knowledge.

Granta helps you to manage business-critical materials data through our GRANTA MI software. Developed in collaboration with the Materials Data Management Consortium (MDMC), a group of leading engineering enterprises, GRANTA MI provides a complete solution for the 'lifecycle' of materials data:

• Capture - flexible data import allows you to capture data directly from test machines, spreadsheets, and other databases. GRANTA MI not only captures specialist materials information of all types (numbers, graphs, documents, images, and more...), but it stores the vital relationships between items of data.
  
  
• Analyze - specialist analysis capabilities help to develop and refine your organization's materials knowledge. For example, a set of modules for analyzing materials test data supports the generation of accurate statistically-derived property data for engineering design.
  
  
• Maintain - relationships between data are easy to explore via a web browser interface and data can be annotated. So the full context for information can be captured and developed, and 'traceability' is guaranteed (a vital requirement in regulated industries such as aerospace or medical devices). Version control features help you deal with changing information, offering an approval process for data and ensuring that the most up-to-date version is provided, while maintaining a full record of the data's history. Access control features mean that users only see data that they are authorized to view, while data quality ratings help users to ensure that data is applied appropriately.

Further background on materials data management and the work of the MDMC >>>

Relevant products and services

Example solutions

Here are some examples of the use of Granta's products to deliver specific solutions for people who need to manage materials information:

• Managing mission-critical materials data
  
  
• Routine management of materials test data
  
  
• Support for research projects
  

You've got well-managed data - now what?

A well-managed materials information resource can deliver competitive advantage to engineering enterprises - but only if the information in that system is applied effectively. To make best use of your materials information, you may want to deploy it in the computer-aided engineering and other software used by your engineers. And you may benefit from specialist tools that help you to use this information to make better materials decisions.

Read more:

• Deploy materials information
  
  
• Use materials information