Materials Data Management - The Granta Solution

The complete solution

Granta's solution to the materials data management challenge is based on GRANTA MI, a comprehensive, integrated system to capture, control, analyze, and apply materials data throughout its lifecycle.

GRANTA MI is developed in collaboration with customers including the Material Data Management Consortium (MDMC), ensuring that GRANTA MI meets industry needs. Membership of this project not only allows you to prioritize your most important requirements within Granta's development process, it also offers valuable networking opportunities and training that help you to get the most from your use of the software.

GRANTA MI allows you to integrate proprietary data with data from external references. The solution can be augmented through Granta's wide range of high quality materials reference information.

Finally, Granta offers high quality support and services to assist you in implementing, customizing, and applying your GRANTA MI system.

GRANTA MI is centered on a unique materials database designed for the idiosyncrasies of materials information. The system allows you to manage and process specialist data such as materials types, single point property data, and design curves.

Through GRANTA MI, you can access all of your company's materials information in a single place. GRANTA MI brings together all of your in-house data - whether from testing, quality assurance, design, or elsewhere. You can integrate this data with external reference information from Granta's extensive catalog or from third-party sources.

How do you get such a range of data into the database, particularly in real engineering environments where it comes from many sources and in multiple formats? This is a strength of GRANTA MI. From raw test output, to processed results in a spreadsheet, to reference information, GRANTA MI can capture data directly from a very wide range of common sources. These include materials testing machines and analysis software. The system is also adaptable to new sources.

The relational structure of GRANTA MI allows links to be created during import, capturing relationships with other pertinent pieces of information. 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
  

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.

You can intepret or manipulate a ny data within GRANTA MI with 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, you might use this feature to record the pedigree of individual data points used in an analysis. Any statistically-based data point resulting from this analysis is automatically linked to 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.

• 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
  

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 your enterprise who deals with materials data — suppliers, purchasing departments, stock control, and quality assurance staff. A key focus is the engineers who use materials data in engineering simulation and design. Information must be as easy as possible to access within their routine workflow.

GRANTA MI does this for you. First, data is prepared, certified, and published by materials experts, ready for the users who need it. Where required, data security is tightly controlled by GRANTA MI’s access control system, enabling data owners to limit access as necessary.

Engineers can then access this data simply via their PCs’ web browsers. GRANTA MI:Viewer is a web browser-based application that lets you browse, search, chart, plot, tabulate, and check data, and conduct property-based materials selections, comparisons or trade-off analyses — all on your desktop. Users can easily export data for analysis 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
  

You need to maintain your data and systems in dynamic enterprises where data, people, and the business environment change frequently.

One requirement is to easily re-apply analysis methods to updated data populations in order to refine existing design information. GRANTA MI's ability to capture all relevant data and its context in a single system makes such analysis much more straightforward.

The capture of contextual information also helps to protect against loss of knowledge and expertise when employees change roles or leave their jobs. With GRANTA MI, this knowledge is no longer only "in people's heads" or in their notebooks - you can search, browse, and analyze it.

You may also want to ensure that you are accessing the most up-to-date versions of external data sources. Granta supports this need by delivering regular data updates of its reference data modules.

• 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