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Materials Strategy - The Granta Solution

In most cases, the information required to optimize materials strategy exists within your company or in external references. But the process of capturing this information, marshalling it, analyzing it, applying it to make strategic decisions, and then ensuring consistent implementation of those decisions poses considerable challenges. This is particularly true where businesses need to go beyond established technical parameters for selecting materials and to consider instead a combination of technical and economic factors. Granta's pedigree and technology Granta has a strong pedigree in such complex analysis. The company was founded on the innovative Cambridge Engineering Selector (CES) technology. The CES Selector products let you apply this technology on your PC. Engineers can rationally select the right materials for engineering applications based on optimal combinations of materials properties. Materials producers can perform quantitative analysis and positioning of their materials.

In this section       Introduction   Critical issues The Granta solution   Customers & case studies   White papers & publications   Why Granta?       Supporting industry project       Materials Strategy Forum       Relevant products       GRANTA MI & MI:EMO   CES Selector   Reference data

Granta has also developed the industry's leading solution for materials information management, GRANTA MI. This integrated system to capture, control, and analyze and apply materials information is designed to deal with the peculiarities of plastics, metals, alloys, composites, ceramics, and their diverse mechanical, physical, processing, environmental, and economic properties. The system can manage your own test and legacy data, or data from external references, including Granta's extensive library of materials reference data.

Thus Granta offers both the materials information content and the information management and analysis capabilities required to support strategic materials decisions.

MI:EMO - make and implement decisions

Now Granta has combined these elements in a revolutionary new software product, available within the GRANTA MI environment, the Enterprise Materials Optimizer (MI:EMO).

The Enterprise Materials Optimizer is designed to support strategic decision-making - allowing you to apply advanced Granta selection technology to materials information held in your GRANTA MI system. Not only does it allow easy ranking and comparison of materials, it also makes it easy to combine considerations of materials function and 'cost' in peforming analyses. 'Cost' could be financial (measured in dollars) or it could be, for example, a measure of environmental impact. MI:EMO is thus a powerful tool enabling materials selection or substitution strategies to address issues such as low cost manufacturing or changing environmental regulation.

MI:EMO also helps to ensure that strategy is implemented enterprise-wide. For example, you can configure its materials analysis tools using your own business rules and then make these available across your company, confident that it will help designers, purchasers, and others to make consistent, repeatable decisions. This an extremely effective means to, for example, implement a preferred materials list.

More on MI:EMO in the GRANTA MI product section...

Service and collaboration - the Materials Strategy Forum

Granta's solution is centered on our 'off-the-shelf' software, providing you with the assurance of robust quality and an ongoing development and maintenance program.

Beyond the standard support for this software, we are also pleased to offer optional consulting services to help you to implement and and configure the software to your company's specific process, and to integrate your data efficiently.

Augmenting this offering is the Materials Strategy Forum, a supporting collaborative project. The Forum draws on Granta’s success in working with the Material Data Management Consortium (MDMC), a collaboration of world-leading engineering organizations that ensures GRANTA MI meets the needs of best practice materials information management in engineering design. The MDMC provides members with a direct say in software development, ensuring that their needs are met, as well as valuable networking and support. The Materials Strategy Forum similarly guides the development and application of materials strategy solutions, giving participating companies a competitive advantage in their specification and use of materials.