Hexagon and MSC Software Debut The Smart Factory

Today's manufacturers are looking for smarter ways to improve quality and productivity. See how Hexagon and MSC Software are working together to enable the Smart Factory.

Here's a look at a few of Hexagon Smart Factory's technology initiatives in some more detail:

1. An important element of a ‘smart factory’ is Connected Devices. This concept refers to advanced new technology to connect all of your devices in your factory so that you can monitor and control them remotely, and, by looking at production data and sensor trends even predict when the machines will need servicing.

2. Another important ‘smart factory’ descriptor is the so-called ‘Digital Thread’, a simple concept of connecting sources of data to consumers of that data to create value. The ‘digital thread’ assists in breaking down the silos, letting the data flow smoothly through your organization to the teams and tools that need it in order to make decisions and take action. An example of this is Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence’s integrated manufacturing cell offering where we are breaking down the silo around metrology information and flowing product quality data “upstream” in the manufacturing process to make corrections and improvements to the manufacturing process, yielding even better product quality on subsequent parts. Another example of this is Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence’s Die Build Improvement project. Here the company will combine cloud-of-point inspection data from metrology with CAE tools from MSC and Forming Technologies Inc. (FTI) to more quickly and accurately calculate the die face geometry needed to correct for springback in a die set (see the FTI forming simulation prediction on the next page).

3. Another promising technology under the ‘smart factory’ umbrella is Artificial Intelligence (AI) – sometimes called machine learning (ML). It's now possible to use the advanced mathematical techniques of AI/ML to analyze the massive amounts of data that you have collected over time in order to gain some insight, make some predictions, and potentially even take direct autonomous action without human intervention.