Ansys has just announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire material selection specialists, Granta Design. For those working in materials and their data management, this is a fascinating move. For those that aren’t familiar with Granta Design, chances are that if you’ve been through the university system and studied materials selection, chances are you’ve come across the work of Mike Ashby and David Cebon’s seminal textbooks on materials selection – and the associated Cambridge Engineering Selector software.
Granta Design was established to take this educational tools into the commercial world and has since grown into one of the most consistently fascinating companies we write about. It has grown way beyond its roots and offers a set of enterprise-class tools, Granta MI, that helps manage materials data for the types of companies that need such systems in place. But at the same time, it has never forgotten its roots in Cambridge (headquartered just across the bridge from the mainline station) and it’s educational business grows each year.
The quotes from Ansys show how it is positioning this acquisition: “With advances in the performance of metals, plastics and other materials, including innovations in areas such as composites and additive manufacturing, manufacturers have a wealth of material choices when developing products. At the same time, they require accurate, traceable and reliable materials information to make smart materials choices and to ensure simulation accuracy. With this acquisition, Ansys customers can benefit from access to the world’s premier system for managing corporate material intelligence and the market-leading solution for materials sources, selection and management. Granta customers can expect even easier access to Ansys’ gold-standard simulation technology. Granta will continue its open ecosystem, integrating with a wide range of leading product lifecycle management, CAD and computer-aided engineering solutions.”
If you want to learn a little more about Granta CES (which is super useful for commercial customers too), our last review is here.
