Authentise has been awarded a grant from the EU’s Horizon 2020 program to assist with their integration of nebumind.
Authentise is a Philadelphia-based service providing powerful data-driven workflow management tools, including a manufacturing execution system they call “aMES” for additive manufacturing.
The company has been beefing up their capabilities over the past few years, with the addition of a material management workflow, an in-processing monitoring solution and most recently a digital twin solution through an integration with nebumind.
If you’re not familiar with nebumind, it is a German firm offering a sophisticated data visualization system for manufacturing. They absorb sensor data from actual operations and transform it into a digital twin.
The digital twin is a virtual representation of a physical object, and it can be inspected or tested in a much more efficient manner than can be done on the physical object. For additive manufacturing this technology presents an approach for creating complex quality control solutions.
Smartly, Authentise partnered with nebumind to integrate their capabilities directly into aMES. This provides aMES users with significantly more powerful methods of analyzing AM output.
But the news today is that Authentise has been provided a grant to assist with this integration by the EU Horizon 2020 program, through partner Digifed.
Digifed is an organization whose goal is to help companies digitize their operations. It seems that the EU believes (correctly) that digitization of manufacturing will be a key success factor in the years ahead. The Horizon 2020 program’s intent is to help EU companies reposition themselves for the post-COVID era that seems to be taking a different form than before the pandemic.
There are plenty of changes now underway in our world, from work-at-home roles, to electrification, to cryptocurrencies, to active transportation and many others.
One of the big changes relevant to AM is the vastly increased importance of flexible manufacturing. While previous supply chains were intensely focused on low-cost, efficient systems, the pandemic showed them to be extraordinarily fragile. Many manufacturers have been seeking more flexible solutions, and for a number of technical reasons, have focused on AM as a key tool.
However, you can’t just switch to AM, as the technology must fit into a sophisticated manufacturing process, one where many parties could be involved. There will be greatly increased use of additive manufacturing through onsite, remote or external services, for example. Use of them will require a far more digital approach, one that allows great flexibility in routing, analyzing and monitoring information, sometimes in real time.
That’s the market that companies like Authentise are pursuing, because the solutions are complex and it’s unlikely a company could develop them on their own. Instead it’s far easier to simply use an already-developed solution like Authentise’s aMES.
This, I believe, is the reason Digifed is providing the grant to Authentise: they want to speed up the digital transformation of EU manufacturers, and the Authentise-nebumind combination could be a key driver.
For Authentise this is incredibly good news, because it allows them the freedom to perform the integration without depending on client requests and payments to fund the develop it.
Authentise CEO Andre Wegner explained:
“We’re delighted to have been selected for this highly competitive programme by the European Union. It not only speaks to the power of nebumind’s digital twin visualization solution but also validates the Authentise approach. Unlike many larger companies, we explicitly don’t want to build or own everything ourselves. We’d rather partner. It makes sense because there’s still a lot of work to do, and these kinds of partnerships free us up to solve other challenges. It also makes sense for customers because they save time from no longer having to interact with multiple software solutions and are guaranteed cutting edge solutions by specialization and constant innovation. We’re delighted that the EU has recognized this and is supporting this integration.”
Somehow I don’t think this will be the last integration for Authentise.
Via Authentise, Digifed and nebumind
