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How VLM Works Today’s manufacturers have been lulled into a false sense of security about the products they’re producing. Because they employ the latest manufacturing techniques, computer-aided and controlled everything, and have a vast amount of experience, they think every product coming off their assembly lines is the same as the one before it. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Simple logic tells us that if a manufactured fleet of 1000 products were really the same, they’d all wear-out and fail in exactly the same way at exactly the same time. But that’s not what happens. And the reason it doesn’t happen that way is because of variability. The same kind of variability that ensures no two fingerprints are alike, also means no two products will ever be alike, either, no matter how painstakingly they are made. Variability is born when the very molecules of the material are formed, and it affects every aspect of the product’s behavior thereafter. Variability begins in the microstructure of the material, but it doesn’t end there. At every stage, more and more variability is introduced. For instance, none of the 1000 products manufactured from our theoretical assembly line are ever stamped, forged, cut or honed exactly the same way. And of course, when they get out of the factory and into the customer marketplace, none of the products are going to be used the same way, and that creates still more variability—as much as it’s possible to create. All this variability makes it impossible to predict how a product is going to behave and what it’s useful life is going to be. Until now. For the first time, VEXTEC’s Virtual Life Management system provides a process for accurately representing and accounting for all the variability imposed on a product throughout its lifetime. But even more impressively, it all starts only one level above the molecular level where the variability in material processing creates granular microstructural “fingerprints” throughout the entire product’s makeup.
How materials affect mechanics. Almost all mechanical failures are material failures. But no one else works at such a deep level to understand how, why, and most importantly, when these failures occur. And no one else can apply their expertise to every aspect of your business to help make parts, systems and fleets more reliable and cost efficient. Because it is extremely beneficial, not to mention economical, to know just when, how and why a complex system like a jet engine, a bulldozer, or an automobile, is going to fail.
By understanding the characteristics of each material at the microstructural level, we can predict how that material will behave at the macro level in various conditions. That understanding has led to a scientific breakthrough with profound and far-reaching economic consequences for every company concerned about the reliability of their products, their reputation for quality, and ultimately, the value of their brand name.
How VLM is connected to your business. The effects of VEXTEC’s Virtual Life Management technology are so pervasive because the technology operates on a level that is itself pervasive. The microstructure of materials underlies all material behavior. And understanding materials at this microstructural level pays off at every level. There’s simply no other way to make everything you make better, faster, stronger, cheaper or more reliable. Perhaps the best news about this material behavior data is that you’ve probably already been collecting it. If you’ve been keeping warranty records, sales records, failure analysis, repair logs, manufacturing samples, anything that details product performance, then you actually have life cycle data with microstructural information hidden in it. Ultimately, every one of these records is, in some way, an indication of microstructural behavior. To make it truly valuable and turn it into information you can use to make real business decisions, VEXTEC needs to extract it, amplify it, and give it back to you in a form you can depend on.
How do we do that for you? Quite simply, we integrate our knowledge with yours. We look at existing business data, existing enterprise data, and product design, anything that details how your products have been performing. We combine that information with our microstructural mapping framework within our computational environment for managing variability. But even if none of this data exists (many companies never collected it in the first place because there has never been a way to derive anything useful from it), we can still provide you with remarkably accurate and valuable predictions. Our technology is that powerful The result is that, for the very first time, you get accurate, actionable data that can be used to improve the financial contribution of every business unit from product design to aftermarket. Only VEXTEC can do this because we understand the material science underlying the behavior of each material, and the probabilities created by variability at every level affecting your product performance. Therefore, we know how your parts are going to behave. And since behavior and reliability information from this microstructural level is extremely accurate, when we’re making predictions about product life cycles, we can tell you far more about your products than you could ever know, even from years of testing. Essentially, we can tell you what’s going to happen to your products in the marketplace, before they ever get to your customers. We can tell you about their life and why it is so, before they’re ever built.
VEXTEC’s Virtual Life Management provides this extraordinary accuracy because it’s built on three key developments
Together, these three elements make Virtual Life Management the most important breakthrough in manufacturing since the invention of the assembly line. Because for the very first time, VEXTEC tells manufacturers exactly what will be coming off their assembly lines, how well those products are going to perform, and how long they’re going to last.
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