iMaterials - Materials Verification & Control Software

A Unique Approach to Shop-Floor Materials Control & Verification

A single error in materials setup will ruin a lot of product quickly.  Slow and cumbersome changeovers of materials between jobs reduce productivity and on-time shipments. Materials traceability adds overhead when handled in the traditional way.

iMaterials is the most adaptable, configurable answer to these problems. A factory-wide technology to ensure every component, cart, feeder, recipe, bin, operator, tool, and chemical is at the right place at the right time. And better still, total traceability is the end benefit to this total control.

Point-of-Use Materials Control

iMaterials guides and controls setup and verification at as many or as few stations as desired. From machines to hand workstations with bins of components, it ensures stations are ready before product is assembled.

A simple, highly graphical interface guides operators through the process. Unlike traditional traceability solutions requiring scans of materials for every unit that passes a station, iMaterials retains a ‘state’ of the station, greatly reducing operator transactions

Adapts to Your Way of Working

Aegis learned that manufacturers have strong opinions about how station setup and materials control should be conducted. We also learned that most every company’s opinion is unique.

In response to this challenge, iMaterials was made completely configurable. The user interface look and feel, the sounds, the speech, its reactions to errors and input, etc. are all configurable. Even the strategy and tactics used offline or online are adjustable.

It can be made to accommodate your specific preferences for how operators should conduct a changeover and setup.

Where other solutions expect you to adapt your process to its one way of operating, iMaterials brings control to the way you already prefer to operate. No other solution approaches the challenge in this manner.

Works with Existing Investments

Many manufacturers already own software products for setting up feeders and carts on machines. Often provided by the machine vendors, they tend to be well integrated to smart feeding systems.

iMaterials leverages the value of these investments rather than expecting customers to replace them. In some applications, the iMaterials interface might be found on the printer, at the rework cell, and at hand stations, but on the placement machines the setup information Aegis requires is actually emerging from the vendor’s setup software.

The result is the same-the traceability and visibility functions work as if iMaterials was controlling the machines as well. It’s seamless, effective, and cost efficient.

Voice and Tone Guidance

If operators are spending more time looking to a setup screen than actually setting up stations, that is not a very efficient materials control solution. With iMaterials, the system may be used with minimum peripherals through the use of voice synthesis and tones that guide operators without them being in range of a monitor.

This technology is fully customizable even to the point of customers loading their own WAV files and the behavior of the prompts.

Developed in conjunction with a Japanese manufacturer where over 11 changeovers of dual-sided lines are conducted per day and not a moment is wasted in production time. A highly lean technology where ultimate efficiency is mandatory.

Machine Integration

Where traceability and efficiency are the goals, machine integration becomes critical. iMaterials works seamlessly with Aegis xLink technology to leverage the information within the machines themselves.

Smart feeder events and the placement records from the machines are the only means to achieve Level 4 component traceability. Aegis has many such machine xLink adapters’ available out-of-the-box.

iMaterials integrates to the great majority of placement machines to ensure your traceability data set is exact and complete. It also reduces the number of transactions by integrating to the existing smart feeding systems at a digital level.

Traceability, Visibility & Predictive Perform.

iMaterials produces rich materials and device history traceability through the Aegis system via multiple outputs. First, the real-time visibility comes through Aegis iMonitor dashboards.

Predictive outputs like projected time of job completion, and time or units until a machine goes down due to depletion are all available active elements in iMonitor. Engineers can also include active tables showing operators which parts are needed next so they can stage the changeover for minimum downtime; everything operators need to maximum uptime and utilization.

For traceability, Data Miner reports and the ‘Trace’ tab in any Aegis web browser will instantly provide rich forward and reverse traceability as well as unlimited nested assembly drill down to the exact component lot complement of a unit.