How fiber-reinforced materials become sustainable through smart data management in PLM
Nexpirit is more than a Teamcenter implementation partner – the company actively thinks ahead about where the journey is heading. Since early 2023, Nexpirit has been an official project partner in the OntOMat research project, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and carried out together with Siemens, the Fraunhofer Institute IWM, the German Aerospace Center (DLR), and other renowned partners.
What's behind it?
“OntOMat” stands for: “Sustainable Ontology-Based Development and Optimization Solutions for Fiber-Reinforced Materials and Their Manufacturing Processes.” In simpler terms, the project is about better understanding, describing, and advancing composite materials – such as carbon-, glass-, or natural-fiber-reinforced plastics used in modern 3D printing – and developing them in a targeted way.
The goal: a shared, structured knowledge database (a so-called ontology) that brings together material data, manufacturing processes, and component information – in a way that the entire industry can benefit from.
What is Nexpirit's role in the research project?
Nexpirit brings to the project what the company does best: Teamcenter. The task is to integrate the lifecycle-spanning digital material twin for fiber-reinforced composites directly into the PLM – based on a generic data model.
In concrete terms: a material can be fully mapped in Teamcenter from raw material through to the finished component. Every step in the manufacturing process – including external variables such as temperature, humidity, and material composition – is captured in a structured way and made analyzable. This makes it possible to identify which process parameters influence material properties and how manufacturing can be optimized in a targeted way.
For this task, Andreas Schott, Product Manager and Teamcenter expert at Nexpirit, developed a dedicated tool: the Formalized Process Description Tool (FPD Tool) – a Teamcenter tool that captures process descriptions in a structured format and makes them directly importable into the PLM. This is complemented by a Knowledge Graph Server that stores material data in descriptive form – a technology that is particularly well-suited for AI integration in the future.
Why does Nexpirit do this?
Research projects like OntOMat offer a rare opportunity: to develop industry-relevant solutions that address real challenges – with manageable investment but significant impact. What emerges in the project doesn’t stay in the lab: the structures, tools, and insights developed flow directly into product development at Nexpirit.
What's next?
The project has been extended by six months and runs until mid-2026. In this final phase, results will be finalized, data made available, and a final report compiled – bringing all project partners together. The developed solutions are to be made accessible to the entire German industry via the MaterialDigital platform.
Project info
Project: OntOMat
Funder: BMBF (Federal Ministry of Education and Research)
Duration: January 2023 – June 2026 (extended)
More infos: materialdigital.de/project/20
