Itaminas Slashes Time to Market by 60 Percent

Itaminas Comércio de Minérios of Sarzedo, Brazil, is a world-class leading provider of equipment and services associated with the mining and extraction of iron ore. Since 1959 the company has grown by investing in technological improvements and updating its processes to ensure large-scale production capable of meeting growing market demand. The company’s equipment currently produces roughly 6.5 million tons of iron ore annually.

Itaminas uses SOLIDWORKS® to develop and engineer its products. In 2022 the company connected SOLIDWORKS to the cloud-based 3DEXPERIENCE® platform and added modeling, collaboration, data management, and communication solutions from the 3DEXPERIENCE Works portfolio.

The cloud-based platform enabled Itaminas designers and engineers to have greater flexibility, collaborate more effectively, and improve quality while traveling less.

“With 3DEXPERIENCE Works solutions, time to market has accelerated by about 60 percent because designers and engineers can access project information and complete project designs in the cloud without having to travel to a customer site or be in the office,” Leonardo Malta, Itaminas Engineering Supervisor notes. “A project that used to take two to three days, we can now do in one day. We’ve become extremely efficient and productive in a smart, affordable way because using 3DEXPERIENCE Works solutions, we can literally visualize everything in the palms of our hands and quickly make adjustments.”
 

Adding 3DEXPERIENCE Works solutions to its SOLIDWORKS implementation has enabled Itaminas to completely eliminate design errors and associated scrap, rework, and plant shut-downs. Now the plants run 24 hours a day. Also, Itaminas designers have gained the bandwidth to absorb the work previously done by external designers, saving the company US$25,000 per project, and because the company creates everything in-house, prototyping costs have been greatly reduced.

In addition, after the first 10 projects, the company eliminated ore contamination issues and the associated ore contamination fines, generating a very high gross margin gain. Malta emphasizes, “The benefits of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform are immeasurable because we simply couldn’t support our level of production if we continued working in our traditional manner.”

Malta concludes: “With the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, our designers and engineers can better complete and manage the work and do it more quickly, which boosts profit margins. In short, the platform allows us to do much more with fewer resources and less plant downtime. Anyone who isn’t working in the cloud will find it difficult to compete.”