Eiger™ Fleet will enable More Control and Automation of Distributed Manufacturing
Today at RAPID + TCT 2021, Markforged, creator of the integrated metal and carbon fiber additive manufacturing platform, The Digital Forge, announced Eiger Fleet, a cloud-based software solution designed to accelerate the adoption of additive manufacturing operations at scale.
Eiger Fleet helps to transform additive manufacturing from a small-scale operation to a large globally-connected, distributed manufacturing fleet. It does this by giving organizations a secure, cloud-connected and centralized source of control over their Markforged 3D printers, users and part production.
As the newest addition to the Markforged Eiger software portfolio, Eiger Fleet is designed to help manufacturers adopt disruptive additive manufacturing technologies into their more traditional workflows. This software helps automate business processes through integrations with a company’s existing enterprise systems to expand access to the Digital Forge across their entire business. For organizations looking to scale their additive manufacturing capabilities, Eiger Fleet offers enterprise level features to manage users, devices and data with greater control and efficiency to print parts on demand at the point of need.
On the eve of the launch, Manufactur3D decided to catch up with Ted Plummer, Principal Product Manager at Markforged to know more about the launch and the product. In a candid interview with us, Ted Plummer shared his views on how the company is advancing cloud-based distributed manufacturing with Eiger Fleet.
Q: What impact do you expect to see with the launch of Eiger Fleet?
Ted Plummer: Eiger Fleet demonstrates that with Markforged, cloud-enabled distributed manufacturing is here. Our customers are able to integrate additive technology into their traditional processes and scale their manufacturing operations to an enterprise-level with total control over quality and process for both tooling and end-use parts.
Eiger Fleet brings scalability to the Digital Forge’s already powerful combination of precise and reliable 3D printing hardware and cloud-based learning software, and a wide portfolio of 3D printing materials such as metals, composites and continuous fiber. Our technology enables some of the world’s biggest manufacturers to create digital supply chains that transcend the limitations of conventional manufacturing by fabricating robust production parts right on their own factory floors.
Q: What are the USP’s of Eiger Fleet over its competitors?
Ted Plummer: With Eiger Fleet, we are providing our customers with a single hand to shake by combining hardware, materials, and software to create a full-stack manufacturing solution that reliably delivers value every day.
Whether our customers need: a secure digital inventory, cloud powered management for a distributed printer fleet, or the tools to integrate your platform into your existing business processes, Eiger Fleet is the tool that modern manufacturing businesses need to take control of their supply chain and to reinvent manufacturing so they can build anything they imagine.
Q: What can you tell us about the security safeguards in Eiger Fleet?
Ted Plummer: Markforged is committed to security, and our customers and their data is at the center of our product and engineering decisions. Eiger Fleet builds on this foundation by providing our customers with the user and printer management capability to govern their operations at a global scale. Eiger Fleet supports role-based access control for determining which folders are accessible by which teams and which permissions the users in those teams have regarding parts in those folders. This unlocks access to 3D printing more broadly across the enterprise without the need for access directly to highly sensitive/confidential files to everyone.
Q: How will the future of Eiger Fleet be shaped?
Ted Plummer: We cannot reveal much about the features and scope for now, but customers are at the center of everything we do at Markforged and we look forward to growing the capabilities of the Digital Forge to support their additive manufacturing operations.
A Case for Eiger Fleet
Vestas Wind Systems A/S, a global leader in sustainable energy solutions, utilizes Eiger Fleet to manage the production of parts and tools for their global fleet of wind turbines on Markforged 3D printers.
“Over the past several years, Direct Digital Manufacturing (DDM) has evolved at Vestas to connect our factories around the world to support agile production of parts and tools on demand. We depend on the Markforged platform with Eiger Fleet and Blacksmith to provide the centralized control, enterprise resource planning (ERP), asset management, and other system integration and print analysis for industrial grade additive manufacturing that our global business needs.”
– Jeremy Haight, Principal Engineer, Industrial Automation and Additive Manufacturing at Vestas
With Eiger Fleet, Vestas has enabled their teams to order a part from their ERP system, creating a digitized Kanban inventory system, and have that part produced by a Markforged 3D printer nearest to them with the click of a button. Vestas is also cutting lead time and costs with Eiger Fleet which drives agility and quality. One example identified by Vestas is a marking tool critical for proper assembly of blades on its wind turbines that previously required a lead time of three weeks and costs thousands of dollars and now requires only three days from design to installation and costs under $100.
Eiger Fleet is designed to enable customers to:
- Control which part, build, devices, print operations and data are accessible to users according to job responsibilities and privileges by leveraging Role-based access control (RBAC)
- Provide frictionless user and administrator experience through Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) and Single Sign-On (SSO), where automated account provisioning reduces IT costs and easily and consistently enforces strong access policies with identity protection
- Connect, simplify and automate workflows with Eiger API, connecting their additive manufacturing processes to their existing enterprise software systems
- Seamlessly manage their entire digital inventory of parts, leveraging batch operations and organization-wide presets
- Easily track, analyze and share key performance indicators of time and cost savings from additive manufacturing
According to David Benhaim, CTO and co-founder of Markforged “Additive technology is transforming manufacturing around the world. Eiger Fleet fuels the expansion of additive manufacturing by giving our customers the right set of control and management tools that address the concerns of security, quality management, auditing or user error. Our customers are able to grow their operations with the right level of control over quality and process. Eiger Fleet is setting the pace for what’s possible in the future of manufacturing, through cloud-enabled distributed manufacturing.”
Eiger™ Fleet is available worldwide today as a paid software subscription on all Markforged printers. Attendees at RAPID + TCT 2021 can stop by booth #E7207 to see Eiger Fleet and the Digital Forge in action.
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