Surface Design Solutions secured $365,000 in funding from the Richard King Mellon Foundation. This investment advances the company's mission to modernize surface engineering with smart manufacturing tools. The capital supports scaling its software and developing training materials for new manufacturing workers.
Empowering Manufacturing's Next Generation
The funding will accelerate the rollout of Surface Builder, Surface Design Solutions' new shop-floor software. This platform provides production workers with real-time feedback on surface performance, consequently eliminating slow or destructive testing methods. The company also co-develops effective training materials with experienced and newer employees.
Manufacturing faces a rising wave of retirements, creating a clear need to train new talent faster. Surface Design Solutions addresses this gap by preserving critical shop-floor knowledge and reducing onboarding time for new hires. This approach drives long-term manufacturing resilience.
Surface Design Solutions utilizes advanced physics-informed machine learning (PIML) technology. This unique approach predicts how a surface will perform, helping manufacturers avoid costly problems and boost their bottom line. Unlike broader industrial software providers like Siemens or PTC, Surface Design Solutions delivers actionable predictions with less data.
The company's technology empowers manufacturers to optimize surfaces, leveraging smart manufacturing tools to increase production yield, improve product performance, and enhance production efficiency. One global high-volume manufacturer reported a 35% increase in production efficiency using the software.
This investment directly addresses the critical challenge of skilled labor loss.
