Altra Motion, a premier global designer and manufacturer of motion control and power transmission solutions, has formed a strategic partnership with factory intelligence and software specialist, MTEK. Following Altra’s acquisition of leading motion control companies Kollmorgen, Thomson and Portescap, the alliance with MTEK supports Altra’s ongoing commitment to continue moving up the technology spectrum, offering more advanced solutions to its customers.    

MTEK CEO, Mattias Andersson, has a vision to accelerate and simplify the journey to smart manufacturing, enabling companies to efficiently capture and utilize data from increasingly connected machines and devices on their factory floors. The machines and processes in manufacturing ecosystems generate huge amounts of data. Today, this information is too often stored and analyzed in disconnected applications. There has been no intuitive way to use it to accurately correlate cause and effect and uncover actionable insights across the mass of data to improve performance, traceability, and control. MTEK’s core software solution, MBrain, connects to any machine or device in the factory, collecting and correlating machine data with production parameters and quality measures by using intuitive drag-and-drop advanced analytics tools like real-time SPC and Artificial Intelligence.

As an established manufacturer of motion control and power transmission systems and components, Altra is familiar with the growing trend for digitalization across the factory floor. Many of its leading brands offer products which can be designed to operate within the ‘Smart Factory’ environment, as well as hardware and software solutions for various factory automation applications.

David Ebling, president of two of Altra’s operating companies, comments: “We are committed to bringing the benefits of the digital factory and Industry 4.0 to our customers, both in terms of the services and solutions we offer and in the technologies we adopt in our own manufacturing facilities. Our partnership with MTEK will help accelerate this initiative.”

David continued, “For example, the AGV Systems division of Kollmorgen provides sophisticated software systems to forklift and AGV manufacturers and users which enable the conversion of traditional vehicles to autonomous ‘driverless’ solutions. Through this partnership our intention is to continue offering a high level of innovation and service to the AGV industry while collaborating with MTEK as we evaluate opportunities to expand our technological offering to a greater breadth of Altra customers globally.”

MTEK’s solutions have been adopted by an increasing number of manufacturers around the world which led to their seeking investments to support growth and expansion into new markets. The position of Altra as a minority owner in the business benefits both parties – Altra will have an inside track on the development of advanced motion control oriented IoT / Industry 4.0 technology software solutions while MTEK gains insight into how a leading manufacturer approaches the challenges of modern-day production.