Solumina is a manufacturing software platform built by iBase-t, designed for industries where production is complex, highly regulated, and demands full traceability. It combines manufacturing execution (MES), quality management, and maintenance capabilities into a single system, giving manufacturers a real-time digital record of every step in production. The platform is used primarily in aerospace and defense, nuclear, medical devices, electronics, and industrial equipment manufacturing.
What Solumina Does
At its core, Solumina manages the shop floor. It tells technicians exactly what to do at each step of a build, enforces the correct sequence of operations, verifies that tools are properly calibrated, and records everything as it happens. This matters most in industries where a single missed step or undocumented change can ground an aircraft or trigger a regulatory violation.
The platform creates what’s known as a “digital thread,” a continuous data trail that connects a product’s design in engineering software, its actual build process on the factory floor, and its business records in an ERP system. Instead of relying on paper travelers or disconnected spreadsheets, manufacturers get a single source of truth for how every unit was built, what materials went into it, and whether every quality check was completed.
Core Modules and Functions
Solumina is organized around several modules that each handle a specific part of the manufacturing process:
- Process Execution Management is the central engine. It enforces proper workflows so that every technician completes every step with the right calibration, tooling, and data collection. Technicians see real-time work instructions with graphics and text guiding them through each task.
- Resource Management tracks machines, tooling, and materials in real time. It checks machine and tooling compatibility, flags equipment due for preventive maintenance, and enforces calibration requirements. It also tracks parts coming from suppliers to make sure each process starts on time.
- Production Definition Management handles all bills of materials (BOMs) associated with a product, including engineering BOMs and CAD models. When a product design changes, the system updates process plans in real time so the shop floor is always working from the latest revision.
- Product Tracking and Genealogy follows every material, part, and component as it moves between work centers. It transmits work-in-progress inventory levels back to your ERP system and maintains a complete product history from initial design through the customer’s use and eventual disposal.
- Quality Management documents all as-built information down the entire production tree, giving users access to real-time data to enforce quality control and meet traceability requirements.
- Change Management lets organizations push new process instructions to multiple production lines and plants simultaneously, ensuring every worker has the correct, up-to-date instructions without halting production schedules.
- Performance Analysis consolidates shop floor data into dashboards so that executives and supervisors work from the same real-time information. You can track product cycle time, resource utilization, scheduling conformance, and even supplier performance.
Industries and Use Cases
Solumina is purpose-built for what the industry calls “complex discrete manufacturing.” These are environments where products are assembled from many individual components, production runs may be low volume but high mix, and regulatory documentation requirements are extensive. Aerospace and defense is the platform’s strongest foothold, with many large, well-known companies in that sector among its customers.
The common thread across its target industries (aerospace, defense, nuclear, medical devices, electronics, industrial equipment) is that regulators or customers require proof of exactly how each unit was built. A medical device manufacturer needs to trace every component back to its lot number. An aerospace company needs to document every fastener installation, torque value, and inspector sign-off. Solumina automates that documentation as a byproduct of guiding the work itself, rather than requiring separate paperwork after the fact.
How It Connects to Other Systems
Solumina sits between two other major enterprise systems: product lifecycle management (PLM) software, where engineers design the product, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, where the business tracks orders, costs, and inventory. Connecting all three is what creates a complete digital thread across the product lifecycle.
The platform uses an integration framework called Business Integration Services (BIS), which relies on industry standards like OAGIS XML, event-driven messaging, and open APIs. This framework is designed to be agnostic to the source system, meaning it can connect to whatever PLM or ERP a company already runs. Notable integrations include PTC Windchill, Siemens TeamCenter, and Dassault 3DX on the PLM side, and SAP, Deltek, IFS, and Oracle on the ERP side.
In practice, this means an engineering change made in PLM can flow into Solumina’s work instructions without manual re-entry, and production data captured on the shop floor can flow back to ERP for costing and scheduling without duplicate data entry.
Technical Architecture
The current generation of Solumina, called iSeries, runs on a cloud-native, microservices architecture. This is a shift from earlier versions of the platform. Instead of one large monolithic application, the system is broken into smaller, independent services that can be updated or scaled individually. The infrastructure uses Kubernetes, a container orchestration platform that manages how those microservices are deployed and maintained.
For manufacturers migrating from the older G-Series version to iSeries, the transition involves building new infrastructure, establishing updated security baselines, and reconfiguring customizations. One documented migration allocated roughly two months for environment setup alone (months five and six of the overall project), giving a sense of the planning involved.
Who Solumina Is For
Solumina is an enterprise platform, not a tool for small job shops. Its sweet spot is mid-to-large manufacturers operating in regulated industries where traceability, compliance documentation, and real-time production visibility are non-negotiable. If your production involves paper-based travelers, disconnected quality systems, or manual data reconciliation between engineering and the shop floor, Solumina is designed to replace those processes with a unified digital system that captures everything as work happens.