Great manufacturing is accumulated human intelligence

ShapeSense is the Decision Library for Manufacturing — a platform that reads and understands engineering artefacts (drawings, CAD models, BOMs, specifications) and connects them to enterprise evidence (supplier history, quality records, cost outcomes, inventory) to create compounding intelligence. Unlike CAD search tools or AI copilots, ShapeSense does not just find similar parts — it surfaces every decision ever made about similar engineering problems, making organisational experience reusable for the first time.

ShapeSense is built for engineering, sourcing, quality, and manufacturing teams at OEMs and Tier-1 suppliers with decades of accumulated engineering artefacts. If your organisation has engineering drawings, CAD files, or PLM records going back ten or more years — and your teams spend weeks finding information that should take minutes — ShapeSense is built for you.

The Decision Library is where engineering decisions become reusable organisational intelligence. It is the core of ShapeSense — a continuously growing repository that connects every engineering artefact to the decisions, outcomes, and evidence surrounding it. When an engineer searches for a similar part, they do not just find the geometry — they find the supplier who made it, the quality failures that occurred, the cost it was produced at, and the decisions that were taken. Every new decision added to the library makes the next one faster and better. Intelligence compounds rather than disappears.

CAD search tools find geometrically similar parts. PLM systems manage engineering files and workflows. Neither captures the decision behind the design — why a supplier was chosen, why a revision was made, what failed and what worked. ShapeSense is not a search tool and not a PLM replacement. It is the intelligence layer that sits between your existing systems — reading what CAD, PLM, ERP, and QMS store separately, and connecting it into a single Decision Library that compounds with every program, deployment, and outcome.

Most enterprise systems treat every new program as a fresh start. Engineers rediscover what was already known. Suppliers are re-qualified. Failures repeat. ShapeSense changes this by ensuring every decision adds to a growing body of organisational intelligence. Every decision strengthens the next. Every outcome recorded makes the next recommendation sharper. ShapeSense doesn’t reset between programs — it compounds across them.

Engineering intelligence is the accumulated knowledge behind every engineering decision — why a supplier was chosen, why a tolerance changed, why a quality issue recurred. Most systems record the decision. Engineering intelligence preserves the reasoning behind it.

Engineering data rationalization connects and deduplicates decades of CAD files, drawings, PLM records, and supplier data so the intelligence buried in them becomes accessible. ShapeSense automates this using geometric analysis — finding related components across programmes and systems that were never designed to communicate. The result is decades of engineering history made searchable in weeks.

CAD similarity search identifies geometrically related components using three-dimensional shape analysis rather than part numbers or file names. ShapeSense connects the geometric match to supplier history, cost records, quality findings, and inventory — turning a search result into a sourcing decision.

Design reuse helps engineers identify existing components that can satisfy a new engineering requirement before creating a new one. ShapeSense automatically finds technically relevant components across geometric families, programs, and enterprise systems—helping every new decision start with everything the organisation has previously learnt but hasn't recorded.

Duplicate part detection identifies identical or near-identical components sitting under different part numbers across an engineering catalogue. ShapeSense uses geometric analysis to surface these — reducing supplier complexity, procurement cost, and inventory overhead.

Engineering knowledge management captures and connects the expertise accumulated through years of design, manufacturing, and sourcing decisions. ShapeSense builds this automatically through geometric analysis and decision recording — creating a Decision Library that compounds with every deployment.

For incoming RFQs, ShapeSense surfaces evidence of similar work — cost history, process capability, supplier performance, quality outcomes. For outgoing RFQs, it connects the geometry to supplier capability, inventory positions, and cost actuals. Both directions run on the same geometric foundation.

PLM records what was decided — the revision, the approval, the change notice. ShapeSense records what was learned — the reasoning, the outcome, the evidence that informs the next decision. The two systems are complementary: ShapeSense reads what PLM stores and connects it to everything else.

Sourcing teams use ShapeSense to answer questions that currently take weeks: which suppliers have made similar geometry, what comparable work cost, whether inventory can satisfy demand before a new purchase order is raised. ShapeSense provides this evidence in seconds, built on geometric identity rather than part number matching.

ShapeSense is deployed with OEMs and Tier-1 manufacturers in automotive, industrial machinery, tractor and agricultural equipment, aerospace, and defence. Any manufacturer with ten or more years of CAD files, drawings, and PLM records will find compounding value in the geometric intelligence layer.