With new waves of import tariffs creating uncertainty across global supply chains, engineering and sourcing teams are being pushed to rethink how they select materials. For companies designing and manufacturing physical products, these changes don’t just impact procurement—they threaten timelines, margins, and product performance. 

That’s where Ansys Granta comes in. Granta provides powerful materials intelligence that helps teams take a proactive, engineering-led approach to avoiding tariff-related disruption.

Localizing Materials Without Sacrificing Performance 

Rather than scrambling to find new suppliers after tariffs are in place, companies using Granta can identify alternative materials early in the design process. Granta offers access to an extensive library of materials reference data—including mechanical, thermal, electrical, and environmental properties—paired with tools that enable side-by-side comparison.

This makes it possible to switch from a material sourced in a tariff-impacted region to a domestically available alternative that meets the same performance criteria. By doing this during design, companies can avoid last-minute changes, reduce the need for revalidation, and keep projects on schedule.

Tailored Solutions for Aerospace, Automotive, and Consumer Products 

Aerospace manufacturers are under constant pressure to reduce weight, meet strict safety standards, and comply with global trade regulations. With Granta, they can find alternative high-performance alloys or composites that match flight-critical specifications while avoiding tariffed imports or export-restricted materials. Granta also supports the inclusion of aerospace-specific material data, such as the MMPDS (Metallic Materials Properties Development and Standardization) database—a widely trusted resource across the aerospace industry. This ensures that teams can confidently make material decisions based on standardized, flight-approved data. In the automotive industry, where cost optimization and production scalability are key, engineers can use Granta to compare locally available steels, polymers, and coatings without compromising crashworthiness, NVH, or thermal resistance. This becomes especially valuable when EV platforms need to be adjusted for regional manufacturing.

Consumer product companies, meanwhile, benefit by being able to rapidly pivot when global sourcing challenges impact components or packaging materials. Granta can help them maintain product performance and regulatory compliance—even when supply chains shift—keeping launches on track and cost targets intact.

Accelerating Design Decisions with Confidence 

One of the biggest challenges in material substitution is ensuring performance doesn’t take a hit. Granta eliminates that guesswork by giving engineers reliable, consistent data they can trust. Whether the goal is to match strength, reduce weight, maintain thermal conductivity, or comply with regulations, engineers can filter for materials that meet exact needs—then quickly assess tradeoffs. Granta’s comparison tools—such as direct comparison tables that break down performance metric by metric, and Ashby plots that visually compare materials across properties like stiffness, cost, and impact resistance—make it easy to evaluate options all at once and identify the best fit.

This speeds up decision-making and reduces risk. It also improves communication between engineering, sourcing, and leadership by making material choices transparent and data-driven.

 

Image Courtesy of Rand Simulation  

Strengthening Supply Chain Resilience

With global uncertainty continuing to affect logistics, trade, and energy costs, companies are putting renewed focus on supply chain resilience. Ansys Granta plays a role here too—by helping teams create standardized material datasets across business units and regions, it ensures consistency in design while still allowing for local sourcing flexibility.

Beyond just sourcing, Granta includes sustainability tools such as the Eco Audit feature, which enables teams to assess the environmental impact of material choices across the full product lifecycle. This includes factors like end-of-life disposal, recyclability, manufacturing energy usage, and even shipping-related CO₂ emissions based on transport methods and distances.

Teams can generate reports to evaluate changes in total CO₂ footprint, supporting both cost analysis and green energy initiatives. Companies with multiple manufacturing sites can use Granta to align on design intent while still sourcing materials regionally, helping to minimize exposure to tariffs, shipping delays, and environmental impact—while building smarter, more sustainable supply chains.

Image Courtesy of Rand Simulation  

A Smarter Way Forward 

Tariffs may be political, but the impact is deeply operational. The companies that win in this environment will be the ones that treat material strategy as a competitive advantage, not just a sourcing problem.

By integrating Ansys Granta into your design process, you can stay ahead of tariff-driven costs, reduce engineering rework, and build more resilient supply chains—without sacrificing innovation.

If your team is dealing with tariff exposure or sourcing bottlenecks, it may be time to explore what Granta can do for you.