Intergraph® Process, Power & Marine (PP&M), part of Hexagon and the world’s leading provider of enterprise engineering software enabling smarter design and operation of plants, ships and offshore facilities, will announce today an agreement to acquire NESTIX of Oulu, Finland, a leading software supplier of data-centric production management solutions that allow connections to pipe, plate, profile cutting and panel welding machines. NESTIX’s skilled and experienced staff in Finland will join Intergraph as part of the acquisition.

The acquisition will be officially announced on the opening day of HxGN LIVE 2016, Hexagon’s international conference, at the Anaheim Convention Center.

The NESTIX marine products are currently included in Intergraph’s Smart™ Yard enterprise solution offering, branded as Intergraph Smart Production powered by NESTIX. This strategic acquisition solidifies the integration of NESTIX and provides Intergraph clients with a long-term solution for managing and nesting parts for fabrication and welding assembly. The NESTIX solutions, compliment Intergraph’s existing solutions for pipe fabrications, thereby providing clients with a complete shop floor solution for all pipe and steel part production management, across all industries.

Primary solutions that will become part of Intergraph’s best-in-class product portfolio are:

• NESTIX MES (Manufacturing Execution System) manages the planning and cutting processes of pipes and parts needed by onshore fabrication facilities. MES supports the creation of work packages, through to CNC machine control and real time tracking of the individual part and assembly creation processes
• NESTIX SHIP, an automated production management solution that controls the work queues as well as the production machine connections for all part fabrication and (welding) assembly work phases for offshore and shipbuilding industrie
• NESTIX Steel Service Center (SSC), a production control solution that supports the entire steel service center production process starting from product sales, fabrication, packaging and continuing onto delivery and invoicing of the steel part packages. NESTIX SSC customers apply the technology to support building construction projects (BIM) and industrial mechanical applications such as heavy equipment manufacturing
• NESTIX CUTTING, the most advanced solution for part nesting and controlling the plate-cutting processes, it supports all the latest plate-cutting technologies in flame, plasma, laser, water jet and shear cutting CNC machines

The NESTIX customer base is comprised of more than 500 clients in 40 countries, with a user community of greater than 8,000 professionals using the software on a daily basis. These customers include major steel service centers, shipyards, offshore yards, pipe fabricators, mechanical engineering companies and the steel construction industry.

Intergraph Process, Power & Marine president Gerhard Sallinger said: "The acquisition is the next logical step in our established partnership where both companies have proven to bring value to each other as an essential part of our Smart Yard fabrication solution. Intergraph continues to evolve our business by pursuing acquisition targets that expand our software solutions portfolio and provide our clients with greater enterprise productivity."

NESTIX managing director Hannu Käkelä said: "Intergraph’s global reach provides NESTIX with many opportunities to expand our solutions into new markets and provide more value to our existing customer base. We are very pleased to be joining the industry leader in the plant design arena and excited about the enterprise level capabilities that we can now offer fabricators."

In 2014, Intergraph PP&M released Intergraph Smart™ Production powered by NESTIX, a solution within its next-generation Intergraph Smart Yard offering. Smart Production enables yards and fabricators to control the entire module/block production process from digital design to parts fabrication through the completion of subassemblies, pipe spools, panels and module/block assemblies.