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Hexagon introduces solution to plan, manage and optimise factories in digital reality

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The new Digital Factory solution will allow manufacturers to boost production and increase efficiency using accurate and up-to-date digital replicas of their factoriesThe solution can help global manufactures save millions each year by helping them reduce costs and avoid mistakes planning and building factoriesBy connecting asset digital twins to an accurate and up-to-date Digital Factory, companies can plan and operate more productive, flexible and sustainable future factories

FARNBOROUGH, England, July 24, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Hexagon’s Manufacturing Intelligence division has launched its new digitalisation solution, Digital Factory, designed to help manufacturers build highly accurate digital replicas of their factories. It enables manufacturers to optimise their floor plans and quickly pivot production lines today, and prepare for smarter and more sustainable future factories with open interfaces that enable digital twins of shopfloor assets. Such solutions could save a global manufacturing company £35 million per year* by avoiding costly mistakes and offering a 50% reduction in travel costs and the on-site training staff require.

Hexagon is uniquely positioned to address this issue through its expertise in delivering best-in-class accuracy reality capture and surveying equipment, software to visualise, explore and simulate scenarios in 3D, and high-productivity cloud-native collaboration workflows. Digitalisation technologies are a proven technology and have been used for over two decades in civil infrastructure, architecture and public safety, but their potential has yet to be fully realised in the manufacturing space where significant disruption now requires manufacturers – in particular brownfield site owners – to rethink their manufacturing equipment and use of space.

According to research conducted by Forrester and commissioned by Hexagon, 32% of manufacturers believe that outdated or ineffective manual processes and workflows are barriers to productivity and collaboration. Digital Factory is a future-ready alternative to traditional factory planning that enables manufacturers to not only ramp up productivity, but also increase efficiency in remodelling, preventing costly mistakes. It also empowers more efficient collaboration between manufacturing and operations teams from anywhere in the world. The core of this solution is improved access to up-to-date data in immersive virtual environments that reflect reality, addressing a major barrier that smart factory initiatives face today.

Digital Factory leverages a comprehensive portfolio of hardware and software solutions that includes Hexagon’s award-winning range of reality capture technology – such as the Leica BLK2GO handheld imaging laser scanner, the Leica BLK ARC autonomous scanning module for robotic and mobile carriers and terrestrial laser scanners like the Leica RTC360 – that allow manufacturers to capture and create dimensionally-accurate point clouds of the factory floor using the Leica Cyclone software portfolio and Hexagon’s Reality Cloud Studio, powered by the HxDR, manufacturers can easily collaborate and quickly process data from Hexagon or a customer’s preferred scanning hardware to recreate up-to-date 3D spaces with speed and flexibility.

Hexagon offers complete workflows to ensure manufacturers achieve the maximum value, from scanning the factory and processing the data into actionable 3D models for various applications, to managing the data in the cloud, making it easier for team members and external stakeholders to provide feedback and make informed decisions. By using Digital Factory, manufacturers will be able to:

Conduct virtual tours for remote factory monitoring – Lead a digital tour of a factory with remote access, eliminating the need for managers and contractors to travel onsite.Remote team collaboration – Facilitate remote collaboration among key teams and stakeholders at any time, using cloud-based tools with analysis and modelling capabilities with on-demand data. Factory planners and production managers can make decisions remotely and provide feedback with confidence based on reliable and up-to-date data.Plan and remodel factory layouts with accuracy and detail – Capture precise measurements of a factory, creating an exact and reliable digital model that can be accessed anytime from anywhere. Factory owners can regularly monitor the progress of production lines under construction in meticulous detail, avoiding the costs associated with unexpected errors.Easily upgrade and install equipment – Introduce and upgrade machinery such as machining centres, 3D printers, robotics and metrology systems by evaluating their addition or replacement in a risk-free digital model. This helps prevent expensive mistakes such as ordering incorrect parts, not having sufficient footprint or access to install a machine.Create operational test-beds and innovate faster – By testing out new machines, factory floor layouts and workflows in the virtual 3D environment, companies can quickly identify feasibility and emissions considerations, enabling them to better understand the potential benefits of new technology and make future-ready smart factories a reality.

Nicholas Lachaud Bandres, VP Industry Solutions at Hexagon commented: “Hexagon has developed a deep understanding of manufacturers’ needs. Digital Factory allows to bring the physical world into an accurate virtual sandbox of their factories on-demand. Collaborating with their team and suppliers, they can consider ‘what-if’ scenarios to shape more effective plant designs and layouts and oversee implementation with irrefutable and accessible 3D plans. We’re making the digital factory more affordable and accessible, and we’re excited to see how our customers apply this to ramp up and remain competitive with smarter factories.”

Digital Factory is designed to integrate with existing customer workflows. It is interoperable with Building Information Modelling (BIM) applications, Hexagon’s HxGN EAM enterprise asset management solutions and popular CAD software such as AutoCAD and Bentley.

Notes to editor

High resolution images of a digitized factory, virtual machine deployment and factory scanning are available.

*Hexagon estimates that the cost of missing a factory digital reality can be up to €210,000 per year per site. For a global manufacturing company with 200 sites, this amounts to €42 million annually. This calculation considers the costs associated with errors due to outdated factory layouts, a 50% reduction in travel and travel-related expenses, and a 50% reduction in on-site training by implementing virtual factory visits and virtual training instead. Additionally, it accounts for the CO2 emissions that can be saved.

Media contacts

Robin Wolstenholme 
Global Media Relations and Analyst Relations Manager 
Hexagon’s Manufacturing Intelligence Division 
Phone: +44(0)7407 642190 
e-mail: robin.wolstenholme@hexagon.com

Global press office: media.mi@hexagon.com

About Hexagon

Hexagon is a global leader in digital reality solutions, combining sensor, software and autonomous technologies. We are putting data to work to boost efficiency, productivity, quality and safety across industrial, manufacturing, infrastructure, public sector, and mobility applications. 

Our technologies are shaping production and people related ecosystems to become increasingly connected and autonomous – ensuring a scalable, sustainable future. Hexagon’s Manufacturing Intelligence division provides solutions that use data from design and engineering, production and metrology to make manufacturing smarter. For more information, visit hexagonmi.com.

Hexagon (Nasdaq Stockholm: HEXA B) has approximately 23,000 employees in 50 countries and net sales of approximately 4.3bn Euro. Learn more at hexagon.com and follow us @HexagonAB.

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ModelBest and OpenBMB Open-Source MiniCPM-OCR Series, Delivering High-Performance Document Parsing and AI-Powered Quality Control

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BEIJING, Oct. 31, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — ModelBest and OpenBMB jointly announced the release and open-source availability of the MiniCPM-OCR series, a family of models for efficient document parsing and parsing-quality assessment. The launch includes two models: MiniCPM-OCR 1.0 (1.3B) and MiniCPM-OCR Jev (2B).

As the first OCR-focused model in the MiniCPM family, MiniCPM-OCR 1.0 brings top-tier parsing accuracy to a compact 1.3-billion-parameter architecture optimized for edge deployment, pushing forward the balance between efficiency and performance for open-source OCR models. Built for real-world conditions, it accurately parses scanned, photographed, curved, tilted and screen-captured documents without cumbersome image pre-correction, lowering the barrier to large-scale document digitization.

The model handles dense bilingual Chinese-English content, complex mathematical formulas, and multi-level or borderless tables, consistently performing at a leading level across a broad range of mainstream industry evaluations. Beyond full-page reconstruction, it supports key information extraction (KIE), pulling specified fields from invoices, IDs and financial statements according to business instructions.

Powered by DSpark decoding acceleration, MiniCPM-OCR 1.0 significantly increases end-to-end throughput while lowering per-page latency. For enterprises processing millions of pages—such as financial contract archives, academic libraries and government records—this means processing far more documents with the same hardware and time budget, at a substantially lower computing cost.

To address the long-standing need for page-by-page manual review, ModelBest and OpenBMB also introduced MiniCPM-OCR Jev, the first OCR result decision model that acts as an “AI quality inspector.” Rather than performing OCR itself, Jev compares the source image with OCR output and rapidly assigns confidence scores to text, LaTeX formulas and tables, detecting missing characters, errors and formatting misalignments. Despite its compact 2B-parameter size, Jev delivers judgment accuracy typically associated with far larger models.

Jev supports cross-model deployment and can be integrated into existing OCR workflows without replacing the underlying OCR engine. It can automatically identify reliable results for direct processing, flag potentially inaccurate outputs for human review and select the best result from multiple OCR systems. This enables enterprises to move from full manual inspection toward risk-based, automated quality control.

The MiniCPM-OCR series is available on GitHub, Hugging Face and ModelScope, and supports vLLM, SGLang, llama.cpp and Ollama, along with SDKs, APIs, Agent Skill plugins and open-source fine-tuning code. Day-0 hardware adaptation covers AMD, Arm, Houmo AI, Intel and NVIDIA. Through the FlagOS software stack, it also has Day-0 support for AI and edge chips from CIX Technology, Huawei Ascend, Hygon, Iluvatar CoreX, Kunlunxin, MetaX, Moore Threads, Sunrise, T-Head, TsingMicro, NVIDIA and Apple Mac (Arm).

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SOURCE ModelBest

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Wulcea Elevates Consumer Trust in Heated Apparel Through Multi-National Safety Certifications and Rigorous Technical Testing

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NEW YORK, Oct. 31, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — As smart heated clothing gains broader adoption, consumers are paying closer attention to the safety and reliability of the technology behind these products. Wulcea, a brand specializing in graphene-powered heated apparel, combines its flexible GrapheneNano™ heating technology with documented safety compliance and durability testing for its heating components and battery systems.

“Trust in smart heated apparel goes beyond warmth—it comes down to confidence in battery safety and heating element reliability,” said John C, Founder of Wulcea. “Our goal is to give users peace of mind through certified technical standards.”

Advanced Graphene Heating Elements Supported by Global Standards

At the core of Wulcea’s thermal architecture is its GrapheneNano™ heating technology. Engineered to eliminate garment stiffness, Wulcea integrates flexible graphene elements that deliver balanced warmth across key upper-body zones while preserving natural garment drape and full freedom of movement.

Wulcea supports its heating components with applicable compliance documentation for major markets. These include CE and FCC compliance documentation addressing relevant electrical and electromagnetic compatibility requirements, as well as PSE compliance for applicable products in Japan. RoHS compliance further addresses restrictions on specified hazardous substances in applicable electrical and electronic components.

Multi-Certified Battery System for Dependable Power

To power its heating elements, Wulcea pairs its heated apparel with rechargeable battery systems designed for convenient everyday use. Featuring a compact design and housed in dedicated interior pockets, the batteries provide portable power while maintaining a streamlined garment profile and comfortable fit.

Wulcea backs its battery options with comprehensive third-party accreditations. UL certification demonstrates that the battery system has been evaluated against recognized power bank safety requirements, covering key areas such as overcharge protection, short-circuit protection, and thermal safety. The battery systems are also supported by applicable CE and FCC compliance documentation, addressing relevant regulatory requirements for electrical and electromagnetic compatibility.

For daily handling and travel, RoHS compliance validates that the battery system meets stringent global standards for material safety. The battery models have also undergone applicable UN 38.3 testing, supporting compliance with international requirements for lithium battery transportation.

Real-World Durability and Practical Usability

Component compliance forms Wulcea’s foundation, but reliability is defined by real-world performance. Built for high-flex endurance, Wulcea’s flexible graphene heating elements are tested through 10,000 active flexing cycles to maintain steady thermal output through repeated bending and everyday body movement.

Everyday convenience is equally essential. Built for hassle-free care, Wulcea’s heating elements withstand 100 machine-wash cycles under standard care guidelines, maintaining internal conductivity and structural stability under repeated laundering.

Integrated NTC temperature sensors provide thermal monitoring and are designed to stop heating if temperatures exceed 131°F (55°C). Combined with runtime of up to 10 hours on the low setting and a discreet interior control button, these features support practical everyday use in cold-weather conditions.

Aligning Technical Standards with Everyday Warmth

By combining graphene-based heating technology with documented battery safety compliance and durability testing, Wulcea continues to focus on the technical foundations of dependable heated apparel. This approach reflects the brand’s emphasis on bringing together safety considerations, practical functionality, and everyday comfort for cold-weather use.

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SOURCE Wulcea

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NIDS Co., Ltd. Confirms CES 2027 Participation, Pursues Expansion of Global Supply Chain for Environmental Sensors

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Company introduced optical and gas sensors at SEDEX and is strengthening its composite sensor business for robotics, home appliances, automotive, and smart building applications

SEOUL, South Korea, Oct. 31, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Environmental sensor manufacturer NIDS Co., Ltd. has confirmed its participation in CES 2027 and is moving to expand its global business-to-business (B2B) supply chain. Building on its experience supplying sensors to domestic and international home appliance and automotive companies, the company aims to secure overseas customers and extend its applications into smart building HVAC and robotics.

NIDS recently participated in the Korea Semiconductor Industry Association’s Sensor Pavilion at SEDEX 2026, held at COEX in Seoul, where it introduced its next-generation sensor modules. The company said the exhibition allowed it to raise awareness of its technology among domestic home appliance and electronic component industry professionals and to lay the groundwork for collaboration in the sensor field.

The company will use CES 2027 as its next stage. NIDS plans to firm up discussions on sensor module supply with global home appliance makers, HVAC specialists, and robotics companies. It aims to extend the industry contacts gained at the domestic exhibition overseas and to convert product introductions into actual supply opportunities.

Founded in 2000, NIDS develops and manufactures environmental sensors and air quality management solutions. According to the company, it has supplied more than 10 million sensors cumulatively to domestic and international companies, including Dyson, Samsung Electronics, and Hyundai Motor. Drawing on this supply track record, the company intends to showcase its precision sensing technology and mass-production capabilities to overseas customers.

Its main products include particulate matter sensors, optical gas sensors based on non-dispersive infrared (NDIR) technology, composite environmental sensors, and electronic nose sensor modules. The particulate matter sensors measure PM1.0, PM2.5, and PM10, while the gas sensor lineup targets carbon dioxide (CO₂), carbon monoxide (CO), and other gases. The electronic nose is used for detecting everyday odors, gas leaks, and fires. The company said it designs the core components required for air quality measurement in-house and has a system in place to mass-produce 5 million units annually.

The area where NIDS will expand development and supply going forward is next-generation composite sensor modules. The company has been pursuing a sensor business that responds to industry-specific demand in home appliances, automotive, and smart building HVAC, and is now concentrating its capabilities on markets such as robotics, industrial safety, and odor detection based on this technology. Building on its experience supplying individual components, NIDS plans to continue developing and supplying, on a B2B basis, modules that handle multiple types of environmental data.

The company will also highlight its sensor product lineup and its newly developed ultra-compact MEMS sensor technology at the exhibition. NIDS plans to introduce its optical and gas sensor lineup along with examples of their application in actual air quality management systems. By explaining both the measurement functions of its components and its experience operating sensors for finished-product services, the company aims to broaden the scope of partnership discussions.

NIDS explained that, because it owns its precision sensors, it can control sensor sensitivity and tune algorithms to suit the system in which they are applied. Drawing on this technical operating experience, the company plans to pursue partnerships with customers and to promote its business capabilities extending from sensor components to air quality and odor management and industrial safety management.

NIDS will also leverage its existing branch network in its overseas market development. Through its overseas bases in the United States, Japan, and China, the company plans to widen its touchpoints with buyers and seek new supply opportunities in conjunction with its CES participation. Its goal is to generate export results by combining exhibition participation with its local networks.

The company intends to keep expanding the global supply of sensor components as a core pillar of its business. Building on the supply experience accumulated in home appliances and automotive, it will broaden its partners to robotics, HVAC, and smart buildings, and respond to industry-specific air quality measurement demand through the development of next-generation modules.

“We plan to continue expanding the development and B2B supply of next-generation composite sensor modules needed across a range of industries, including home appliances, automotive, and smart building HVAC,” NIDS said.

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SOURCE NIDS Co., Ltd.

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