Aria is an artificial intelligence- (AI-) powered software solution designed to support injection molding companies in managing process adjustments.
Posted by Alexandra Golden, Assistant Editor
Italy-based Smart Mold, a spin-off of the University of Padova and part of Sirmax Group that specializes in optimizing the plastic injection molding process, will present a new product at PLAST 2026 in Milan on June 10.
The new product is Aria, a software solution powered by an artificial intelligence– (AI–)–based system designed to support injection molding companies in managing process adjustments, making them faster and more repeatable.
The company says this was developed to address a common challenge in the industry that any change in production conditions requires adjustments that are often left to the individual operator’s experience. These conditions include a mold change, machine downtime, a change in material or the appearance of defects.
Any ineffective adjustment can result in scrap, unproductive machine time and wasted energy. The software helps the operator to restore the process to optimal conditions through guided recommendations based on defect analysis.
Aria measures the quality of the part, identifies defects and suggests the most effective corrective actions to achieve the desired quality more quickly along with providing decision-making support, Smart Mold says.
It uses computer vision and AI algorithms to continuously measure the severity of defects. This makes it possible to understand whether the process is improving, deteriorating or requires targeted adjustments, the company says. It also transforms the experience gained during mold testing and fine-tuning into a shared knowledge base that can be utilized over time by less experienced operators.
“In an industrial context where specialized skills are becoming increasingly hard to find, Aria helps companies standardize the process, reduce reliance on individual expertise and make quality management more accessible,” says Giovanni Lucchetta, founder and CEO of Smart Mold. “The aim is to bring process intelligence directly to the press, making molding more efficient, stable and repeatable. We are proud to have achieved this result, the outcome of years of research and experimentation, and to now be able to offer our customers such a high level of innovation.”
The software has been tested with an average reduction in the number of trials required to achieve quality from 25 to 3 and in the number of rejected parts from 128 to 8. This is an 88 percent reduction in set-up trials and a 94 percent reduction in scraps during process restart, which is a faster return to quality and improved production continuity.
Aria can be integrated with any injection molding machine and if there are no digital interfaces, the system can retrieve data directly from the machine’s monitor. Installation involves a vision system consisting of industrial cameras, controlled lighting and a local processing unit, without the need to modify the press.
Sirmax also brought its portfolio of its six main families of compounds to PLAST, developed in collaboration with customers through co-design processes.
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