by Gary Mintchell | Jan 2, 2015 | Automation, Internet of Things, Manufacturing IT, News, Operations Management, Organizations, Standards, Technology
Last month, the Obama administration announced another smart manufacturing initiative through a “Notice of Intent to Issue FOA.” That is a “Funding Opportunity Announcement.” This follows another initiative in which the Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition was awarded funds to develop several test beds.
In government-speak:
DE-FOA-0001262: Notice of Intent to Issue FOA entitled “Clean Energy Manufacturing Innovation Institute on Smart Manufacturing: Advanced Sensors, Controls, Platforms, and Modeling for Manufacturing” (DE-FOA-0001263)
The purpose of this Notice of Intent is to provide potential applicants advance notice that the Advanced Manufacturing Office (AMO), on behalf of the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), intends to issue a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) entitled “Clean Energy Manufacturing Innovation Institute on Smart Manufacturing: Advanced Sensors, Controls, Platforms, and Modeling for Manufacturing” (DE-FOA-0001263).
This Notice is issued so that interested parties are aware of the EERE’s intention to issue this FOA in the near term. All of the information contained in this Notice is subject to change. EERE may issue a FOA as described herein, may issue a FOA that is significantly different than the FOA described herein, or DOE may not issue a FOA at all.
NO APPLICATIONS WILL BE ACCEPTED THROUGH THIS NOTICE. Please do not submit questions or respond to this Notice of Intent. Prospective applicants to the FOA should begin developing partnerships, formulating ideas, and gathering data in anticipation of the issuance of this FOA. It is anticipated that this FOA will be posted to EERE eXCHANGE early in the year 2015.
FOA Documents
This announcement was accompanied by a release from the White House tying funding to enhancing US manufacturing export capability. The announcement reads:
[On December 11, 2014], at a meeting of the President’s Export Council (PEC), President Obama announced nearly $400 million to help improve the competitiveness of American businesses and workers by spurring new manufacturing innovations and giving America workers additional opportunities to improve and expand their skill sets for middleclass jobs.
To help support new advancements in manufacturing, the President will announce more than $290 million in public-private investment for two new Manufacturing Innovation Hub Competitions. The announcement fulfills the President’s 2014 State of the Union pledge to launch four new institutes this year, for a total of eight institutes launched so far, and puts the Administration past the halfway mark on the President’s original goal of creating 15 manufacturing innovation institutes supported through executive action.
In addition, the President will announce $100 million to expand apprenticeships for American workers – a proven training strategy for workers to learn the skills that employers need for American businesses to grow and thrive in a competitive global environment. Apprenticeships are also a path to the middle class – 87 percent of apprentices are employed after completing their programs and the average starting wage for apprenticeship graduates is over $50,000.
During the meeting, President Obama will also highlight the continued need to reform and simplify our tax code and the importance of opening up new markets abroad for American-made goods and services through tough, fair new trade agreements.
The PEC, chaired by Jim McNerney, President and CEO of Boeing and vice-chaired by Ursula Burns, Chairman and CEO of the Xerox Corporation, is the principal national advisory committee for exporting. The Council advises the President on government policies and programs that affect U.S. trade performance; promotes export expansion; and provides a forum for discussing and resolving trade-related problems among the business, industrial, agricultural, labor, and government sectors.
Last year, the United States exported $2.3 trillion dollars of goods and services, an all-time high, and today, exports support more than 11 million American jobs across 300,000 businesses. Manufacturing, in particular, is the engine behind our exports and innovation – contributing the majority of the nation’s exports and nearly three-quarters of its private-sector R&D. And American manufacturing is more competitive than it has been in decades, growing nearly twice as fast as the economy overall and adding 764,000 jobs since February 2010.
At the same time, businesses looking to move production to the United States consistently cite the skills of America’s workers, the most productive workforce in the world, as the reason for rooting jobs and investment here. These announcements build on that competitive strength by investing in manufacturing innovation and upgrading the skills of American workers through the proven model of apprenticeships.
Manufacturing Institutes
Manufacturing institutes serve as a regional hub, bridging the gap between applied research and product development by bringing together companies, universities and other academic and training institutions, and Federal agencies to co-invest in key technology areas that encourage investment and production in the U.S. This type of “teaching factory” provides a unique opportunity for education and training of students and workers at all levels, while providing the shared assets to help small manufacturers and other companies access the cutting-edge capabilities and equipment to design, test, and pilot new products and manufacturing processes.
Department of Energy-led Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute
A third of the nation’s energy consumption goes into manufacturing. New smart manufacturing technologies – including advanced sensors and sophisticated process controls – can dramatically improve energy efficiency in manufacturing, saving manufacturers costs and conserving the nation’s energy.
The Department of Energy will lead a competition for a new public-private manufacturing innovation institute focused on smart manufacturing, including advanced sensors, control, platforms, and models for manufacturing. By combining manufacturing, digital, and energy efficiency expertise, technologies developed by the institute will give American manufacturers unprecedented, real-time control of energy use across factories and companies to increase productivity and save on energy costs.
For energy intensive industries – like chemical production, solar cell manufacturing, and steelmaking – these technologies can shave 10-20% off the cost of production. The new institute will receive a federal investment of $70 million that will be matched by at least $70 million in private investments and represents a critical step in the Administration’s effort to double U.S. energy efficiency by 2030.
by Gary Mintchell | Oct 14, 2014 | Automation, Data Management, Internet of Things, M2M, Manufacturing IT, Operations Management, Software, Technology
Talk of Internet of Things / Industrial Internet / Connected Enterprise is growing. Consumer applications are partly to blame. Wearables for health and fitness and home automation are major consumer applications attracting attention and investment dollars.
The industrial case dates from at least 1999 when the cellular carriers were looking for new markets to sell data transmission (not foreseeing the smartphone boom). There was something called SCADA that used dial-up modems, FHSS radios and maybe T1 lines to send data from remote locations to a central command. Cellular could carry the data just as well — well, almost, because back in that day cell phone quality and dropped calls were a problem. Not like today. This was called M2M–Machine-to-Machine or Machine-to-Mobile.
The Internet and TCP/IP won. Now we see many companies jumping on the IoT bandwagen. We’re still defining what all the benefits will be, but we are certain that there will be many. GE calls this the Industrial Internet.
The GE Intelligent Platforms Business user conference, an occasional gathering, pops up on the radar in a couple of weeks. Unfortunately, I will not be there. A one-man shop can’t hit every conference. Especially a bootstrapping startup like this one. An interview with Rich Carpenter, Chief Technology Officer of GE IP became the next best thing to being there.
Rich described a progression that I’m beginning to see more of: collect data–>store data–>analyze (say for predictive maintenance)–>diagnose why things are not 100%–>recommendations that we’ve seen this before and here’s what you need to fix it.
Carpenter told me, “We still feel there’s a lot to be learned. We’re good at collecting data. Good at storing. We even can analyze for future failures. In some equipment, we can be 99.9%. But, we’re at best 30%-50% in diagnosing why. And we are really at 0%-10% on giving a recommendation on we’ve seen this before and here’s what you need to fix it.
He continues, “Our Smart Signal product that does predictive diagnostics has proven to be good. What’s happening these days is we’re changing from pushing it and doing pilots to where customers are saying ‘Wow this works, we have to have it.’ The reason is simple, every company if left on its own goes through this maturity curve. First, a guy goes out to feel asset. But that doesn’t scale. So we begin to remotely monitor, but still have to go out. Then we analyze and set limits for alarms. But those have problems. Then we add more intelligence like Smart Signal looking at the relationship among 20 variables and now you can predict better. Now you can start planning downtime–not wasting time and dollars due to unstable operations.”
Regarding what competencies are required, “First is platforms. We are trying to master cloud development paradigm. With the evolution of hardware power, we have to master massive parallel compute figuring out what it means to have infinite disk space. Second is around big data. That is an overused term. We look at it as volume of data. It also is a data variety problem–written notes, logs, genealogies, need to correlate and at ecosystem level. Third, expertise is needed user experience (not interface). How do you understand what problem customer is trying to solve and not just add new features. We hired 60-70 people to work on that. Then data science. How can we tease out insights from all the data and identify algorithms. Then cyber security–secure by design. Finally machine learning, model based control, sensor analytics.”
Then at last we need to think about the entirety of manufacturing. Carpenter, “We think these systems–ERP, PLM,MES–can no longer operate in silos. We have a close relationship with PTC. We are working to close the loop from design to manufacture. Then we have to look at the supply chain as just a step in the manufacturing process. Have the MES look at the whole chain and avoid things like incoming inspection.
by Gary Mintchell | Jan 30, 2014 | Automation, News, Technology
One potentially disruptive technology rapidly developing beyond the hobbyist stage is 3D printing. It has been around for a while, but new developments in printers and materials pop up at least weekly.
Most manufacturing has been subtractive–take a hunk of iron or steel or plastic, put it in a mill, lathe, machining center, and do like the famous artist who, when asked how he sculpted the statue said, “I just chip away all the marble that didn’t look like the statue.”
We also mold in various ways. My second manufacturing position was at an operation that included vacuum forming parts from plastic sheets. Later, I was involved with blow molding and injection molding.
3D printing, or additive manufacturing, works by laying down a thin layer of the material, followed by another layer, and so on until the final part is manufactured. It is possible to do complex parts that could never be machined or molded. The possibilities for product designers are exciting. And the prices are dropping enough and the reliability improving enough so that maybe you, too, could start a manufacturing business in your garage.
Here’s an advance I just read about.
Stratasys Ltd., a manufacturer of 3D printers and materials for personal use, prototyping, and production, has announced the launch of the “ground-breaking” Objet500 Connex3 Color Multi-material 3D Printer, it claims to be the first and only 3D printer to combine colors with multi-material 3D printing.
From the release, “A game-changer for product design, engineering and manufacturing processes, the Objet500 Connex3 Color Multi-material 3D Printer features a unique triple-jetting technology that combines droplets of three base materials to produce parts with virtually unlimited combinations of rigid, flexible, and transparent color materials as well as color digital materials – all in a single print run. This ability to achieve the characteristics of an assembled part without assembly or painting is a significant time-saver. It helps product manufacturers validate designs and make good decisions earlier before committing to manufacturing, and bring products to market faster.”
Revolutionize manufacturing
“Stratasys’ goal is to help our customers revolutionize their design and manufacturing processes,” says Stratasys CEO David Reis. “I believe our new Objet500 Connex3 Color Multi-material 3D Printer will transform the way our customers design, engineer and manufacture new products. In general and with the Connex technology in particular, we will continue to push the envelope of what’s possible in a 3D world.“
Engineers at beta user Trek Bicycle in Waterloo, Wisconsin are using the Objet500 Connex3 Color Multi-material 3D Printer for assessment and testing of accessories like bike chain stay guards and handlebar grips prior to actual production. “The Objet500 Connex3 Color Multi-material 3D Printer changed the way we manufacture at Trek, augmenting our traditional, time-consuming CNC processes with fast, iterative and realistic prototyping and functional testing,” says Mike Zeigle, manager of Trek’s prototype development group.
“Now we produce bicycle parts that look and feel like production parts. We are particularly excited about 3D printing our models directly in color. This gives our designers the ability to graphically display color contact pressure map data on rider contact parts like seats and grips. We are also working on doing the same with FEA & CFD stress data on structural bike components,” adds Zeigle.
Similar to a 2D inkjet printer, three color materials – VeroCyan, VeroMagenta and VeroYellow – are combined to produce hundreds of vivid colors. These color materials join Stratasys’ extensive range of PolyJet photopolymer materials including digital materials, rigid, rubber-like, transparent, and high temperature materials to simulate standard and high temperature engineering plastics.
by Gary Mintchell | Aug 14, 2013 | Operations Management, Software
Mark Davidson, Principal Analyst, LNS Research
Who or what drives your operations management software implementations? Does everything come from or through your ERP system? Maybe the company implemented an MES (or MOM) system throughout the enterprise and depends upon connectors to ERP and the automation and manufacturing process systems. Or maybe your MES evolved on a plant-by-plant basis building up from the automation system?
In the first case, any new software or process must be able to integrate into the ERP system. This system is driven primarily by corporate IT. It is often rigid. It is hard to buy new software that keeps up with state-of-the-art computer science in this case. But everything integrates.
Perhaps division management was far-sighted and wanted a cohesive and comprehensive reporting system from all the plants within their scope of responsibility. They built up an MES and then connected up and down.
Maybe an individual plant manager was frustrated by lack of standardized workflows and inconsistent results reporting. Managing the plant based on real-time information was impossible. So an individual plant MES system grew–maybe from a number of isolated spreadsheets–that helped the one plant but left a headache for division managers trying to integrate a company.
LNS Research Analysis
Mark Davidson, writing on the LNS Research blog, analyzes the pros and cons of three different approaches which he labels:
- Top-Down/ERP-Centric Manufacturing Strategy
- Center-Out/MOM Software-Centric Manufacturing Strategy
- Bottom-Up/Industrial Automation System-Centric Manufacturing Strategy
Based upon LNS “crowd-sourced” research, Davidson concludes, “These days, companies are mostly taking either the center-out or top-down approach, but different trends emerge based on company size and specific vertical industry needs, and for some organizations, bottom-up may make perfect sense.”
What is your experience? What would you prefer?
