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January 2006
Welcome to The CTMA
Connector, a monthly newsletter designed to provide news and ideas about
the Commercial Technologies for Maintenance Activities (CTMA) program.
The CTMA program is a joint Department of Defense/National Center for
Manufacturing Sciences (DoD/NCMS) effort promoting collaborative
technology development between industry and the DoD maintenance and
repair facilities. This newsletter highlights ongoing projects, serves
as a forum for promoting new project ideas, and provides other news of
interest to the program. Our goal is to stimulate your participation and
solicit your input. Feel free to
submit items for the
newsletter as well as any suggestions to make it more useful. More
information about the program can be found at
http://ctma.ncms.org/. To
subscribe or unsubscribe to the CTMA Connector, send a message to
listserv@listserv.ncms.org with "subscribe CTMANewsletter" or
"unsubscribe CTMANewsletter" in the subject line.
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Plenary Session with key military
along with private industry
to identify critical
problems at manufacturing and repair
facilities
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Series of workshops relating to
manufacturing and repair
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CTMA project presentations
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Brainstorming session for new
project ideas
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New ideas for projects will be
presented
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Meet new contacts and build
relationships at receptions
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Table top displays for new
technologies
NCMS is
soliciting event sponsors for the upcoming CTMA Symposium.
The following are the various levels for sponsoring an event
at the symposium.
Event
sponsors will be recognized on the CTMA Symposium handouts
as well as a poster displayed at the event they are
sponsoring. In addition, your
company name will appear in the CTMA Connector newsletter
for four months. The CTMA Connector is distributed to over
4,200 recipients. Contact Chuck Ryan,
chuckr@ncms.org, for
more information.
We welcome the following
new member companies into NCMS:
DEKA
Research & Development Corporation
(http://www.dekaresearch.com)
DEKA provides
research, development and low-volume
manufacturing services to a variety of
clients, primarily in the medical device
field.
Dow
Chemical Company (http://www.dow.com)
Dow is a leader in science and technology,
providing innovative chemical, plastic and
agricultural products and service to many
essential consumer markets.
NextEnergy
Center (http://www.nextenergy.org)
NextEnergy
was founded to advance the Alternative
Energy Technology (AET) industry in
Michigan. Major technology thrusts
include portable power generation, renewable
fuels and hydrogen production for use within
commercial and military applications.
ASTRA,
The Alliance for Science & Technology
Research in America (http://www.aboutastra.org)
ASTRA is a
collaboration of industry, academic and
non-profit entities whose mission is to
promote increased federal funding for the
physical and engineering sciences through
policy research and education.
Proto
Manufacturing Inc. (http://www.protoxrd.com)
Proto
Manufacturing specializes in automated
industrial NDT systems and innovation. These
innovations include the development of an
18-kilogram portable device, automated
residual stress mapping, simultaneous
residual stress and retained austenite
measurement, pioneering field and inline
applications, high-speed x-ray diffraction
and more.
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Projects
Seeking Participants
Legacy Lifecycle Management Project
Statement of Problem:
All modern design of mechanical components is
performed using CAD systems that preserve design
granularity down to the object level. Technical
data for those components is typically stored in
a Product Data Management (PDM) or Product
Lifecycle Management (PLM) system that can
search, manage, and manipulate data down to the
object level. However, defense weapons systems
are expected to have long lifetimes (over 90
years in the case of the B52) so a large body of
component data exists that predates the use of
CAD systems. That component design data is
stored in the form of bitmap images of
electronic scans of 2-D drawings. The rich data
sets of dimensions, tolerances, notes, tables,
plus specifications and standards references
that can be searched and manipulated in modern
design data isnt available from the bitmap
images. If it could be made available,
downstream activities in manufacturing process
planning, quality planning, and quality
management would be more efficient and less
error prone.
Proposed Solution:
Develop an integrated system that imports a 2-D
drawing bitmap image as one layer of a modern
CAD drawing, performs interactive optical
character recognition to locate, parse and
identify design requirements on the drawing,
construct a table of extracted requirements, and
deliver the table objects to a PLM system for
lifecycle management. The system will be
validated by conducting a supply chain
evaluation using real legacy parts. Most engine
data is export controlled so the supply chain
evaluation will include creation and evaluation
of a secure collaboration environment.
Anticipated Deliverables:
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Demonstration of engineering requirements
extraction from legacy drawings and
management of extracted data by Teamcenter
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Demonstration of efficiencies gained through
the use of rich requirements data in supply
chain procurements
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Demonstration of a secure supply chain
collaboration environment
Expected and Quantifiable Depot Benefits:
OEMs, depots, and DLA will be able to use this
system to capture engineering requirements off
legacy drawings and to use that data to lower
costs by producing greater efficiency in supply
chain procurements through reduced opportunity
for error and reducing acquisition lead time
through reducing the time to first article
inspection.
The NCMS contact is Tony Haynes,
tonyh@ncms.org, 734-995-4930
Low Cost RFID for
DoD Logistics
NCMS and
one of its Fortune 500 member companies are
currently forming a collaborative project in the
area of low cost, high volume RFID tags.
The company is considering
development of conductive inks and
printing/manufacturing processes necessary to enable
production of high-quality printed RFrn tag antennas
at very high volumes and low cost. Since the antenna
and attachment of antenna to the chip represent a
significant portion of the tag cost, providing lower
cost antennas at very high volumes would help drive
the tag price down. The company is further
interested in pursuing a longer-term program to
develop materials (inorganic and organic, conductors
and semiconductors) and processes for manufacturing
printed electronics for many applications, including
printing complete RFrn tags through a roll-to-roll
printing process. The result of these research
activities will help to enable the broad adoption of
RFrn technology in applications that will return
efficiency improvements and cost savings to the
Government, and enhance public safety and security.
The development of very
low-cost passive RFrn tags would make it
cost-effective for the DOD to use RFrn tagging for
all assets in the supply chain at the item level as
well as the case and pallet levels. This will allow
military logisticians to synthesize and integrate
end-to-end information about all assets from the
manufacturer to the soldier in the field. The
results would include more effective operations,
reduced shrinkage, less black/gray market weapons
and materiel, and tax savings. The DOD and other
agencies would be able to track and trace assets and
paper records more effectively, resulting in more
efficient operations and reduced cost to taxpayers.
The company would like to
proceed aggressively in three areas: developing
conductive inks, testing the feasibility of
high-speed roll-to-roll printing of RFrn antennas
for use with silicon chips, and developing materials
and processes for producing printed electronics for
various applications including the production of
chip-less RFrn tags. We propose joining forces with
key companies in the industry to develop and
commercialize the key technologies required to
achieve these three objectives.
Specifically, NCMS and the
company are seeking collaborative partners from
integrated circuit manufacturers and from
assemblers. We are also seeking relevant entities
from DoD who would be the beneficiaries and end
users of this new technology.
The NCMS contact is Mike Gnam,
mikeg@ncms.org,
734-995-4971
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Participants needed on New
Project Ideas: Submit and view project ideas at
http://ctmaideas.ncms.org. Add
your comments to new project ideas and indicate your interest in helping to
define and participate in the project.
Call for CTMA Project
Ideas
We are
continuing to solicit project ideas for the CTMA program for possible funding
in 2006. A new, on-line process has been developed for submitting
one-page descriptions of your project idea. Go to
http://ctmaideas.ncms.org.
We are looking for projects that have the highest value to the
Department of Defense and to private industry. Fill out each
category, and leave blank if unknown. The DoD is joining in the
early evaluation of project ideas, which should quicken the process to
approval.
We appreciate your feedback.
Please contact
Chuck Ryan
with suggestions or input on other topics that would be of interest to you
in this newsletter. The CTMA Program is sponsored by the Department of
Defense; the content of this newsletter does not necessarily reflect the
position or policy of the government; no official endorsement should be
inferred. |
