Smart Manufacturing Systems Test Bed and the Digital Thread

System Insights (Berkeley, CA) is collaborating with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST; Gathersburg, MD) and other partners on the Smart Manufacturing (SMS)Test Bed, a project with the common goals of enabling the digital thread and transferring the learnings from it to the manufacturing industry for improvement in business performance and global competitive advantage.

The (SMS) Test Bed was launched by NIST, a non-regulatory agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, as an innovative model factory that will facilitate the advanced manufacturing technology known as the “digital thread,” which refers to the information life cycle processes from design, through manufacturing and inspection. The goal of the Test Bed is to create a shared resource for smart manufacturing research and development that is accessible to those who want to explore capabilities as well as contribute to its advancement. The Test Bed is designed to be the foundation for fostering the acceptance and use of the digital thread, a technological advance predicted to yield significant operational and bottom-line benefits for manufacturers of all sizes.

System Insights and NIST’s collaborative effort generated the MTConnectR package that analyzes data from machine tools using the MTConnect standard to collect data from machine tools and bring the data into R, a statistical analysis package. This system will enable one part of the digital thread concept – connecting the as-planned to the as-fabricated state. For more details about MTConnectR, please click here.

The overall test bed will support the next planned stage of a recently started collaborative effort between System Insights, NIST, and an ecosystem of partners that will collect data and power analytics to help manufacturers transform to digital, data-driven manufacturing. The MTConnectR package will be enhanced to integrate with the VIMANA platform that collects, enriches and analyzes data from advanced manufacturing equipment, enabling decisions to improve productivity.

“We are very excited to work with NIST on this Test Bed,” said Dr. Athulan Vijayaraghavan, the founder and chief technology officer of System Insights. “We see this as a great start to advance the use of analytics to drive insight and to integrate technology and processes across the digital thread so that manufacturers can outpace the competition and reduce costs. We value the opportunity provided by the Test Bed to innovate and enable the future of manufacturing, as well as build learnings into future products for our customers.”

According to NIST, future plans for the Test Bed include offering manufacturers the opportunity to compare the fabrication of test products using their standard procedure with an optimized digital thread plan.

To learn more about the SMS Test Bed, please go here.

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