Stitching Together the Next Digital Revolution

by Tom Hedberg, Research Mechanical Engineer, National Institute of Science and Technology

Along the path from design to manufacture, a lot of information gets passed from computer to computer and machine to machine. But just as a children’s game of telephone can produce a jumbled message, machines that use different software can disrupt the flow of information and lead to errors. Those errors cost time and money.

Figuring out how a product’s design and manufacturing information can be authored, exchanged, and processed without errors could lead to what some are calling the Third Industrial Revolution. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is playing a key role in this “digitization” of manufacturing with its Digital Thread for Smart Manufacturing project, which would help businesses of all sizes make the most of the revolution.

We are studying how industry uses design models and how those models can be used for manufacturing and inspection in an automated process. The potential benefits for industry are significant: more accurate (and better quality) final products and less time wasted in back-and-forth communications about what a product “should be.”

We recently completed a pilot project working with a group of industry partners, including Iowa-based Geater Machining and Manufacturing and Rockwell Collins. The pilot made it clear to our partners that the Digital Thread holds the potential of making American small and medium-sized enterprises more competitive. With the Digital Thread, these companies will be able to use the software they already have to read models and ultimately deliver high-quality products faster. It promises to bring improvements in time, efficiency, and quality, and to remove steps in the current manufacturing process where errors can be introduced.

I recently visited Geater and Rockwell Collins to watch a successful demonstration of the Digital Thread. You can learn more about our work in the video below.

The pilot project brought us one step closer to a usable Digital Thread, which will solve major problems that manufacturers—both big and small—are dealing with today.