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Top 10 Questions Highlight Mobile Team Coordination of Logistics Readiness for Supply Choices

8/27/2018

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Coordinating efforts of small combat elements operating in tactical scenarios requiring dispersal and disaggregation is difficult. It’s probably going to get even more difficult to coordinate combat elements, and maintain tempo, when we start considering combat in close quarters and fighting in scenarios that separate forces from one another.

Logistics Officers need to start preparing for this challenge as it applies to future operations. Logistics Officers supporting combat brigades formations generally think about company sized teams when they talk about purpose-specific forces. However, must sustain the combat brigade in the future, so Logistics Officers need to become better practiced – or at least consider – sustaining small units.

In order to win the battle, coordination and tempo have always been essential tenets for combat arms and Logistics Officers to remember. Key is arrangement of physical and non-physical actions to ensure their contribution is unified within a single mission.

Through coordination, tactical actions are focused to create a turbulent and rapidly deteriorating situation that shatters adversary cohesion and will to fight.

Conflict is a competition for times/space and ability to maintain a higher tempo allows us to exploit friction, achieve surprise, seize the initiative and maintain speed. Coordination requires a well-developed and executed plan, orders and control measures. However, tempo also requires agile and responsive logistics that can effectively support operations at the combat team level.

In practice, commanders and their staff plan for activity ‘two-down’. For a combat brigade this means a focus on coordinating the efforts of combat teams that are usually allocated to a battlegroup. A brigade can only generate so many combat teams based on its company or squadron level headquarters elements.

Within the battlegroups, commanding officers group armoured troops, infantry platoons and other capabilities together. A range of additional enablers are often attached to these combat teams at different times for a specific task and purpose.

These groupings are never templated, but usually reflect teams established and practiced during training prior to battle. From this mix of combat teams the brigade commander establishes battlegroups, based around a battalion or regimental headquarters.

Most of sustainment capabilities at the formation level with battalions and regiments possesses small integral echelons. Logistics capability is allocated to battlegroups to support tasks in a similar way as combat forces when they are assigned to combat teams and battlegroups.

There are several ways in which this allocation occurs as defined by duration, distance and threat. In the first, combat service support capability is allocated for a set time or battle phasing. Alternatively, the brigade headquarters provides coordination and sets control measures where support capability bricks to independently navigate the battlefield to allow the sustainment of forward combat teams.

This modularity could be taken further with logistics teams of platoon size the basis for Capability Blocks within a combat formation. This means battalion commander must generate small and capable platoon-sized ‘replenishment teams’ to  include:

--Proficient distribution teams, transport sections, and transport troops that can group and regroup to achieve the distribution effect across the battle space.

--Technically qualified and proficient forward repair teams and forward repair groups to maintain and repair brigade equipment across the battle space.

--Bulk fuel section, ammo sections, and warehouse platoons capable of defending, holding and preparing combat commodities for distribution.

--Logistic command teams capable of command and employment of any Capability Block allocated to it.

Replenishment teams must operate in direct support to combat teams. To achieve this level of dispersal in a formations logistics capability would be difficult for reasons of control, but technology could assist future logistics commanders.

In the near future, enabled by a range of new platforms, replenishment teams should possess the ability to communicate, provide their own protection to some extent and have sufficient situational awareness to navigate a complex battle space, and most importantly, protection and weaponry to survive the fight.

As a support commander at any level, must realise you command a high value target and a physical vulnerability of the formation. This is especially the case if logistics capabilities are centralised and made static in large positions.

There are ways to mitigate this risk, but it is usually the case that dispersed, but mutually-supporting platoon-sized support capabilities, is the best way for sustainment to be assured without tempting an adversary with a large logistics target.

Moving in small packets, below detection thresholds if possible, and responding with overwhelming firepower if required should become the norm for logistic elements. In applying this concept, losing a replenishment team to adversay action will pose a significant problem for the combat team being sustained. However, considered in the context of a non-dispersed formation, such a loss would seem minor in comparison to losing either a company or Brigade Maintenance Area or Support Group.

How can the formation staff coordinate this concept and give the brigade its tempo? It won’t be an easy task. With a set number of Combat Teams and replenishment teams available to a brigade, coordination and control measures become central to their effective and efficient use. ‘Road space’ must be managed efficiently as support elements will routinely move forwards and rear as the battle develops.

Intermixed in this movement, combat teams will leap frog in tactical bounds; requiring replenishment at various intervals. Further rear bulk commodity movements and distributed, and continually moving, ‘Logistics Nodes’ will very quickly stretch the ability to sustain tempo. Managing this complex battlespace will require the best out of the formation staff.

The ability to enable, sustain and maintain combat teams concurrently in any operational setting is the key to generating tempo and winning the fight. This requires Logistics Officers to ‘think smaller’ when considering the use of Logistic Capabilities.

Future combat and operating scenarios in close quarters, will require Logistics Units to operate independently, and most likely in platoon-sized elements supporting combat teams in combat.

Just as members of the combat arms need to develop new tactics, techniques and procedures to operate in a dispersed battlefield, so too will Logistics Offices. Transferring what was once a regimental echelon sustainment task to formation level logistic units will require developing a different strategy space to generate capabilities suitably structured to interact directly with combat teams so to effectively sustain the brigade.

This requires more of Logistics Officers who must build Capability Blocks of the brigade and the mechanics of how combat teams move, fight and execute tactical tasks. This will enable them to better visualise and plan sustainment requirements.

Doctrine should guide them in developing such an understanding. Undoubtedly seeing it, exercising it and simulating it will be lead to better outcomes; Logistics Officers must practice the concept regularly in collective training. Furthermore, Logistics Commanders must trust junior Logistic Officers to command and fight logistics capabilities in the battle space. This is something that some Logistics Officers have been reluctant to do in the past, and it must change.

Changing old Logistics approaches to focus upon small-team operations will better prepare logistics teams for the requirement to be responsive and agile. Coordinated effectively with the formations battle plan, small-team operations will better support Brigade tempo and contribute to it winning the fight.

When we think of readiness, we tend to confuse it with preparedness terms such as a ‘notice to move’. However, it is common to find that despite a unit being well within its designated ‘notice’ when time comes for action, the unit is constrained because of the availability of kits, a lack of enabling elements available in supporting formations, the slow activation of supply resources by strategic organisations as well as a variety of other logistics factors.

In some cases, strategic-level decisions result simply because available capabilities cannot be appropriately sustained and, accordingly, are unable to be deployed. No operation is free of friction caused by logistics, but there are many examples where the readiness of respective logistics systems was inadequate, under-resourced and inefficient.

Results in logistics are a consequence of a process; a process involving numerous capabilities, agencies and organisations and takes resources made available to the military at the strategic level of combat and converts them to combat power at the tactical level. Logistics is the ‘bridge’ which takes supply resources and applies them on the battlefield.

When activities occuring within this ‘bridge’ are properly controlled and coordinated, ultimately contribute to the overall ‘readiness’ of the logistics system to act when it is required. Many of the operational issues directly resulted from how the logistics process was not suited to the demands of the operation.

Some of the logistics deficiencies identified might have been directly addressed through improvements in supply resourcing. However, there are other equally influential factors that are essential for logistics readiness, and the early performance of the logistics process at during an operation.

Fundamentally, logistics readiness refers to the ability to undertake, to build up and then to sustain, combat operations at the full combat potential of forces. It comprises actions undertaken during operations, but is predominantly a consequence of routines and practices set in organisation behaviour long before deployment.

It is not a simple matter of issuing logistics units their own ‘notice to move’ or applying some other metric that will inevitably be ‘crashed’ through in a time of crisis; rather logistics readiness is a function of total organisational performance and efficiency. This standard of performance is achieved by addressing factors that are applicable at all levels – from the strategic to the tactical.

There must be a mutual understanding between commanders and the logistics units, agencies and organisations that support them. This is founded on clear communication of commander intent, but also the cooperation set within the military or formation. It also recognises that there must be timely exchanges of information; one of biggest challenges in supporting operations is knowing how far to compartment operational information, especially with supplier partners.

To achieve balance between logistics and combat resources and elements. There must be an appropriate balance of logistics resources to the combat elements. This is captured in the idea of the ‘tooth-to-tail’ ratio. However, logistics resources can be appropriated by a variety of means and may include multiple supplier organizations.

The important factor is the total amount of firepower which can brought to bear. If the greatest total of effective power can be delivered with on combat manpower for each troop unit, then this is the desirable ratio.

Logistics plans and policies, from stockholding policies at the unit and formation level right up to national mobilisation plans at the big picture strategic level must be available. Format and bulk of plans are less important than those that are developed through interagency effort, and reflecting the nature of an efficient and effective logistics process.

Logistics organisations must be structured to support operational requirements rather than back office needs. Although organisations may not need to be resourced to their full combat capability during most periods and rarely are because to do so would be cost prohibitive, the organisational architecture must be established to enable the transition to an operational footing and policies in place to enable such a transition to occur rapidly.

There must be a high state of materiel readiness across the force. In addition to appropriately funding the sustainment of equipment, and the establishment of appropriate stockholdings in appropriate areas to enable operational contingencies, the means of sustaining equipment must be as appropriate for support operations as they are for efficiency in garrison.

Failures in materiel readiness in garrison are often replicated in major sustainability issues on operations, and necessitate consequential actions to achieve desired operational readiness outcomes.

Logistics process, capabilities and organisations must be systematically assessed for its readiness. Every military activity or exercise is an opportunity for assessing logistics performance, but it is rare that military exercises comprehensively test and assess operational sustainability and logistics readiness with rigour.

Fewer still are those exercises that test logistics readiness through a major deployment performed at short-notice; a phase of an operation that demands all supporting agencies are ready.

Of course, it is hard to remove any discussion on logistics readiness without referring to the capacity of the logistics ‘tail’. It may appear easier to build up logistics forces, and support organisations, than it is to have combat forces at commander disposal since it is generally easier to supply equipment for logistics purposes than it is for combat forces.

The assumed familiarity between logistics operations and supply organisation activities suggests that any conversion between the two is relatively simple, and there is always the possibility that the supplier sector can be turned to overcome any deficiencies there are for in-house logistics capabilities.

There are perceptions which tend to ignore the importance of logistics readiness to the overall employability of the force. Even if the ease of raising these logistic capabilities were a simple task, to take it for granted that operational deficiencies can be overcome at short notice is not a good idea.

If military forces are to be responsive, fully trained and equipped logistics forces must be available and processes ranging from strategic activity to tactical action must be coherent and well-practiced. A combat force without efficient and effective logistics support is ineffectual and, in the end, a waste of organisational effort.

At the root of logistics readiness is the union between acquiring and maintaining military capability to have it available, and the establishment of a logistics process which enables or constrains its use operationally. Budgets, supply factors, and military capability are typically executed by Service headquarters, and limit the combat forces that can be created and made available.

However, it is logistics capabilities and practices that limit the forces that may be actually employed on military operations. The combat unit that is formed and given the latest technology, best armour and capable of overmatch against any possible adversary will be ineffective – undeployable in practice – without a logistics system capable of sustaining it.

Logistics readiness is particularly vital for those militaries that consider themselves as expeditionary at its core. Not only do robust logistics capabilities define the capacity of a military to project force, these same capabilities underwrite the ability of a military to respond quickly, affording them time to overcome the distance there may be to the operational area.

Militaries rarely assign logistics readiness issues as their highest priority to resolve. Instead they are typically consumed with ensuring that the elements at the forward edge of the operational area are as ready as practicable. Yet if compromises are made with regards to the preparedness of the logistics ‘system’ as a whole, or the logistics process is inefficient or ineffective due to poor practices and inadequate logistic discipline across the military, the readiness and preparedness of any unit destined for operations will itself be compromised.

Operational reporting consistently identifies forces as having culminated as a consequence of system-wide logistics failures that may have been otherwise prevented. Less well known are the times in which senior commanders have had to make choices on which forces they chose not to deploy based on the readiness of the logistics forces and the logistics process more generally. It is a venture into the world of strategic decision making, where logistics truly becomes the ‘arbiter of opportunity’, if not the arbiter of choice, and the true measure of whether a military is ready for combat.

Must Identify specific metrics critical for logistics support meeting supply schedule expectations of installations. Ensure definitions are provided within assumptions & appropriate measures identified following site visit investigation.

Recent site visits have documented increasing number of metrics being evaluated. Growth in number of total metrics must be minimised to ensure reasonable amount of effort is required to obtain & assess supply information to arrive at reasonable conclusions/recommendations.

Impacts must be assessed using primary mobile transit metrics to include Operational availability, materiel readiness, total cost of in-house provisions & mission downtime. Other specific appropriate metrics include work order planning, automated Supply line connection Support, installation structure quality & quick transport functions.

Whenever an supply line connection event occurs, whether it involves the results of a quality inspection on Flight Line or supply delivery, records should flow seamlessly into the scorecard deposit with real-time updating of supplier performance. Of all the attributes of an ideal measured system. this is the one that is rarely implemented.

For real-time updating of Logisitics work orders, the scorecard system must be linked to other supply line constituencies, including fiscal accounts, quality control, and transportation. Any system that stresses objective rather than subjective assessment, particularly under real-time conditions must receive serious consideration.

Many Logistics systems are moving toward real-time supply metrics visibility. Some organisations are beginning to rely on suppliers to self-report and submit their performance to the scorecard system on a frequent basis. Some are even beginning to solicit performance marks from or about second or third tier suppliers.

If a Logistics organisation is set on measuring most of its suppliers, then the less critical suppliers should receive a basic scorecard—perhaps even one that is categorical. Depending on level of effort required to obtain scorecard ratings, the cost to measure a supplier could outweigh the value of measuring that supplier.

An effective supply system will not only generate the scorecard itself; it will enable information to be presented in a variety of reporting formats, along with easy generation of useful reports. Some on-demand reports can show side-by-side supplier rankings, demonstrate performance changes by category, and highlight the suppliers that improved or deteriorated in performance over a certain period. Systems allowing slicing and dicing of raw inputs is an essential element of an ideal scorecard system.

Most measurement systems are reactive in that they report what has happened, not what is likely to happen. As with a metrics process control system, an ideal measurement system would be able to “look ahead” to spot troublesome trends and non-random changes in supplier performance before it becomes out of control. An ideal Logistics system would notify supply line teams of potential problems before the impact of those problems is even realised. The system should be deigned to have predictive capabilities.

Logistics performance bench marking involves comparing products, practices, processes, or strategies against suppliers considered to offer best-in-class Logistics services. Benchmarking techniques can involve working directly with other units to compare scorecard practices, performing searches to find information on performance measurement and working with suppliers to obtain scorecard information.

It is critical for Logistics teams to feature the sharing of best-practice information. While informal bench marking can occur at any time, formal reviews of the scorecard system should occur regularly. Today, when almost too much supply information is available, there is no excuse for not remaining current regarding the trends and technologies that relate to supplier performance measurement in Logistics Domains.

1. Are Logistics Metrics given strategic priority to directly control behaviour and supply line performance?

2. Have limited number of key measurements been established to keep supply line objectives on track?

3. Are labour-intensive measurements that at first seem relevant of little practical use?

4. Are wrong measures being picked and leaving out important ones could lead to lower supply line performance?

5. Are supply line based drivers only effective on after-the-fact measures, like customer loss or fiscal performance?

6. What is total cost of getting product availability to the point of field action to include materiel stocks and transit?

7. Is supplier responsible for the fact that products have poor availability for field-level use?

8. Is supplier responsible for transit operations of downstream customers picking up products on location?

9. Is upstream component parts supplier responsible for the fact that order could not be produced due to lack of supplier part?

10. Is supplier responsible for on-time delivery to customer after transit order?
 

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Top 10 Questions Product Design Engineering Build Application for Groups of Distributed Agents

8/18/2018

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The big question we are asking in our quest to find answers to Distributed Artificial Intelligence potential is application of techniques engineers develop in standards and development tools that make them accessible to industrial users. The best techniques will not be widely used unless they are embedded in tools designed to support industrial activities.

Now that multiple products are becoming available, market forces will join up with technical excellence in determining the platforms best suited for products to be built in the future. Engineers who are alert to these market forces and who pay special attention to packaging and deployment of their results will see their work have the most lasting impact on the field.

This brief survey of agent systems utilised in product proposed systems must be practical, and the tools used to develop them must be packaged. Industrial systems are driven by the need to solve a practical problem, rather than curiosity about the possibility of some technology. The criterion for success in an industrial project is not how clever the technology is, or what one has learned about that technology, but how well the system solves the problem that it addresses.
 
The orientation to practical problems means that engineers in industry must be first of all experts in the products they manufacture, the processes they control, or the services they render. Agent technology is for them a means to an end, a tool. The more the tool fades into the background and lets them concentrate on the requirements of the problem at hand, the more likely they are to use it.

As with other technologies, detailed application issues are more likely to be discussed in venues associated with the application domain than in those dedicated to the underlying technology, and as a result the best case studies will be scattered throughout a wide range of sources.

Ultimately, application expertise is best communicated by hands-on experience not reports so engineers motivated to learn more about this area should establish joint projects with industrial partners around application problems of industrial scope and complexity, where the objective is to improve the operations of industry users rather than to generate cumbersome reports.

Practical design engineering applications of Distributed Artificial Intelligence are characterised by agents tech focus on a particular capability e.g., communication, planning, learning and seeks practical problems to demonstrate the usefulness of this capability. The engineer has a practical problem to solve, and cares much more about the speed and cost-effectiveness of the solution than about its elegance or sophistication.

To the engineer, it offers an overview of the kinds of problems faced, and some examples of agent technologies have made their way into practical application. To the engineer it explains why agents are not just the latest technical fad, but a good match to the characteristics of a broad class of real problems to include selected development projects that are not yet industrial strength.

Agents represent industrially important concepts or are being conducted in a way likely to lead to deployable technology. Also emphasises agent applications in manufacturing and physical control over other fielded industrial applications such as information-gathering agents, network administration, or business planning agents.

Like any other technology, agents are best used for problems whose characteristics require their particular capabilities. Agents are appropriate for applications that are modular, decentralised, changeable, poorly structured, and complex In some cases, a problem may exhibit or lack these characteristics, but many industrial problems can be formulated in different ways.

In these cases, attention to the characteristics during problem formulation and assessments can yield a solution that is more robust and adaptable than one supported by other technologies. Agents are pro-active objects, and share the benefits of modularity enjoyed by object technology. They are best suited to applications that fall into practical modules.

An agent has its own set of state variables, distinct from those of the used in real-life mission space.. Some subset of the agents state variables is coupled to some subset of the mission work space state variables to provide input and output. An industrial entity is a good candidate for agency if it has a well-defined set of state variables that are distinct from those utilised in mission space, and if its interfaces can be clearly identified.

The state-based view of the distinction between an agent and its mission space suggests that functional decompositions are less well suited to agent-based systems than are physical decompositions. Functional decompositions tend to share many state variables across different functions.

Separate agents must share many state variables, leading to problems of consistency and unintended interaction. A physical decomposition naturally defines distinct sets of state variables that can be managed efficiently by individual agents with limited interactions. The choice between functional and physical decomposition is often up to the engineer.

Emphasising the physical dimension enables more modular applications. Because the agent characterises a physical entity, that entity can be redeployed with minimal changes to the agents code. As a result, the cost of reconfiguration drops dramatically, and reusability increases.

Decentralisation is important because an agent is more than an object; it is a pro-active object, a bounded process. It does not need to be invoked externally, but autonomously monitors its own mission space and takes action as it considers appropriate. This characteristic of agents makes them particularly suited for applications that can be decomposed into stand-alone processes, each capable of doing useful things without continuous direction by some other process.

Many industrial processes can be organised in either a centralised or a decentralised fashion. Centralised operations focus on a central authority and elaborate bureaucracy to manage the flow of control down and information back up.

There is an alternative approach. The power of decentralisation has recently been made clear in the contrast in performance. Modern industrial strategists seek to eliminate excessive layers of management and push decision-making down to the very lowest level, and are developing the vision of the "virtual enterprise," formed for a particular market opportunity from a collection of independent firms with well-defined core competencies.

It is increasingly common for the manufacturer of a complex product to purchase much of the content in the product from other companies. For example, an automotive manufacturer might buy seats from one company, brake systems from another, air conditioning from a third, and electrical systems from a fourth, and manufacture only the chassis, body, and powertrain in its own facilities.

The suppliers of major subsystems in turn purchase much of their content from still other companies. As a result, the "production line" that turns raw materials into a vehicle is a network, or "supply chain," of many different firms. Agent-based architectures are an ideal fit to such an organisational strategy.

Agents are well suited to modular problems because they are objects. They are well suited to decentralised problems because they are pro-active objects. These characteristics combine to make them especially valuable when a problem is likely to change frequently.

Modularity permits the system to be modified one piece at a time. Decentralisation minimises the impact that changing one module has on the behaviour of other modules. Modules alone are not sufficient to permit frequent changes. In a system with a single digital thread of control, changes to a single module can cause later modules, those it invokes, to malfunction.

Decentralisation decouples the individual modules from one another, so that errors in one module impact only those modules that interact with it, leaving the rest of the system unaffected. From an industrial perspective, the ability to change a system quickly, frequently, and without damaging side effects is increasingly important to competitiveness.

In manufacturing, the product that suit’s the requirements of the most customers has a tremendous advantage. One of the most effective means to determine the features that customers like is to turn out as many different product variations as quickly as possible, sampling customer response and adjusting new offerings accordingly.

This strategy is responsible for the precipitous drop in the time-to-market for many products. The time from product concept to first production in vehicles has decreased markedly. Agent-based architectures permit reuse of much existing code and self-configuration of large portions of the system, reducing both the cost and the time needed to bring up a new factory.

An early deliverable in traditional systems design is an architecture of the application, showing which entities interact with which other entities and specifying the interfaces among them. For example, installation of a conventional system for electronic interchange among trading partners requires that one know the providers and consumers of the various goods and services being traded, so that orders can be sent to the appropriate parties.

Sometimes, determining this information in advance is extremely difficult or even impossible. Consider an electronic system to support open trading, where orders are made available to any qualified bidder. Requiring the system designer to specify the sender and recipient of each transaction would quickly lead to getting stuck in details.

From a traditional point of view, this application is poorly structured. That is, not all of the necessary structural information is available when the system is designed. Agents naturally support such an application. The fundamental distinction in an agent's view of the world is between "self" and "environment." "Self'' is known and predictable, while "environment" can change on its own within limits.

Other agents are part of this dynamic, changing environment. Depending on the complexity of individual agents, they may or may not model one another explicitly. Instead of specifying the individual entities to be interconnected and their interfaces with one another, an agent-based design need identify only the classes of entities in the system and their impact on the environment.

Because each agent is designed to interact with the environment rather than with specific other agents, it can interact appropriately with any other agent that modifies the environment within the range of variation with which other agents are prepared to deal.

Some applications are intrinsically under-specified and agents offer the only realistic approach to managing them. Even where more detailed structural information is available, the better course may be to pretend that it isn't. A system that is designed to a specific domain structure will require modification if that structure changes.

Agent technology permits system design to the classes that generate a given domain structure rather than to that structure itself, thus extending the useful life of the resulting system and reducing the cost of maintenance and reconfiguration.

One measure of the complexity of a system is the number of different behaviours it must exhibit. For example, a manufacturing job shop might produce a given part in several different ways, depending on which machines are used and in which order. The number of possible behaviours in this simple example depends exponentially on the number of different machines in the shop.

For a shop with only a few machines, one might code a separate subroutine for each possible routing, but this approach quickly becomes prohibitive as the shop grows. This example shows combinatorial complexity. The number of different interactions among a set of elements increases much faster than does the number of elements in the set.

By mapping individual agents to the interacting elements, agent architectures can replace explicit coding of this large set of interactions with generation of them at run-time. Not all of these will be useful behaviours, and one can imagine poor agent designs in which none of the generated behaviours will be appropriate.

However, appropriately designed agent architectures can move the generation of combinatorial behaviour spaces from design-time to run-time, drastically reducing effort and cost of the system to be constructed.

Modification of a system during its life can increase its complexity as well as making it poorly structured. By adopting an agent approach at the outset, systems engineers can provide a much more robust and adaptable solution that will grow to meet business requirements.

Information agents have access to multiple, potentially heterogeneous and geographically distributed information sources and do work ranging from relatively simple in-house information systems to large-scale multi-source systems.

One of the main tasks of the agents is an active search for relevant information in non-local domains on behalf of their users or other agents including retrieving, manipulating, and integrating information available from multiple sources. Agents support users in fulfilling certain tasks by hiding the complexity of a difficult task, train/teach human users, and perform sub-tasks for user.

Realistic application of Responsible Agents for Product/Process Integrated Design will have one or two dozen component agents and on the order of a hundred characteristic agents. In the current implementation, agents are not created, destroyed, divided, or fused during operation, but as the system matures, designers will need a way to add both component and characteristics agents to the community as a design is refined.

Agents communicate digitally, and currently use point addressing. Messages do not persist outside of agents, and agents do not move over the network. Fixed market protocol is used but also provides for the humans behind component agents to communicate directly with one another using Standard work orders.

The initial configuration of component agents and characteristic agents is defined when the system is initialised, but component agents can engage in markets for other characteristics as the system runs.

The fundamental challenge in applying agents to both planning and control is satisfying a global criterion on the basis of parallel local decisions. In spite of the natural benefit that centralisation has in dealing with control criteria. Case studies show that many users have found agents an even better approach.

Operational systems must be maintained, and it is much easier to maintain a set of well-bounded modules than to make changes to a large programme. The move toward supply chains means that the manufacturing system is geographically distributed, and agent decentralisation reduces communication bottlenecks and permits local parts of the enterprise to continue operation during temporary lapses in connectivity.

Competitiveness increasingly depends on adjusting system operations frequently to track customer requirements, benefiting from how agent systems can be changed. The ability of agents to deal with poorly structured systems is less important in the operation of an engineered system than in its design.

However, the ability of agents to deal with dynamically changing structures means that digital communication can now be applied to manage systems such as networks of trading partners that formerly required extensive manual attention. The increased complexity that agents can manage also extends the scope of operational problems to which they can be applied.
 
1. What in a system becomes an agent?

Classical engineering techniques lead many systems designers toward "functional decomposition." For example, manufacturing information systems typically contain modules dedicated to functions such as "scheduling," "materiel management," and "maintenance," suggesting that these functions should be assigned to distinct agents. Most industrial agent applications are additions to existing systems, and functionally oriented legacy systems may be most easily attached by encapsulating them as functional agents. A watchdog agent may usefully monitor the behaviour of a population of physical agents for important system states that local agents cannot perceive.

2. How Does each agent model the world?

Any agent that functions in a changing world must model that world internally. However, agents differ in the how developed the knowledge representation and reasoning are used for this task. Some agents model aspects of their world explicitly, so that they can reason about the model. In other agents, these models are hard-wired and often distributed throughout the agent's architecture.

3. How do agents differ in the scope of what they model?

It depends if agents individuate other agents or not and whether they model the world as it is now, or as the agent wants the world to be.

4. How are agents structured internally?

The different agents in a system may be identical, heterogeneous, or sharing some common modules and differing in others. They may or may not remember past states, and their internal code may or may not change over time.

5. How many agents are there?

Both the number of different agent categories and the total number of individual agents are important characteristics of a given system, as well as whether the agent population can change while the system is running.

6. What communication channels do agents use?

The channels through which information moves from one agent to another can differ in medium, ie the shared physical space vs. a digital network, addressing broadcast, subject-based, agent-to-agent, whether messages persist after being sent, and locality-- if agents need to move "close" to one another in order to exchange messages.

7. What communications protocols do agents use?

A communications protocol determines how conversations among agents are structured. Some agents simply give orders to one another and expect them to be received. Others vote, negotiate, or engage in more complex dialogues based on speech-act constructs.

8. How is the configuration of agents relative to one another established?

The configuration of an agent community describes on how well each agent knows each other and the resulting surface structure over which information and materiel move among them. This structure may be set in advance by the system driver and remain unchanged as the system operates, or the agents may be able to discover new relationships and reconfigure themselves while running.

9. How do agents coordinate their actions?

Agents are autonomous in that they do not have to be invoked in order to execute. However, in a useful system there is coordination with one another. In different coordination levels, commands flow down from higher levels and status information flows back up. Coordination emerges from how agents interact through mechanisms such as dissipative or constraint propagation.

10. How mature is the application?

Maturity levels differ, for example system has been demonstrated against a simulation of its intended domain scenario, or the system has been demonstrated in a commercial practice, sold and supported as a commercial product.

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Top 10 Benefits to Prototype Process for Design Exploration Improve Ability to Meet Product Goals

8/9/2018

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Digital prototyping can be used by design teams at any time in the design cycle, from conceptual design to production. It’s a means of understanding performance and a step toward design optimisation. Digital prototyping brings form and function together to solve a problem or drive innovation. The entire development team may use a simulation that represents product function under operating conditions. It’s a logical alternative to developing each aspect of product design and engineering separately.

Physical prototypes let development teams test for fit, actuation, operation, instrumentation, and controls. That’s been good enough for a long time. But conventional physical prototyping also can turn the development process into an inefficient, linear affair.

A concept is sketched, the product engineered, and the physical prototype built and evaluated for issues and adjustments that are required. With each prototype failure, the process starts over again. But the electrical engineer, for example, may not have the opportunity to advise the industrial designer “out of sequence” and share insight that could help the designers avoid spending time on a pointless undertaking.

The goal of digital prototyping is to bring all geometry and functional characteristics into a single model. So digital prototyping is an approach that favors a two-way pipeline over the conventional, linear sequence. Information flows to and from that model during the industrial design, engineering and manufacturing teamwork.

Digital Prototyping gives you the ability to explore a complete product before it is built so they can carry out product design, visualise, and simulate from the conceptual design phase through the manufacturing process.

By using a digital prototype, manufacturers can boost design performance and innovation by visualising and simulating the real-world completion of a design and save time and money by reducing the number of physical prototypes they build.

Digital Prototyping brings together design information from all phases of the product development process and facilitates manufacturing work groups to create a unique digital model that can be used in every stage of production bridging the gaps that usually exist between conceptual design, engineering, and manufacturing organisations.

The solution for Digital Prototyping is different in that it is scalable, attainable, and cost-effective. This solution enables a wider group of manufacturers to realise the benefits of Digital Prototyping, with minimal disruption to existing work flows providing the most straightforward path to creating and maintaining a single digital model.

“Prototype” is a test article designed to demonstrate areas of high technical risk that are essential to system success. A prototype need not be a full system, but, in scope and scale, it is tailored to accommodate series of decisions so it can represent a concept, subsystem, or end item according to the decisions to be made. Rather than reflect the final design, prototypes are built with the expectation that, as decisions are made, change will follow.

“Prototyping” is the practice of testing prototypes, of appropriate scope and scale, for the purpose of obtaining knowledge about some requirement, capability, or design approach. The knowledge obtained informs a decision-making process with output to result in some degree of change. The degree of allowable change is bounded in proportion by the scope and scale of the prototype.

A prototype is a working model of a product that is used for testing before it is manufactured. Prototypes help designers learn about the manufacturing process of a product, how people will use the product, and how the product could fail or break. A prototype is not the same thing as a model. A model is used to demonstrate or explain how a product will look or function. A prototype is used to test different working aspects of a product before the design is finalised.

Your team will follow a similar process. By building a prototype, you should be able to determine if your chosen design solution is feasible and which aspects of your design needs special materials or further refinement. You will also ask other people to test your prototype to help you identify any problems a user might encounter. You may even have time to complete a few iterations, or modifications, to your prototype.

No matter where you are in the process and no matter how much experience you have, working with a dedicated prototyping shop is valuable. A prototype gives you a tangible object that you can hold in your hands, inspect and test in the real world. It’s also a chance to see exactly how a part comes together during assembly and catch errors or omissions before final production.

We understand the value of a prototype and have a dedicated prototype shop to help meet customer requirements and suggest materials and part geometry based on solid experience.

Streamline your entire product development process with our solution for Digital Prototyping, which lets you explore your ideas before they’re even built. Gather design information from all phases of the process into a single digital model. Validate it against product requirements. Reference it as you build deliverables for release.

A prototype is anything that represents your product work, in a tangible format, to actual customers for the purpose of gathering feedback. It is a testable proposition about value or technical feasibility. A good prototype minimises the time and cost needed to get smart about a new offering.

Early on, when you’ve identified some key ideas and need to understand which ones are worth pursuing, storyboards or paper mock-ups are appropriate. As you continue, you’ll want to know how a selected idea is best translated into a design. At this point high-fidelity mock-ups or a non-production implementation of a key interaction are ideal.

Each new project is assigned to team charged with oversight of all stages: quoting, design, programming and fabrication. Team attention to your requirements reduces miscommunication along the way and keeps your project moving.

Many original equipment manufacturers use hard tooling to manufacture large quantities of parts in their own factories. When it’s time to update a part or create a new one, they can’t always afford the time and money it takes to manufacture a new tool set on-site just to test new parts.

Rapid prototyping shops take the prototype designs and making tools for them. Recently, our team manufactured and tested a new punch and die set for a client. As a result, the company quickly learned that it was worth the investment in this hard tool without having to divert time and resources from its regular manufacturing.

What if you’re developing a new product or have proprietary parts to test? Is your design classified? Can you still get a prototype when the fabricator truly can’t know all of the details?

There are many times we do not know the end use of a part or assembly that we’re making for a customer so we will ask for as much information as they can give and offer suggestions for design improvements as we can see them.

We have worked with enough types of material and parts to identify clues and make improvements even without the full picture. Having years of experience means knowing the optimal thickness for hot-rolled steel sheets or if laser welding will increase joint strength even if the final application is a mystery.

Working closely with clients is key. In a recent case, we worked to improve a design they were bringing to market. After many meetings and prototype sessions with their engineers, and sharing their sheet metal fabrication knowledge, the final product was easier to manufacture.

As we’ve said before, there’s more than one way to design and build a part. By following manufacturing design principles, prototype fabricators can facilitate assembly, or speed time to market. We do deep dives into designs looking for ways to refine and improve the final product.

In one recent case, we took a three-piece welded design and changed it to a one-piece design that was cheaper and easier to manufacture.

In-shop fabrication equipment plays a role too. Offering laser welding, we are able to take an enclosure that was originally welded and finished with grinding and changed it to a laser welded design. The result? A part that works better and is cheaper to manufacture.

Laser welding gives you an opportunity to redesign parts for more efficient production. Some of the greatest advantages come from simpler joints, reduced overlaps and welding in places that might otherwise be inaccessible.

If you have a design ready to fabricate or if you’re still working out the kinks in your plan, request a quote or contact the team to find out how our express prototype shop can help.

In a perfect world, there would be no deadlines.

Ideally, you would get the chance to exhaustively explore all possibilities for a design. You could develop many different alternatives, ensuring that you arrive at the best choice for all design characteristics.

Of course, it’s not a perfect world. And, like everyone, engineers can find themselves facing a looming deadline. In these frequently encountered cases, they can end up desperately exploring a couple different choices before going with the first feasible design.

There are big challenges facing engineers that keep them from exploring the design space for the items they’re developing. Emerging technologies can help mitigate those barriers.
 
One reason deadlines today have become so challenging for engineers is that the expertise of one person can only cover so much. As products become more complex, so do the manufacturing and technology options that can be incorporated into the product, and the number of engineers with particular specialties—mechanical, electrical, etc. —working on the product rise.

You’d like to carry out your job and pass the design to the next engineer for approval and enhancement. But of course, that cycle needs to end at some point.

Also, you, like many other engineers, may have a specialty within your discipline--you may work primarily in plastics or sheet metal, machined products or composites, for example. To exhaust all design possibilities that could result in a high-performing product requires knowledge of every aspect of your field and every other field involved in that product’s production, which isn’t usually a practical expectation.

You also need to weigh how fully you need to explore your designs. Is meeting the minimum on a project good enough? Or would further exploration, iteration, and improvement result in a justifiable return on your project?

Even if you answered that meeting the project minimum is good enough, nothing may make you happier than the freedom to fully explore your design space, even as that the project deadline nears.

As an engineer you are a problem solver. Left alone with a design you’ll likely want to explore, design, iterate, and repeat the cycle until you come up with a great design solution for the situation at hand.

And sometimes a design really needs to be the best one, rather than the first feasible one, In that case, further exploration does result in a justifiable return on your time.

But too often, exploration can feel cut short because you work within competing constraints of the design cycle. On one hand, the design needs to be released on time. On the other hand, you need to spend time developing a design that meets all specification and requirements.

Your freedom to explore their design space to varying degrees is based on these competing design-cycle demands. The demands themselves are at two extremes; between them is the huge range you have to explore.

There are many legitimate scenarios in which you do need to go with the first feasible design for a number of reasons. Likely, a deadline looms and design needs to be passed off to the manufacturing floor or sent out to a supplier, even as you’d like to explore a few other design possibilities, check out a few other results even after you’ve found a feasible design.

Today, shorter and shorter development schedules can force you, even as you pass back and forth, to make compromises that come in a few different forms. Maybe you feel the model geometry could be further perfected or maybe you’d like to run a few more assessments for virtual prototyping reasons. But time runs out.

In all, you may not feel so great about your lot in the development cycle. Sometimes, you might feel like they aren’t given the room you need to truly develop real design solutions because you’re forced to go with the first feasible design.

It is in this context that the objective and associated enabler is revealed. For you to find something better than the first feasible design, your organisations must accelerate design exploration. 

To do that, you must be enabled to be more productive in design. Today, there is a range of emerging design processes and technologies that can do just that.

How fully are you able to explore your designs? How and when is it justified to exhaustively explore design alternatives and why is that important?

Rapid prototyping technology is gaining a lot of importance among the engineering designers and manufacturers, as it offers a fast and accurate way to realise the potential of the product. Adopting rapid prototyping brings higher fidelity from the concept design compared to the conventional paper prototyping.

The use of rapid prototyping in product design and development is a profitable decision and must be encouraged in the manufacturing organisation. In a fiercely competitive landscape, this tool can help in developing innovative products cost-effectively.

Rapid Prototyping utilises a group of technologies used to quickly fabricate a scale model of a physical part or assembly using 3D printing/design. Prototyping isn’t a new concept, but techniques have been refined to advance many industries, including fabricated reflective optics.

A common misconception about Rapid Prototyping is that a machine is simply loaded and a finished part magically appears. In fact, the majority of work involved in creating a prototype happens well before a prototype is created. We first work with customers to determine the specific prototype needs; then our engineers pinpoint which of the Rapid Engineering technologies will produce optimal results.

3D Printing and Modeling are the most common methods, using equipment that produces 3D components in various materials including plastics, wax, and metal. While effective, this technology can’t directly produce a fabricated reflector. Instead, we use 3D Printing and Modeling for rapid tooling and fixture needs. It dramatically reduces prep time, which otherwise takes weeks using traditional methods.

Laser and Punching are the most traditional Rapid Prototyping methods for fabricated reflectors. These technologies continue to mature and advance, making them the core of versatile and rapid fabricated metals processing. Laser and Punching are programmable and changeable so the process can continue until the part is right.

Designers, more often than not, ignore the process of prototyping before finalising concept models. Most think prototyping is a waste of time and money. Couldn’t a 3D model achieve the same result? Some are simply confused about what prototyping actually is.

Prototyping across many industries refers to creating a highly realistic model of the product solely for testing or promotional purposes. It’s different to building a computer or 3D versions of design models, which are hard to interact within a realistic sense.

Prototyping is both progressive/practical and can be one of the many stages of developing a high-quality, error-free product.

Using the following techniques provides you with significant advantages:

1. Prototyping with Reduced Costs in Development is Possible and Available

Much of the costs of prototyping in the past were associated with expensive materials used in the products. Nowadays, prototypes can be made for far less using inexpensive and alternative materials. Cheaper new materials can realistically replicate shapes and features of products, and ultimately mimic real functionality as well.

We specialise in creating concept prototypes using inexpensive material without compromising the overall quality of the prototype experienced in visually replicating products near exactly as prototypes. We employ a wide range of manufacturing tech to develop prototypes, some of which allows for creating different prototypes at the same time for side-by-side comparison. If your budget isn’t big enough for a specially made concept, you could always purchase materials and build your own prototypes.

Prototypes do cost money, but the benefits they offer can eliminate many expensive costs associated with errors. Think about how costly it is to fix problems in products discovered after the product goes to the market. Designers, developers and others can use prototypes to fine-tune final products in a manner that typical concept art does not allow. Companies not only have to pay developers to correct mistakes, but there are additional costs. In an overall sense, prototyping can actually save your company money.

Prototyping is also much less costly than ordering samples of the final product. Companies often place sample orders to test products before mass-market retail. These sample orders are the real product, so each would cost more. Prototypes are far cheaper to make realistically for testing purposes. As mentioned above, being specialised and seasoned manufacturers, we can deliver the perfect testing prototype for the fraction of a cost of an original sample. All in all, companies can save significant amounts of money in the long term by using prototypes.

Prototyping injection mold tools and production runs are expensive investments. The 3D printing process allows the creation of parts and/or tools through additive manufacturing at rates much lower than traditional machining.

2. Speed Up Time-to-Market

3D printing allows ideas to develop faster than ever. Being able to 3D print a concept the same day it was designed shrinks a development process from what might have been months to a matter of days, helping companies stay one step ahead of the competition.

With additive manufacturing, time required to develop molds, patterns and special tools can be eliminated. The same CAD applications and the printing equipment can be utilised to produce different geometries. Unlike conventional prototyping methods, the amount of waste produced is minimum, as rapid prototyping only prints the material that is actually required to build the object.

Manipulating geometry in 3D space presents hard to see opportunities very early; before everyone has committed to the first reasonable idea. At the point of launch, new products often have things that could have been done better in hindsight. Even with this being so there is no reason to make sure by not using tools that are already available to use.

Anyone can make anything once, but what about the second time, and every time after that? The prototyping process always represents the production process, ensuring consistency and a quick start-up of the production process.

As the name implies, Rapid Prototyping produces results quickly. However, it’s also understood that while prototyping is rapid, it’s never rushed. Experience, engineering, and technologies combine for best outcomes.

Speed, better results, streamlined transitioning and easy refinements – mean you’re able to get your product to market faster. And the profitability that goes with it.

In the modern boom of digital art and design, the possibilities are not only accelerating but limitless. One can now 3D print almost anything they imagine after drawing it up virtually. In a relatively short time, an idea, concept, dream or invention can go from a simple thought to a produced part that you can hold.
 
3. Verify Design Concepts to Mitigate Risk

Being able to verify a design before investing in an expensive molding tool is worth its weight in 3D printed plastic, and then some. Printing a production-ready prototype builds confidence before making these large investments. It is far cheaper to 3D print a test prototype then to redesign or alter an existing mold.

Rapid prototyping allows designers to realise their concepts beyond virtual visualisation. This enables to understand the look and feel of the design, rather than simply assuming through the CAD model. This helps designers to carry forward their ideas and implement them in their design prior to finalisation. It also provides a proof of concept for the end client, seeking for a more realistic product design rather than merely visualising the design on screen.

With a prototype you can test the market by unveiling it at a trade-show, showing it to potential buyers or investors, or raising capital by pre-selling. Getting buyers response to the product before it actually goes into production is a valuable way to verify the product has market potential.
 
4. Minimisng Design Constraints/Limitations

The additive manufacturing offers the ability to identify flaws in the design prior to mass production. The materials available for rapid prototyping closely resemble the properties and strength of the actual product, making it possible to perform physical tests easily. The risks of faults and usability issues can be identified earlier to avoid problems that might occur later during manufacturing process.

There’s nothing inherently risky about integrating geometry and performance data into a single model to simulate function—unless the design team is afraid to find out that their assumptions are wrong. The value of bringing this technique into the design process sooner, rather than later, is that it helps to eliminate invalid design options and isolate those that are going to be most advantageous.

The limitations of standard machining have constrained product design for years. With the improvements in additive manufacturing, now the possibilities are endless. Geometry that has been historically difficult or impossible to build; like holes that change direction, unrealistic overhangs, or square interior cavities, is now possible and actually simple to construct.
 
5. Customising Designs

The most promising benefit of rapid prototyping is the ability to develop customised products as per the individual requirement. It requires no special tools or process to implement design changes in the product. A small change in the CAD model and the entire process remains the same. For manufacturers, this is highly advantageous as it offers a connected experience for the customer with the product they purchase.

With standard mass-production, all parts come off the assembly line or out of the mold the same. With 3D printing, one can customise fits. One thing you can’t get from a picture or virtual prototype on the computer screen is the way something feels in your hand. If you want to ensure fit of a product is just right, you must actually hold it, use it and test it.
 
6. Proof of Design Concept

Many developers overlook proof of concept prototypes because they have a short lifespan. Proof of design prototypes may not survive rigorous testing, but these models provide valuable information regarding how practical the design concept is. These prototypes can facilitate the creative process of design and point out mistakes early in a highly realistic manner.

Developers can have several concepts prototyped to make informed, digital-based decisions on which models to move forward with. Prototyping can eliminate some confusion of the design process as well, especially if multiple teams or many employees are involved. While these prototyping models are not built to last, they can be highly valuable in many other ways.

Being able to test ideas quickly and discover what doesn’t work accelerates discovery leading to an ideal solution. 3D printing allows a product developer to make breakthroughs at early stages that are relatively inexpensive leading to better products and less expensive dead-ends.

7. Clearly Communicate Results to Customers

Describing the product you are going to deliver is often misinterpreted since it leaves construction up to the imagination. A conceptual picture of the product is better than the description since it is worth 1,000 words, but getting to hold the tangible product-to-be, in hand, clears all lines of communication. There is no ambiguity when holding the exact, or at least a very close, representation of the product.

An accurate prototype is critical in evaluating and verifying function, fit, and finish of the product. Precision is the basis of Rapid Prototyping. Once you’ve gone through the Rapid Prototyping process, revisions and modifications to products are much easier to implement.
 
8. Receive Better Feedback

Prototypes are designed to scale. Interacting with a prototype is not so different to interacting with the real product. So designers can use prototypes to obtain valuable user feedback to improve the final version. User feedback with prototyping is complete and is not based on a disproportional version of the product. Designers can rely more on such feedback to make improvements to the final product.

One major advantage of prototyping is that companies can present audiences with a highly realistic model of the product. Therefore, the resulting feedback would be as if it were based on the real deal. Prototypes can also be used highly effectively for visual presentations for feedback from clients. Visual presentation prototypes can eliminate doubts and misunderstandings when it comes to gathering high-quality feedback or initial impression reviews.

Using prototypes is highly recommended before a product moves to mass manufacturing. Prototypes can eliminate much of the problems associated with mass production as well. Designers should use prototypes to validate digital representations, reliability,and functionality of models. The cost savings down the line are significant when you create a prototype first. As the prototyping process has become cheaper in modern times, it’s a cost even startups can now bear.

9. Incorporating Changes Instantly

Having a physical model in hand, it is possible to incorporate the changes instantly merely by asking the feedback from the customers. Prior to finalising the design, there are several iterations required. With each iterative process, the design improves further, building confidence for both the designer as well as the end consumer. This also helps in identifying the actual need of the market, making possible to develop competitive products with better acceptance rate.

Furthermore, early low-volume prototyping allows affordable design modification. Modifying final product designs requires tooling modification, which is very expensive. Prototyping, on the other hands, doesn’t require tooling, so developers can benefit from surprisingly low costs. If a product needs to be rushed to the market, prototyping can speed up the process and eliminate typical errors.

10. Rapid Implementation

Prototyping can fast-track the implementation process by removing many of the quality bottlenecks product launches face. Prototypes can help designers and developers immediately spot major problems present in products. Because prototyping occurs during the development stage, that still leaves plenty of time to do a course correction if necessary. The result is fewer or no errors during the final product unveiling stage. Bugs in products can hurt sales and brand reputation. So using prototypes in advance to determine whether users can interact with the product as the designer intends helps perfect the final product that goes into the hands of the customer.


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Top 10 "Digital Twin" Simulation Working Group Objectives to Model Product/Battlespace Regions

8/1/2018

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An awesome new Digital Twin processing feature is now available!


Digital Twin Builder is a new product that builds on previous products and consolidates them into a convenient workflow exclusively dedicated to helping engineers design digital twins.

The feature allows you to check operational variables through a user-defined region. User defined regions is an amazing tool when you want to understand flow between sections of the battlespace separate mission components, or even between different sequence of events.

Digital Twins are not only giving us the ability to do things faster, better and cheaper but it is changing the way we look at the entire product lifecycle. No longer are we tied to the iterative design cycle, but instead we are able to use simulation and other tools to inform our design choices from the very outset.

A Digital Twin, in case you missed it, is a 3D virtual representation of a component, assembly or system that is connected to its real-world counterpart by means of sensors and networked devices. The digital twin behaves just as the real-life twin behaves, and can be used for diagnosis, prognosis, and what-if scenarios of its real-world variant. The data that the digital twin provides can be used for process optimisation and maintenance scheduling, and can even be used to increase profitability by reducing downtime.

A digital twin can be as effective as the user wants it to be, and is limited only by how they choose to programme it.

A Consolidated Workflow

“Twin Builder is built on existing technology and we have invested in reduced order modeling, which is something we’ve been involved with for a few years, so Twin Builder is an extention of work that we have done in the past.

“Reduced order modeling typically takes data from 3D simulation and converts it into a faster simulation. The techniques vary—from matrix reduction, equivalent model extraction, regression, polynomial fitting, transfer function/system identification, etc. We also have techniques that can render the field back from the reduced model.

“One extra thing that we did add to Twin Builder, which has taken a couple of years, was to add connectivity to some popular network platforms. That involved phasing out some old stuff and actually making the connections with the new network platforms, so that’s the new piece.

How to Build a Digital Twin

So that’s how Twin Builder came into existence. But how did engineers build digital twins before these technologies were put together? Was there a proper and accepted method for creating them?

There wasn’t really a clearly defined method of building a digital twin in the past. What people would do in the past would be to just build a virtual prototype. There was no real notion of connecting it to operational data. And there was no real notion of actually deploying the digital twin at scale in an operational setting.

So, if you think about it, simulation is typically used at the design phase. You would build one virtual prototype for your design, validate it, and that’s it. But now what we want to do is to take that design and replicate it as you would with other virtual assets. That concept of scaling out is what’s really new here.”

“We start by telling customers to look at their top service costs that they may have; they can then do some kind of failure mode analysis to determine exactly what kind of digital twin model they need to build.

“We can then look at existing simulation models that were used during the design of the system, subsystem or component that was identified as key to the failure mode. From these simulation items, we can extract—via techniques like reduced order modeling, behavioural modeling, etc.—an accurate virtual replica of the physical equipment. Then you validate it by tuning and optimising parameters to accurately match measured data.

“Finally, we can export out the model into an executable deployable runtime. We have connectors for several popular network platforms, allowing customers to actually connect the simulation model to data through the platform and deploy the digital twin at scale,”

Use Cases in Industry

So, who are the biggest users of digital twins at the moment?

“At the moment, the digital twins are limited in deployment and limited in scale, but generally the most common uses of digital twins at the moment are for industrial equipment such as motors and pumps, and heating and cooling systems…those types of applications.”

We have heard the word “scalability” used when describing the benefits of digital twins. This can refer to the scalability of the number of instances of digital twins, or it can be used to describe the number of sensors and the scale of the analysis you want to perform.

So that begs the question: How big can a digital twin be in terms of scope and complexity?

“The scale of deployment will vary a lot. For example, in one application, we have a motor, and it has a few sensors on it. The number of sensors is very limited in that case—we are just using them to determine useful life and things like that. Then there are more complicated systems such as submersible pumps that contain multiple subsystems and multiple sensors. These are complicated systems and can contain tens to hundreds of different sensors.”

And those sensors aren’t restricted to physical sensors. Virtual sensors play an important role, too, especially when it comes to generating graphs outside of the typical functional data that is representative of nominal physical system operations. In short, a digital twin can be as big or as complicated as you want it to be. But then it really boils down to a question of what information do you need? What is useful and actionable?

Trials

“We’ve done several trials. Because this is based on existing technology, we have been testing at low scale in a few different industries with some of our advanced customers. Now we have the opportunity to embed simulation solutions for digital twins into manufacturing and asset management portfolios.

This solution will allow customers to study engineering-related effects in advance, through simulation. The solution will be run on cloud platforms, with the goal of enabling those who manage industrial facilities to optimise operation and maintenance through real-time technical insights.

"The result should also, in its extension, lead to reduced product cycle times and increased profitability.”

"The merging of physical and digital worlds disruptively affects the way in which products are manufactured, placed on the market and operated. By utilising the insights produced by digital twins, users will be well positioned to exploit the breakthrough this technology brings, and the solution will also help drive innovation.”

These solutions can not only simulate products and facilities during the product development phases, but also in manufacturing and—more importantly- even when the products or facilities are in the hands of end-users.

Based on solutions for digital twins, operators can test which flows in the most complex structure are most efficient to run under specific conditions. Through this type of simulation, it is possible to iterate and select a line of operational benefits.

These simulations use the enormous amounts of data generated by sensors in the assets, and let engineers gain valuable insights that can improve a process and provide a basis for improving future similar processes.

Additionally, one might consider developing hybrid models that leverage machine learning with multi-physical simulation models to accurately predict why a process in a facility may fail after it has been implemented.

Replacing Scheduled Maintenance with Needs-Related Maintenance

Linking these insights and data into business processes for controlling and managing plant facilities with other relevant platforms is an important step forward in the digital twin strategy.

"Combining the physical and digital worlds can sharpen competitiveness.

From a lifecycle perspective, companies can benefit from real-time insights by tracking how assets are designed, built and operated throughout the lifecycle of the product.

With the new solution, time-based maintenance of industrial assets is replaced with predictive maintenance. The machine or plant components can tell ‘themselves’ when they become worn to the point that they are likely to break.


Users can get a correct insight using a combination of real-time and predictive analyses and get Twin Builder to build, validate and distribute digital twins.

"Capturing Value Throughout the Entire Life Cycle"

Digital Twin technology simulates behaviour in different environments and stresses so the system is intended to predict problems before they occur. The prediction is based on information from physical sensors and physics-based models to provide results in 3D visualisation.

Putting together the digital and physical asset will enable capture of value throughout their product lifecycle. “This solution helps equipment operators and service providers predict and improve asset performance and reliability with technical insights. A digital twin that merges technical models, manufacturing details and operational insights, is unique in the industry.”

When we’re asked what the jobs entail, we say we’re problem hunter—solutions architect. When a company defines goals for its engineering team like doubling productivity, eliminating errors or reducing repetitive tasks, we hunt for any problem that could prevent them for reaching the goal and then design a custom solution for solving it.

It is true that many problems are similar for most engineering teams, regardless of the type of product they design or industry they serve.

For example, large numbers of engineers would mention large assembly slowdowns affecting their team. While the symptoms are the same, the causes are, most of the times, unique for each team. Finding these specific causes and tailoring solutions for each customer is art as much as science.

Here’s the lowdown on how simulation is shaping design, and how it is not only changing the products that we design, but also changing the way we look at the design process as a whole.

What Is It?

First up, let’s get up to speed on the concept of simulation-driven design.

“Simulation-driven design is taking simulation technology and moving it from the middle and the late cycles of the design process to the very front of it. This drastically lowers the time it takes to develop products, because instead of going back and forth between detailed design and validation, we put validation or simulation at the front of that process.

We use simulation to design the product using things like surface interaction optimisation, or we integrate control systems at the earliest stages, and then when we get to validation, it’s a simple check box instead of an iterative process.

So, simulation-driven design is putting simulation at the front of the design process and using simulation technology to create a design instead of using simulation to figure it out later.”

This is very much a common thread in industry manufacturing and design. In the old days, we used to have to wait for a design to come downstream before testing, building or simulating a design. Then, if the design wasn’t up to scratch, we would literally have to go back to the drawing board and try again.

Now, armed with design and simulation applications, we can effectively simulate early, and decide what strategy to use before getting too deep into the product lifecycle. We are now entering a world of pre-validated design.

How to Do It?

We’ve been hearing a lot about generative design and part interaction optimisation these last couple of years, with all of the big companies having their own take on this new way of doing things. Largely, it has been spurred on by the rise of additive manufacturing, which is permitting the creation of new geometries never before seen in manufacturing.

“This is a completely different concept that started as additive manufacturing technologies made it more possible to print these organic surfaces and structures that previously you couldn’t machine or cast because it was an organic, bone-looking design, right? When that change happened simulation-driven design really started to move from design validation, where you used simulation to validate a design, and change it from validating to becoming the actual main driver to inform the design.”

We have several products geared toward this new trend. It’s our flagship product…it’s essentially becoming a full-blown environment for simulation-driven design. It has topology optimisation and generative design capabilities to create these designs. It has finite element assessments for components of those designs. It’s got motion tools in there to understand the mechanical performance, evaluate loads, and take those loads into optimisations—that’s something that no one else can do.

We can basically do a motion simulation, and bring those loads and motions into an optimisation. We’re optimising full assembly-level designs, which is something that no one else is really doing either. We can have multiple components all being optimised at one time.”

But is it really that easy to use? It’s all very nice having generative design, which presents you with a variety of design solutions at the click of a button. But while the product lifecycle may be moving into our future, modeling itself is still a fairly entrenched task that seems destined to remain in the past. Not so true anymore.

“We created a whole suite of modeling tools that allow you to take those concepts that are generated and quickly generate smooth, organic surface design. If you’re familiar with parametric modeling, it’s very difficult to do organic surfaces in. We make it very easy. It’s call ‘3D tracing for engineers,’ so you’re basically tracing over the top of an optimised shape and you end up with a final printable design or a design that’s ready for machining.

Even if you’re unfamiliar with the Digital Twin, there’s a good chance that you use something of the sort anyway.
“A polygonal model is where you’d use blocks to model things…and what we did was we said that for every Block, you can hook those together. It’s almost like molding clay, but you’re still getting fully defined parasolid geometry that can be used in any manufacturing process.

Did you watch the video? Pretty cool, huh? The designer makes it look so easy. Now that means he’s either a simulation guru, or else it’s super easy to use? Or maybe both?

“This environment was built for design engineers—someone who is designing parts who needs to come up with lightweight and efficient structures. We’ve taken the complexity of simulation and made it very simple. You’ve heard simulation is tough, but we made it easy enough for everyone to use.

We’ve taken that to the next level. If you look at the ease of use of our interface, we’ve made it very easy to train designers how to use it—and once they start using it, they really become hooked on the style of modeling. And that has really been driving the interest in simulation-driven design.”

So now design engineering does look fun—almost like a video game.

Who Is Using It?

“The main driver that interests organisations to start with is the idea of lightweight. You hear about lightweighting all the time—these were the types of products that were initially interested in simulation-driven design. So, obviously the aerospace industry, anything going into space, any major unit that has a mass budget instead of a dollar budget—they’re using this to take as much weight out of the design as possible. The by-products of that are an accelerated development cycle as well as cutting costs by material reduction and a compressed design cycle.”

“So, ground vehicles, aerospace, general machinery devices are now starting to use it, especially as we look at structure optimisation, being able to encourage block growth through the structure—those things are very important, so we’re seeing more traction there as well.”

The Path to Mass Adoption

So, you’ve seen the features available in generative design-oriented packages. With something so revolutionary available to engineers, we should be seeing a lot more of these highly optimised designs trickling into our daily work, right?

Not quite. There is resistance to mass adoption whenever a new technology comes along, not just due to the technological hurdles but also due to behavioual hurdles.

“On the behaviour side regarding the more organic shapes…it’s half the weight yet twice as strong, which is pretty counter intuitive to engineering principles, right? There’s that old mantra of when in doubt, build it stout…simulation-driven design takes that mantra and reverses it and says that’s not the best way to do it. The best way to do it is to put the material where it needs to go so it accommodates the forces that you’re designing for. So, it creates these very organic structures.

People think that more material makes it stronger—and that’s not the reality, so that’s one of the biggest issues is getting past that.”

That’s the biggest challenge to adoption—changing the way that people think about design, from the old concept of form follows function to the modern paradigm where form follows forces.

“Also, there is resistance to changing the way people design. Any time there’s a big change in the way that we design something, there’s always resistance to change, so that’s the biggest challenge to adoption—changing the way that people think about design, from that form follows function to now, where form follows forces.”

What’s Next?

“We’re still in the early stages—traditional design groups are starting to adopt this approach—we’re seeing this adoption more in the bleeding-edge companies, right? These kinds of companies and organisations are really pushing the edges of that, and now we’re starting to see that trickle down into traditional manufacturing industries as well.”

“As we look into the future, we are going to see topology optimisation techniques hooked up to iterate through numerous different concepts very quickly—so you can look at a lot more concepts and understand what’s going to work and what’s not going to work. Then you take the best concept and move forward with that design.”

Other than having fun solving difficult problems, the declared goal has always been to facilitate—through brainstorming—the finding of new techniques and methods for maximum benefits.

Here we present goals for a Working Group organistional structure. Forum participants find answers to established questions. Most of the problems are relevant to specific groups of users who benefit from the limitations identified in the challenges and enhancement requests that are created at the same time.
 
1. Formalise planning development, integration, and use of models to inform enterprise, programme decision making, support engineering activities to digitally represent the system of interest

2. Ensure models are accurate, complete, usable across disciplines to support communication, collaboration and performance and decision making across lifecycle activities

3. Provide enduring, authoritative source of secure authentication with access/controls to establish technical baseline, product digital artifacts, and support reviews for accurate decision making

4. Incorporate technological innovation to establish end-to-end digital engineering enterprise and foster conditions for productive step advances towards goals

5. Enable end-to-end decision making using advance human-machine interactions

6. Establish mature supporting digital engineering activity infrastructure to perform activities with connected information networks

7. Develop, mature, and implement technology tools to realise digital engineering goals and share best practices using models to collaborate with stakeholders

8. Improve digital engineering knowledge base, policy, guidance, specifications, and standards and streamline contracting, procurement and business operations

9. Lead and support digital engineering transformation efforts, vision, strategy, and implementation to establish accountability to measure and demonstrate results across programmes

10. Build and prepare workforce to develop knowledge, competence, and skills with active participation and engagement in planning and implementing transformation efforts 

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Top 10 3D Print Services Support Manoeuvres Artificial Intelligence Reduce Repair Pitstops and Supply Runs

8/1/2018

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New contract to apply artificial intelligence to Marine Corps maintenance could streamline logistics and help lessen dependence of fighting forces from long supply lines. Ultimately, AI could enable the far-ranging manoeuvres envisioned by the multi-domain operations concept.

Most debate about military artificial intelligence centers on robots, but professionals usually talk logistics. Without fuel, ammunition, spare parts, and maintenance, no weapon, manned or unmanned, is going anywhere.

What’s more, while AI has made great progress in recognising objects/targets and navigating the physical world, autonomous combat robots are far in the future.

Marines will apply AI-driven “predictive maintenance” to part of its aging fleet troop carriers equipped with diesel engines, heavy-duty transmissions, and other features with hundreds million hours of metrics on diesel engines alone, and in the world of AI machine learning, the more metrics you have, the more accurate your predictions get.

The goal is to track the performance of each major component in real time — oil pressure, turbocharger speed, battery life, etc. etc. — and predict when it’s likely to fail.

Predictive maintenance has two benefits. First, most obviously, it lets you replace or repair a part before it breaks on you. Second, it lets you skip a lot of so-called preventive maintenance, when you pull your vehicle into the shop after so many hours of operation because that’s when, on average, such-and-such a component will need an overhaul.

There’s been a small blitz of media coverage of the contract, but it’s focused on how predictive maintenance can improve efficiency and cut costs, but there are uniquely military benefits.

Logistics has been a double-edged sword for Marines for a long time. On the upside, plentiful supplies of fuel, ammunition, and spare parts in good times have kept huge armoured forces on the march. On the downside, the long supply lines, iron mountains of supply stockpiles, and the huge numbers of support troops and vehicles required slow down deployments to a crisis and restrict manoeuvres once it’s arrived.

Marines could cope with these logistical limits when it has months to build up before the shooting started, with nearby as bases, and a relatively short distance to drive.

But logistical demands can be much greater when distances are longer with large combat formations moving along a single axis of advance, let alone supply convoys and depots.

So emerging concepts called multi-domain operations or distributed operations envisions Marines spreading out to make themselves harder targets. Relatively small units would operate “semi-independently,” moving frequently from one position to another, without resupply for days at a time.

The problem is Marines are not set up to do this today. Heavy armoured vehicles just require too much fuel and maintenance to operate this way. The long-term solution is to develop lighter and less logistically demanding vehicles, but recent efforts have been less than successful.

In the meantime, Marines need to figure out how to support the forces it has more efficiently so they can manoeuvre more freely, with less frequent pit stops for maintenance or supply runs for repair parts.

That’s where the new contract comes in. A lot of maintenance that’s done is based on what the owner’s manual says. You should go and get your oil changed and your engine checked every so many miles which can function as a baseline but it doesn’t take into account how the machine is being used and the wear and tear and stresses.

So we track not only the individual performance of specific components on specific vehicles, but also external variables like weather. Heat, cold, and humidity can all impose stress on machinery.

Where is this information coming from? It turns out the ability to put digital sensors on its products got ahead of its ability to do anything with it. A lot of machines have the sensors already on them that are producing metrics, it’s just that nobody’s listening.

Another problem is when vehicle is in a location with poor bandwidth, or if there’s a military reason to turn off all transmissions, the system can stop sending updates for a time. It can also do some of the assessments onboard the vehicle and may not have to send the results back to the central station minimising bandwidth use and transmission length.

But the big benefit is the ability to pool all available information in one place and then let machine learning figure out patterns, which can then be used to forecast future performance.

We can track general trends across a fleet of vehicles, but the real value is with prediction. Imagine if, instead of having to go to the shop for your scheduled work, you could have your status 24/7.

On the individual machine/equipment level, will the fighter unit make it through the day and do what it needs to do?

Our goal is for tactical commanders to know -- we have this many vehicles this is what the overall status is for each one so better strategic decisions can be made.

For deployed units, the ability to print parts on the go reduces the time it takes to secure new replacement parts and it also saves on the amount of gear the unit needs to take on deployment. For the operational crews, most importantly, 3D printing saves on lost training time and scrubbed operational sorties.

“While afloat, our motto is, ‘Fix it forward,’” “3-D printing is a great tool to make that happen. Marines can now bring that capability to bear exactly where it’s needed most—on a forward-deployed MEU.”

“As a commander, my most important commodity is time,” Although our supply and logistics personnel do an outstanding job getting us parts, being able to rapidly make our own parts is a huge advantage.”

A U.S. Marine Corps pilot has successfully flown an F-35B Lightning II with a 3-D printed part. The Marine Fighter Attack Squadron used 3D printing to replace a worn bumper on the landing gear of the fighter jet.

Marine Corps used the 3D printer as part of a process otherwise known as additive manufacturing. Without a 3D printing capability, the entire door assembly would have needed to be replaced, a more expensive and more time-consuming repair. Rather than waiting weeks for a replacement the bumper was printed, approved and installed within a few days.

The repair demonstrates the value that additive manufacturing technology brings to forward-deployed units. “I think 3D printing is definitely the future ― it’s absolutely the direction the Marine Corps needs to be going,”

Building off the achievement with the F-35 part, the MEU’s explosive ordnance disposal team requested a modification part to function as a lens cap for a camera on an iRobot small unmanned ground vehicle. Such a part did not exist at the time, but the 3-D printing team designed and produced the part, which is currently operational and protecting the robot’s lens.

The Corps has issued requests for information on a new cap and gloves for intense cold, and it plans to spend over 10 million on more than 2,500 sets of ski system for scout snipers, reconnaissance Marines, and some infantrymen. Zippers stuck; seams ripped; backpack frames snapped; and boots repeatedly pulled loose from skis or tore on the metal bindings.

Marines at the Mountain Warfare Training Center, working with the Marine Corps System Command team focused on additive manufacturing, which is also known as 3D printing, have come up with a method for same-day printing of new snowshoe clips, which keep boots locked into show shoes.


"If a Marine is attacking a position in the snow while in combat, and the clip on their boot breaks, it makes it difficult for the Marine to run forward with a rifle uphill to complete the mission," "If the Marine has a 3D-printed clip in their pocket, they can quickly replace it and continue charging ahead."
If you can imagine how frustrating it is, you don’t want to carry extra snowshoes because they break and this happens pretty frequently. The Marine Corps produced their own design that was cheaper and alleviated a lot of the problem.

The teams designed and printed the new clip, made of resin, within three business days of the request, and each clip costs just $0.05, The team has also 3D-printed an insulated cover for radio batteries that would otherwise quickly be depleted in cold weather.

"The capability that a 3D printer brings to us on scene saves the Marine Corps time and money by providing same-day replacements if needed. "It makes us faster than our peer adversaries because we can design whatever we need right when we need it, instead of ordering a replacement part and waiting for it to ship."

Marine Corps has expressed particular interest in the technology and unit commands broad permission to use 3D printing to build parts for their equipment. The force now relies on it to make products that are too small for the conventional supply chain, like specialised tools, radio components, or items that would otherwise require larger, much more expensive repairs to replace.

Marines were the first to deploy the machines to combat zones with conventional forces. Several of the desktop-computer-size machines had been deployed with the Marine Corps crisis-response task force

The Corps is developing the X-FAB, a self-contained, transportable 3D-printing facility contained within a 20-foot-by-20-foot box, meant to support maintenance, supply, logistics, and engineer units in the field. The service also said it wants to 3D-print mini drones for use by infantry units.

3D Print Demo Capabilities Address Supply Chain Issues to Speed Delivery of Parts and Equipment in Time to Troops

3D Print Tech is going to bring about revolutionary changes to Marines supply system, with an associated big shift from the current order and stocking system to implementation of just-in-time inventory. It has the potential to move the point of manufacture for hundreds of components and parts closer to the point of demand."

The service envisions logistics scenarios in which Marine supply officers could special order parts and equipment for "just in time" production using 3D printers. Must demo rapid prototyping, improved logistics operations and cost reduction capabilities flowing from the Marine Corps embrace of 3D printing technology.

For example, 3D printers to manufacture a standard one-inch manual valve designed to regulate flow in a pipeline. A 3D printed version of the valve is being used for training, where it can be torn apart and reassemble the valve. A standard valve can cost as much as $50,000, but the 3D training version costs about $500. The valve mock-up is being used to familiarise engineers and mechanics with valve operation and repair procedures.

The Marines acknowledge key engineering questions must still be resolved before 3D manufacturing technology can be leveraged to streamline its supply chain. Among the engineering issues is determining whether parts made using additive manufacturing match military specifications for standard components.

"We will need to develop new contracting strategies to exploit on-demand or even automated procurements so a fleet user could put in a demand signal for a particular component. An order would be transmitted through the supply system to the most suitable geographic location where it could conceivably get a 3D machine printing that part without any troop interaction from the moment the demand signal is sent."

We put a group together to develop 3D print expertise while asking process operational and applications, designs, and goals to rapidly provide state-of-the-art solutions. The readiness is very important to us, but as well we don’t want to get above innovation in the new stuff, so we use 3D print where it makes sense; currently and in the future.

We’re looking at sustainment in design at the point of need—getting the right tools and equipment to Marines, with the right education and training, so they can make what they need to keep boots on the ground, aircraft in the air, and tanks rolling out. It’s not just structural stuff like metals and polymers; but we’re also looking at electronics.

Our key thinking is the organic, industrial base. We don’t want to make and do stuff in if we can transition on technology to the industrial base. The only exception to that is at the point of need where sometimes we need to make something far forward as a battlefield repair or a temporary holdover until we can get replacement parts, or we can design the permanent fix.

We also use 3D print for unmanned systems, that includes aerial systems, ground systems, underwater systems, and we have a lot of effort in 3D print for armaments. One of the keys to all the stuff we’re doing is a digital depository to keep all that information so Marines can get the information on parts they need and make the stuff.

We have a tiered approach of what we’re trying to do, we’re making new 3D print tech operational in our systems. The next stage is parts alternative, so that’s like a one-to-one replacement.

Now we’re in the phase where we do process alternatives, where 3D print is a better process or equal process to what we’re currently using. That’s where we’re standing right now, and where we’re ultimately trying to get to is true design for 3D print, so it’s a product alternative, so it’s something we couldn’t make before or the technology wasn’t there.

We are starting to make strides towards machines being used. Most of them were small tabletop units; but there were some larger 3D print machines. What we found was excitement among the people doing it. They were really trying to push the technology. But what we also found was no configuration control, everybody was working in little silos, there was no process standardisation, there was no digital thread.

But now, today we’re up to 50 including eight metal printers. So, tomorrow what we’re trying to do is get to the library of qualified parts. We want to continue to build the digital inventory of materials. And really what it’s all about is standardising our 3D print with documentation, certified operators and machines. Its all about how do we get to the future where agile manufacturing network create digital threads and secure parts library?

Our whole goal is to keep aircraft in the air. So we’re never going to be making more than a few parts at a time; but when we need them, we need them. So we have a lot of unintended spares out there.

We’re going leave you with two takeaways today. The first, based on both our manufacturing background in the industry and developing processes, that you learn by doing. You don’t do it by studying it, and then put your person in production, then from day one production is done. It doesn’t happen that way. So, the first takeaway is if you really want to get into it, you’ve got to go do it. And that means making lots of parts.

The other thing we saw immediately when we started getting our metal printers, was troops were focusing on cost. What’s it going to cost to make this here? I’m going to tell you right now, you probably already know this, when you start to learn how to make the part, it’s not going to be inexpensive, it’s not going to be less expensive than the part you were making traditionally. But if you start looking at parts with multiple year lead time, or we can’t even get it. That’s hard to put a price on.

We’re working with a number of industries trying to collaborate; but we’ve got to be able to do this ourselves, and we’ve got to be able to make one or two parts. We’re not trying to become manufacturers; we’re trying to keep aircraft in the air.

Marines have been doing adding to manufacturing for some time—we’ve been doing 3D print. We didn’t start easy with additive manufacturing end-use parts. We recently manufactured and installed a flight-critical titanium component on an MV-22 Osprey. It’s probably the first 3D print flight-critical part in operational aircraft.

The parts are still on that MV-22, it’s sensored, we’re monitoring it. It wasn’t a readiness driver, it wasn’t something that we had to do, it’s something we did because we would like to learn about 3D print parts, and we knew that if we could do a critical part, we could do everything.

We’re concentrating on primary places where we want to print. First is in the depots. We want to make a thing that’s going to keep planes, or ships, functional for however long it’s supposed to. We want to make the right thing on that platform at the right time to get it back into service.

We’re doing a lot of work to make things internally, but that’s not what we want. We want to go to industry, and say ‘We need things that have been obsolete and the guys been out of business for decades.’ We need that, and we need a lot of one, right? We don’t need a lot of 50 or 1,000. We need a lot of one of this part to put on the airplane, or ship to get it back operational.

The other thing that’s really important to us, is if we have a platform deployed in an operation environment, we need a backup. If a critical ship system or combat system goes down; we want to get that system back up. It doesn’t have to be back up forever, it might just have to be back up for two hours. That’s a big change.

What’s going to be important to us is additive manufacturing and new acquisitions. This is where industry partners can really help us drive to new, better capabilities. The things that you could do with additive manufacturing that you can’t do with traditional manufacturing technology, will allow us to develop systems that are more lethal, more survivable, and more sustainable. It may be systems that we have never thought about being able to do before.

Marines have identified several challenges that we need to overcome. Those challenges are qualification and certification … we need a digital thread to be able to securely share files amongst ourselves, within the Navy. We need to be able to print in a floating expeditionary environment with a trained workforce and business processes to be able determine ‘Should we print it?’

Marine Corps has focused on some use cases for 3D print. As we’ve mentioned before, readiness is a huge driver. Aircraft were deadlined due to one component. We designed the original and sent that over to engineering. It took a few iterations, and a month to approve but it’s installed. So it reduced the lead time from 300 days down to three days.

An innovation challenge led to 3D print Bootcamp Training. This is where we go out into the field—engineers—training our Marines so that they understand the current capabilities of the technology and they can make smart decisions.

The Marine Corps is fast and lean. You can imagine you can only carry in so much equipment, so they’re looking at how can we reduce what we carry in. With this training, they’re able to design and produce unit-specific solutions that have already been proven for deployed environments.

As far as tailored capabilities, we have weapons systems like unmanned aerial vehicles. The Marines need something that’s low-cost, literally just to look over the hill and see what’s on the other side.

So instead of expensive weapons systems, here is a design that could be 3D printed that was actually designed in house. If it crashes we can quickly print another component in the field using low-cost 3D printers.

Results from our 3D printing workshop included greater functionality, lower weight, and reduced manufacturing costs, and oftentimes all three. Several design considerations made these benefits possible:

Well-designed 3D-printed parts follow many of the same rules as those made with injection molding. These include: Use gradual transitions between adjoining surfaces. Eliminate large differences in cross section and part volume. Avoid sharp corners that often create residual stress in finished workpieces. Watch that thin unsupported walls don’t grow too tall, or they may buckle or warp.

The most dramatic 3D-printed part designs leverage 3D’s ability to create “organic” shapes, such as honeycombs and complex matrices. Don’t be afraid to use these shapes, provided doing so creates a lighter, stronger part. Nor should you fear placing holes -- lots of them in your design. With traditional manufacturing, drilling holes in a solid block of material increases part cost and waste.

Not so in the additive world, where more holes mean less powder and less processing time. Just remember, 3D-printed holes don’t need to be round. Quite often, an elliptical, hexagonal, or free-form hole shape would better suit the part design and be easier to print.

Just because you can print parts with lots of holes, however, doesn’t mean you should, especially if the plan is to make lots of such parts later. Because 3D printing offers tremendous design flexibility, it’s easy to paint yourself into a corner by not considering how parts will be manufactured post-prototyping.

Based on examples at the start of this design tip, an increasing number of units are finding 3D printing suitable for end-use parts, but many parts will transition from printing to machining, molding, or casting as production volumes grow. That’s why it’s important to perform a design for manufacturability assessments early in the design cycle, assuring cost-effective production throughout the part’s life cycle.

With certain techniques plastic parts produced need no support structures during the build process, so post-processing is usually limited to bead blasting, painting, reaming, tapping holes, and machining critical part features. Direct metal laser sintering, on the other hand, often requires extensive scaffold-like structures to support and control movement of the metal workpiece; without them, surfaces may curl and warp. This is especially true with overhanging geometries such as wide T-shapes, which require build supports beneath the arms which will have to be machined or ground away, thus increasing cost and lead time.

Designers and engineers should avoid “over-tolerancing” parts because it may force them to be built using thinner layers-- increasing build time and cost and will often call for secondary machining operations to meet ‘overzealous’ print dimensions. Because 3D printing offers so many opportunities for part count reduction, there’s less need for super-accurate fits between mating surfaces anyway—just one more example of how this technology reduces manufacturing costs.

3D printed parts might cost more upfront, but don’t let that scare you. With additive, you have tremendous potential for part count reduction, reduced weight and greater structural integrity, lower assembly costs, internal passages for cooling or wiring, and other features not possible with traditional designs.

Also, keep in mind that fixtures, molds, and other types of tooling are not needed with 3D printing, eliminating costs that might not be directly associated to the price of the individual parts. Focusing on the part’s price tag, rather than product function and “the big picture,” may leave you designing the same parts you did yesterday, eliminating opportunities to reduce overall manufacturing costs.

Search our catalog of assembly line items - Find the parts for the interactions you need to assemble from our real-time catalog. We update our catalog as we receive updates, not days later like most services. Use our parts number catalog to find out the configuration details of the part you need.

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NEW! - Online Parts Catalog - Browse or Search through our new Parts Catalog System

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