NIST studies recommend closing tech gaps to fortify advanced manufacturing
- PDF / 151,117 Bytes
- 1 Pages / 585 x 783 pts Page_size
- 54 Downloads / 222 Views
its allotted time and used about one-sixth of its budget so it would be rather surprising if we had reached all our goals already,” Kinaret says. The aim for the next phase of the flagship is to focus more heavily on boosting industrial impact. “In some areas, such as supercapacitors, we are already approaching the pilot line stage, while in other fields we expect to produce system-level demonstrators,” he says. One more challenge is how the Graphene Flagship will cope with the departure of the UK from the EU following the decision made in a
NIST studies recommend closing tech gaps to fortify advanced manufacturing
T
o spur significant innovation and growth in advanced manufacturing, as well as save over $100 billion annually, US industry must rectify currently unmet needs for measurement science and “proof-of-concept” demonstrations of emerging technologies. This is the overall conclusion reached by economic studies funded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) of four advanced manufacturing areas used to create everything from automobile composites to zero-noise headsets. “Gaps in the technology infrastructure—including the lack of reliable measurement and test methods, scientifically based standards, and other formal knowledge and tools—limit advanced manufacturing’s further development and adoption,” says NIST economist Gary Anderson, coordinator of the economic studies prepared by RTI International, an independent nonprofit research institute. Using data collected through extensive interviews and surveys with researchers, developers, manufacturers, and other stakeholders, each of the four studies identifies 5–10 critical technical barriers to the adoption of its specific manufacturing technology. The studies also estimate the impacts of eliminating these obstacles and define which needs should be met first to do so.
For example, establishing industrywide standards and measurements for the inks and substrates used in roll-to-roll (R2R) manufacturing—the fabrication of electronic devices on a roll of flexible plastic or metal—is projected to reduce production costs by 15%. Likewise, the development and adoption of verified reference data, robust measurement technologies and testing protocols, and standardized modeling and finishing methods could yield some $4 billion in annual benefits and savings for additive manufacturing, a process also known as three-dimensional printing. The two largest predicted cost savings were the $57.4 billion and $40.1 billion for smart manufacturing (where all manufacturing data from design to finished product is electronically exchanged and processed) and advanced robotics and automation sectors, respectively. Among the needs that must be met to realize both of these benefits, the researchers say, is increasing access by small- and mediumsized manufacturers to the same state-ofthe-art methods, tools, and knowledge as their larger counterparts. For each of the four advanced manufacturing technologies studied, the estimated annual cost savings and percentage r
Data Loading...
