MTConnect conference: Attendees come away educated, connected and inspired

I just want to share with you some interesting insights that happened during the manufacturing conference organized by MTConnect. Indeed attendees came home educated, connected and inspired. Here are some of the highlights from the MTConnect: Connecting Manufacturing Conference in April.

Founding principal of MAYA Design and co-author of Trillions: Thriving in the Emerging Information Ecology, challenged attendees to look beyond just the Internet of Things and “imagine a world in which you could not buy a microprocessor that didn’t have a radio on it. Everything, every trivial piece of bric-a-brac we build with processors, is going to be communicating with everything else. What would such a world look like?”

He continued, “It’ll be a lot like nature. Trillions of computers communicating with billions of people and an uncountable number of information objects, flowing freely from device to device with everything connected.”

In another keynote address, Greg Harris, Ph.D., who is with the U.S. Army, Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center, Engineering Directorate, Manufacturing Science & Technology Division and Program Manager of the Digital Manufacturing & Design Innovation (DMDI) Institute, explained how the federal investment for the DMDI Institute that will be used to establish the Digital Lab for Manufacturing (Digital Lab), led by a Chicago-based research and commercialization collaborative called UI Labs came to be. “We knew the basic criteria necessary for innovation to take place: close proximity, ways to make the design-make-and-learn cycle faster and an ecosystem in place to support innovation. As a pillar of President Obama’s investment in U.S. Manufacturing, the Digital Lab will be the nation’s flagship research institute in digital manufacturing and design innovation and a world-class, first-of-its-kind manufacturing hub with the capabilities, innovation and collaboration necessary to transform American manufacturing.”

On the closing day of the conference, The National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM) and the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) Defense-wide Manufacturing Science and Technology (DMS&T), along with AMT – The Association For Manufacturing Technology and the U.S. Army Benét Labs, announced the three top winners of the MTConnect Challenge 2 as voted by [MC]2 attendees. The MTConnect Challenge was a two-part competition for the development of manufacturing intelligence ideas and software applications utilizing the MTConnect standard.

First prize of $100,000 was awarded to Valerie Pezzullo of Clemson University for Machining Process Monitoring to Aid in Chatter Identification. Second prize of $75,000 went to Joel Neidig of ITAMCO for Expanding Manufacturing's Vision: MTConnect + Google Glass. Third prize of $50,000 was awarded to Shane Crandall for Promise.

The conference also featured an End User Forum and various other educational sessions where attendees received hands-on training about MTConnect and the MTConnect/OPC UA Companion Specification.