CCAM Hosts its 3rd Advanced Manufacturing Research Day – in Automation

On April 25th CCAM hosted over 130 guests for its first Automation Research Day. This was CCAM’s third Advanced Manufacturing Research Day and the largest to date. CCAM’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Days provide a forum for thought leaders within industry, government, and academia to explore common challenges end emerging solutions in a collaborative environment. A combination of presentations from subject matter experts, interactive panels, and demonstrations of current research provided an opportunity for participants to gain insight and share best practices.

The day was kicked off by the Speaker for the Virginia House of Delegates, Kirk Cox. In his comments Speaker Cox noted CCAM as a leading resource for advanced manufacturing in the Commonwealth of Virginia. He affirmed the Commonwealth’s commitment to CCAM, its member companies, and all advanced manufacturing companies in Virginia.

CCAM’s Automation Day was broken into two main topics. One focus was on the Intelligent Factory and included speakers from industry leaders such as Boeing and Siemens PLM Software. Their presentations offered a view of how large companies utilize Intelligent Factory solutions. Speakers from CISCO and Deloitte were available to share ideas and solutions both from a very specific implementation level and a high-level C-suite perspective. “Realizing the substantial potential benefits of the ‘Industry 4.0’ vision continues to be an exciting opportunity for industry, and the challenges faced are a key focus of CCAM in providing value to our collaborative partners,” said Dr. Jaime Camelio, CCAM’s Chief Technology Officer.”

A panel addressing Challenges Implementing the Intelligent Factory in Manufacturing with representatives from BR&L Consulting, VCU, NIST, CCAM, CESMII, and Arconic answered questions about the value proposition for investing in manufacturing automation, its uses, and benefits of generating data in the manufacturing environment.

The second focus of the day was on how robotics can be used to enhance manufacturing processes. Human-robot collaboration, robots that can be easily re-tasked, and security were topics covered by speakers from NIST, ABB Robotics, and Virginia Tech. Its panel included participants CCAM, ARM, Airbus, SWRI, and NIST to discuss Collaborative and Autonomous Robotics for the Intelligent Factory. The panelist offered thoughts on the meaning and benefits of the ‘collaborative robotics’ concept and discussed the business case for large scale implementation of collaborative and autonomous robotics. “CCAM continues to work with end users, suppliers, and government to bring truly adaptive & collaborative robotics into manufacturing. We were very excited to host a diverse and engaged audience in addressing the current state and challenges with making these technologies a real part of manufacturing in the US,” said CCAM’s Adaptive Automation Research Manager, Matt Stremler.

CCAM’s Automation Day demonstrated current industry research include Sandvik Coromant’s sample of applying visualization tools to deriving value from machine data, and a discussion of in-machine adaptation presented by CCAM. CCAM conducted research tours in their 15,000 square foot high bay which highlighted automation demos for a virtual factory, process monitors and APS factory integration, job kitting with collaborative robotics, automated mobile fused monitoring, tele-operated robotics, fused data monitoring for additive manufacturing, and monitoring and measurement for machining.

Visitors were able to tour Newport News Shipbuilding’s (NNS) Digital Shipbuilding Mobile Experience (MX). The 53-foot trailer contains demonstration stations to provide an overview of the digital tools currently in use at NNS.

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