Objective: This project will develop the measurement science foundation to enable integration of manufacturing applications. In FY12, the project will coordinate intramural manufacturing integration activities across NIST labs.
What is the new technical idea? Just as a manufacturing process comes to a halt if the input materials are not available or are inappropriate, the software applications used in the product realization process do not perform the jobs intended if needed information is unavailable, is incomplete, or not in the correct format when provided. The amount of information required for a paperless, integrated product realization process has grown exponentially and thus the opportunities for information to be missing, incomplete, erroneous, or incompatible are enormous. Although the specific types of information will vary according to manufacturing sector, processes used, and product type, the volume of information is comparable for most industries.
Most of the information conveyed between manufacturing activities today exists only in digital form.
Manufacturers attribute information exchange problems to the software applications that the designers, manufacturing engineers, machine operators, and administrators use to do their jobs. Simply put, they lack commonly defined interfaces through which the software applications can exchange information with each other. Without information interfaces between the software applications, there is no exchange of information and hence, no effective communication. Without effective communication between engineering systems, manufacturing systems, supplier's systems, and customer's systems, the product realization process is slower, more costly, and reduces competitiveness.
Standards-based Integration Solutions: Integration standards come in different forms and come into existence through several mechanisms. A formal standard arises through agreement by a committee of technical representatives formed under the auspices of a formal standards-making body, e.g., the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). Informal or de facto standards are those that have not been submitted to a formal-standards making body but are nonetheless adhered to in multiple independent implementations. Such standards are more common in the software domain than in other areas. De facto standards arise through dominance in the market of a particular mechanism, resulting in the de facto standardization of its characteristics. Another variant of an informal standard is one arising through agreement among a group of software vendors to adhere to a common interface so that their products interoperate, thus creating a “standard” within their combined customer base - this is sometimes referred to as an “industry standard.”
Many informal standards eventually become formal standards through ratification by a standards-making body. The advantage of creating a standard first through informal means and following with formal ratification is that in virtually all such cases implementations of the specification have evolved with the maturation of the specification. The side effect of this parallel evolution of the specification and implementations is that the specification has been refined to reflect implementation and usability concerns. For these reasons, the SIMA Project has adopted a process for development of manufacturing software integration specifications taking into account the advantages of both the informal and formal standard development tracks.
What is the research plan? The focus of the project is eliminating the loss of productivity attributed to incompatible manufacturing software interfaces and the time lost correcting faulty or incomplete information exchanges. The opportunities for such time losses multiply with the availability of every new software system in the marketplace. The types and numbers of software packages available for use in various aspects of the product realization process have grown over the last decade and there is no reason to believe that this trend will not continue – for example, new software applications for designing and analyzing components made from composite materials. The SIMA Project must work not only to develop specific integration solutions between classes of manufacturing applications and among applications within the same class, but also generic integration solutions which will be applicable to many classes of manufacturing applications.
The SIMA Project encompasses projects throughout the NIST's Laboratories. SIMA – funded projects have delivered standards and participated in standards implementation pilots in the automotive, electronics and aerospace industries.
SIMA Project Criteria
The scope of projects in the SIMA Project is the development, testing, and standardization of specifications that enable the exchange of information among the multitude of engineering and manufacturing software applications across the product life cycle. SIMA projects focus on the content of these specifications not the underlying languages used to represent that content or the generic exchange mechanism used to move that content from one device to another or one application to another.
SIMA projects focus on specification of an interface between software systems that support a particular manufacturing activity or manufacturing scenario. As such, it will be a proposed solution aimed at improving interoperability among independently developed manufacturing software systems. An interface is developed through an industry review and consensus process and is accepted by the manufacturing community as a definitive solution to a particular interoperability problem. A complete interface project:
- specifies the scope and domain of its applicability along with a supporting manufacturing scenario
- specifies the interface or information repository
- identifies its status as of publication in formal standards organizations
- states the implementations available, and
- references the source documents (related standards) from which it is derived or on which it depends.
SIMA projects follow a structured approach to specification development.
Identify/Document Industry Need – The initial activity of development is identifying and documenting an industry need, manufacturing scenario, or problem statement to define the scope and manufacturing domain of the project.
Analyze Requirements –Analyze current solutions within the manufacturing scenario to understand current capabilities. A requirements specification is the primary output.
Design – Project activities may result in a combination of deliverable types, including information model(s), interface protocol(s), or process model(s), as required by the problem to be solved.
Validate – Validation is required to ensure the completeness, validity, and usability of the proposed solution. Validation activities may take several forms, including: prototype implementations, detailed walk-through with domain experts, or a comparison with known references. A proposed solution with demonstrated prototype implementations and validation test results makes a much stronger case for standardization.
Transfer Technology – One of the primary missions of NIST is to provide technology transfer of NIST research results to industry. Various methods of technology transfer may be employed at the various stages of the project to supply industry collaborators and the manufacturing community with current information.
Standardization – Development efforts will include interaction with appropriate standards development organizations to initiate standardization. These activities may include participating on standards committees. The objective is to bring NIST research results to the standard.
