Geoff Wood- Profile Composites, Craig Snyder- Bayer, Michael Fancher- NCMS

NCMS was formally recognized last week for the creation of a new process for creating high pressure hydrogen storage tanks for vehicles.  The JEC Innovation awards identify the most innovative composite solutions worldwide and contribute to the advancement of the composite industry.

NCMS brought together Profile Composites, Inc; Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America; Bayer MaterialScience, LLC; MAG Cincinnati Automation; and A&P Technology to design a new manufacturing process to increase production volume. The team used a resin material custom formulated by Bayer and applied it to a dry fiber preform, rather than the conventional – and slow – filament winding process of the traditional model. As a result, a new tank is ready for market 18x faster than filament winding, and project partners are confident that speeds can be doubled with additional improvements to the process. 

NCMS is no stranger to global recognition for its collaborative R&D management model: the Michigan-based non-profit has won six Defense Manufacturing Excellence Awards and five consecutive R&D 100 Awards. NCMS also administers the Robotics Technology Consortium for the Defense Department, overseeing over 100 participating companies and a budget in the hundreds of millions. Recently, another collaborative NCMS DoE project made headlines as two recently developed fuel cell stacks served as the sole source of power for an Oakland, California passenger bus for more than 130 hours over two weeks, a fantastic example of NCMS innovation taking one step closer to mass-market reality.

Gain the tangible “world-class” operations knowledge you need to get YOUR organization through these economically challenging times. As part of the operations management community we invite you to attend the IndustryWeek Best Plants Conference being held April 27-29, 2009 at the Nashville Convention Center in Nashville, TN.

Hear from over 30 speakers - experts in their field - from companies such as Harley-Davidson, The Hershey Company, Wyeth, Stryker Instruments, Lockheed Martin, Trane, and Philips.

Session Topics include:

• Lean Operations
• Six Sigma
• Operational Excellence
• Increasing Productivity and Efficiency Sustainability
• Maintaining Your Competitive Edge
• And much, much more...

Participate in a panel discussion with the 10 IndustryWeek Best Plants Winners. They'll share secrets of their success and how they achieved world-class status.

As a registered attendee you'll have the chance to tour Best-in-Class area manufacturing facilities at NO CHARGE. Don't miss out...tours are filling up fast.

Free Plant Tours include:

• Jack Daniel Distillery
• Philips Lighting
• Nissan
• Batesville Casket Company
• Stinger Medical

Take advantage of multiple networking opportunities the IW Best Plants conference has to offer. Swap challenges and strategies with other CEOs, COO’s, VP’s, Directors, General Managers, Engineers, Production Managers and Operations Managers.

Activities include:

• New Equipment Digest Solutions Hall
• The Speakers Lounge
• Best Plants Awards Ceremony
• Rockin’ n Rollin’ on the River

For more details on the conference program and to register visit: http://www.iwbestplants.com

The event offers a unique opportunity for industry to network with DoD personnel and to showcase technology.

• Don't Miss this Opportunity to Learn about DoD Maintenance Needs!

The NCMS-CTMA 2009 Symposium features leaders from across all services who will discuss the importance of continuous technology insertion to ensure that our maintainers, logisticians and engineers are equipped with the capabilities which enable them to efficiently and effectively sustain materiel readiness.

Featured Speakers

Richard B. Jarman, President & CEO, NCMS

John Johns, Assistant Deputy Under Secretary of Defense
 Maintenance Policy & Programs

MajGen Scott G. West, Commanding General
  U.S. Army TACOM Lifecycle Management Command

Dr. Raj Iyer, TACOM LCMC Data Czar Director
 Product Data & Data Management, TACOM Lifecycle Management Command

Col Ron Alberto, Logistics Corps Commander, Tobyhanna Army Depot

Col Dale Johnson, Commander,  Maintenance Center Barstow

Dr. Katherine Stevens, Director Materials and Manufacturing Directorate, AFRL

Capt Tim Matthews, Command Officer, Fleet Readiness Center Southeast

Does your Company have a Technology Roadmap?

Technology transition is a difficult challenge for industries under the best of circumstances.  Given the current economic climate, the future of your organization may depend on the timely deployment of new technology.

Plan on attending this compelling series to gain insight and observe DoD participants working through a technology transition roadmap. 

Technology Transition Roadmapping Series

Part 1: Identifying Barriers

This panel discussion will focus on the problems and solutions to transitioning technology to the various DoD manufacturing and maintenance activities such as air logistic centers, shipyards, depots and arsenals.

In order to achieve the maximum benefits of the CTMA program as a whole, the new technologies that are developed by the individual projects must be implemented on the manufacturing floors of these activities.  But many times this technology transition does not happen quickly, and sometimes not at all.  This session will identify the barriers to technology transition faced by the CTMA program.

Part 2: Develop Resolutions to Identified Barriers to
Technology Transition

This second session will be a roadmapping event to identify the solutions to the technology transition barriers and represent them on an implementation timeline.  In this session, technology transition will encompass both transitioning from the technology provider to the maintenance activity and also the transition from one successful maintenance activity to other maintenance activities needing the same capability.

https://www.ncms.org/09CTMASymposium/

Hurry- it is not too late to register. Come and learn more about the importance of maintenance technology and technology insertion.

This year's agenda will focus on highlighting available and developing technologies and the associated actions necessary to provide these technologies to our maintainers.

The 2009 CTMA Symposium promises to set new standards for agenda content and audience interest.

Our plenary speakers from across all services will discuss the importance of continuous technology insertion to ensure that our maintainers, logisticians and engineers are equipped with the capabilities which enable them to efficiently and effectively sustain materiel readiness.

Featured Speakers

John Johns, Assistant Deputy Under Secretary of Defense
 Maintenance Policy & Programs

MajGen Scott G. West, Commanding General
  U.S. Army TACOM Lifecycle Management Command

Dr. Raj Iyer, TACOM LCMC Data Czar Director
 Product Data & Data Management, TACOM Lifecycle Management Command

Col Ron Alberto, Logistics Corps Commander, Tobyhanna Army Depot

Col Dale Johnson, Commander,  Maintenance Center Barstow

Dr. Katherine Stevens, Director Materials and Manufacturing Directorate

Capt Tim Matthews, Command Officer, Fleet Readiness Center Southeast

https://www.ncms.org/09CTMASymposium/

Technology transition is a difficult challenge for industries under the best of circumstances.  Given the current economic climate, the future of your organization may depend on the timely deployment of new technology.

Plan on attending this compelling series to gain insight and observe DoD participants work through a technology transition roadmap. 

This is a unique opportunity to see a roadmapping exercise in action.

Technology Transition Roadmapping Series

Part 1: Identifying Barriers

This panel discussion will focus on the problems and solutions to transitioning technology to the various DoD manufacturing and maintenance activities such as air logistic centers, shipyards, depots and arsenals.

In order to achieve the maximum benefits of the CTMA program as a whole, the new technologies that are developed by the individual projects must be implemented on the manufacturing floors of these activities.  But many times this technology transition does not happen quickly, and sometimes not at all.  This session will identify the barriers to technology transition faced by the CTMA program.

Part 2: Develop Resolutions to Identified Barriers to
Technology Transition

This second session will be a roadmapping event to identify the solutions to the technology transition barriers and represent them on an implementation timeline.  In this session, technology transition will encompass both transitioning from the technology provider to the maintenance activity and also the transition from one successful maintenance activity to other maintenance activities needing the same capability.

https://www.ncms.org/09CTMASymposium/

Technology innovation is important to keeping an industry competitive, and the industrial member companies of the National Fluid Power Association (NFPA) are working with academic partners, and each other, on research and development to keep the industry moving forward.  The identification of research and development projects and their prioritization has, to date, been a largely informal process, and the participants see the need for a more formal process to determining directions and program priorities.    A technology roadmap for fluid power will help set a collaborative research and development agenda for the industry and can be centered around the key research and development challenges facing the industry. 

The National Fluid Power Association has engaged NCMS to facilitate an industry wide roadmap for the next ten years and beyond to accomplish these goals.  NCMS, using a methodology developed in one of its collaborative projects, facilitates a team of industry and research participants to develop a view of the industry future – incorporating evolving customer needs and technology advances – identifying key technology challenges and helping to set a joint industry/academic research and development agenda.

NFPA has assembled a team of 27 persons from their membership and the roadmapping process is being conducted in two 2 ½ days sessions at NCMS headquarters in Ann Arbor.  These are being held in March and in May with the completed roadmap available in June.  The team primarily is working with fluid power as a whole, however, two specific branches, hydraulic and pneumatic, are being broken out separately to address their specific issues.  This methodology will result in a finished product that contains: current industry position, current and emerging markets, competitive industries, customer drivers, technology drivers, industry functional architecture, R&D challenges, a timeline for implementation (the roadmap), new technology identification, a risk roadmap an investment map, and an action plan.

For additional information about the NFPA Roadmap, please contact:

Eric Lanke, (414) 778-3351, elanke@nfpa.com

For additional information about the NCMS roadmapping process, please contact:

Mike Gnam, (734) 995-4971, mikeg@ncms.org