Research Magazine
There is a growing digital divide between large manufacturers and the small-to medium-sized manufacturers that make up 85% of the industrial base in the United States. These large, original equipment manufacturers have blended their manufacturing physical and virtual domains into an Industry 4.0 environment, achieving positive productivity results.
The Interdisciplinary Center for Advanced Manufacturing Systems (ICAMS) at Auburn has received nearly $13 million in awards from the U.S. Department of Defense’s Office of Industrial Policy’s Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment (IBAS) Program to explore the digitalization of manufacturing and become a resource for small and medium manufacturers throughout the country to help close the digital gap. These awards will allow the center to increase efforts to improve the skills of the next generation of engineers and the existing workforce to take full advantage of those technologies in their operations.
“The most significant way ICAMS can make a difference is in helping small and medium manufacturers understand the technologies they should be utilizing and helping them understand the need for adopting Industry 4.0/Smart Manufacturing concepts, therefore really digitalizing the full supply chain,” said Dr. Gregory Harris, ICAMS director and associate professor of industrial and systems engineering.
Housed in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, ICAMS is led by Harris and several additional faculty members, including assistant professor Dr. Peter Liu, assistant professor Dr. Konstantinos Mykoniatis, professor of practice Dr. Lewis Payton and assistant professor Dr. Gregory Purdy. The center is also supported through a partnership with the city of Auburn’s Industrial Development Board, which has provided a facility to house large equipment and provide a hands-on learning laboratory for ICAMS students.
Purdy explained that one key focus area for the center is the creation of the nation’s first cyber-physical manufacturing range (CpMR) housed on a university campus. The CpMR will provide a testbed to research, test, demonstrate and teach the technologies and processes to significantly improve technology adoption in small and medium-sized manufacturers and overcome the fear of malicious cyber activity in their systems.
“Industry 4.0-driven manufacturing environments are a collection of different equipment and technologies that increase the potential attack surface for malicious cyberattacks,” Purdy explained. “We are trying to understand what vulnerabilities exist in these systems and the potential impacts of a cyberattack on both the process and resulting part. However, it is not feasible to simulate attacks on a production resource that is used day-in and day-out.”
The CpMR solves this dilemma by incorporating modern manufacturing technologies in an Industry 4.0 ecosystem with current generation automation, thereby allowing a safe environment for testing and evaluating malicious cyber activity in an Industry 4.0 smart manufacturing platform.
“It allows students, researchers and other professionals to execute attacks and see what the outcome is in a state-of-the-art machining cell,” Purdy said. “I could unleash the most potent and sophisticated attack that I have and completely make everything go haywire, without endangering a key production resource.”
The researchers plan to use the DoD funding to support the purchase of additional manufacturing equipment to further develop an Industry 4.0 manufacturing environment, including the creation of a digital manufacturing demonstration cell. The manufacturing and metrology cell will demonstrate the full digital manufacturing process flow, starting by automatically scanning a subject and creating a point cloud from the 3D scan that is converted into a solid model. This model will be sent to a vertical machining center that will produce the part. A robotic arm will remove the part from the mill and deliver it to a coordinate measurement machine. The automated inspection process will then confirm the part matches the reference design. The digital manufacturing demonstration cell will be able to continuously run a product and show the capability of the connected enterprise.
Additional ICAMS Key Focus Areas
An annual call for undergraduate and graduate research proposals to be evaluated and awarded to those that expand the demonstration, education training and research capabilities of ICAMS
Research into inspection technologies to understand how to provide real-time quality data as feedback to adjust equipment controls to continuously improve control limits and reduce the possibility of a defective product
The creation of a smart cyber-physical sensing, modeling and control digital twin infrastructure with augmented and mixed reality
The extension of annual survey research for three additional years, for a total of a five-year study into technology adoption amid small and medium-sized manufacturers
“This additional equipment is going to make us more capable and allow us the ability to better showcase digital manufacturing demonstrations on site,“ Harris explained. “We can show that this artifact can go all the way from design through production with little to no human intervention, really highlighting digital manufacturing capabilities. Manufacturers will be able to relate to that and say, ‘if they can do that with this artifact, I can envision what I’m trying to do using this technology.’”
According to Harris, another key area of service is a “Path to the Plains” partnership with Southern Union State Community College (SU), through which SU students can take Auburn University courses while completing their associate degree. The partnership also outlines a plan for a graduate certificate in advanced manufacturing and an advanced manufacturing minor. Additionally, any Auburn undergraduate student will be able to obtain a certificate in mechatronics through the partnership with SU.
articipating students will be assisted by scholarships to support their educational success.
“The ability at ICAMS to create tailored programs upon request from industry allows local industries to adapt to changing industry trends much more easily using existing personnel,” said Dr. Lewis Payton, ICAMS associate director and professor of practice in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. “Auburn students in the new manufacturing minor will also be graduating with hands-on experience using industrial grade equipment. ICAMS is poised to become the premier fabrication and teaching laboratory in the Southeast, including future expansion into the area of die fabrication and repair.”
“ICAMS represents a major, transformational change in the areas of outreach, innovation and education at Auburn University,” Payton said. “By early in 2022, ICAMS will be the most capable prototyping laboratory within the state of Alabama for innovation, creating a unique opportunity for companies and for student design teams across the campus.”
ICAMS, which launched in 2018, has formed and strengthened relationships with the city of Auburn Industrial Development Board and the Alabama Community College System. Through these relationships, ICAMS has doubled its facility footprint from 10,000 square-feet to 20,000 square-feet, providing adequate space for its dedicated operations, and utilized the space to educate and train students and industry personnel to use the advanced manufacturing technologies and capabilities to benefit the DoD and its supporting manufacturing sector.