There are a lot of industry buzzwords out there—the cloud, IoT, UX, Smart Factory—that are supposedly connected to the next renaissance of manufacturing. The principles of Industry 4.0 have soaked up plenty of ink since the concept was introduced in Germany circa 2011. Surely big data and analytics will play a major role in these modular-structured, data-driven Smart Factories. But words are just words until industry moves the rock. And some of that work has begun through an initiative called the PrecisionPath Consortium for Large Scale Manufacturing. The project is funded by an Advanced Manufacturing Technology Consortia (AMTech) Grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency of the U.S. Commerce Department.
In America, we’ve always been a nation of makers. We dream big and we make big from ships to automobiles, airplanes to skyscrapers. Large-scale manufacturing and advanced manufacturing go hand-in-hand. That’s why the PrecisionPath Consortium is a very big deal. The industry-driven coalition brings together the brightest minds in the manufacturing and metrology fields – technology users, managers, OEMs and software developers. These industry players are focused on mapping the technology requirements needed to advance aerospace, defense, energy, automotive and other industries producing large-scale, high accuracy parts and products.