(Washington, DC) The Council on Competitiveness (Council) today is pleased to announce that the National Digital Engineering and Manufacturing Consortium (NDEMC, Inc.) is a supporting partner in the winning proposal selected by the White House for a major manufacturing hub at the Chicago-based UI LABS.
The Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute (DMDI), or Digital Lab, is an applied research institute that will develop, deploy and commercialize digital manufacturing technologies across key manufacturing industries.
NDEMC, Inc., will help firms to leverage high performance computing (HPC) for modeling, simulation and analysis (MS&A). This capability helps manufacturers to design, test and build prototype products or components much more rapidly – enabling them to bring innovations to market more quickly and less expensively.
The U.S. Department of Defense has awarded UI LABS $70 million to fund the Digital Lab, which will leverage $250 million in commitments from leading industry partners including Council members General Electric, John Deere, Proctor & Gamble and Lockheed Martin, as well as other academia, government and community partners to form a $320 million institute.
“Advanced manufacturing is a competitive game-changer, bringing our nation’s research, engineering, and production communities together in new and exciting ways,” said Dr. Ray O. Johnson, Lockheed Martin senior vice president and chief technology officer. “Specifically, the combination of advanced materials, high performance computing resources, modeling and simulation tools, and additive manufacturing practices is allowing large and small enterprises alike to design and build otherwise impossibly complex shapes and systems while significantly reducing manufacturing costs and cycle times.”
BACKGROUND:
Building on over a decade of leadership in promoting the use of HPC for competitive advantage, the Council spearheaded the formation NDEMC. The consortium began as a partnership of industry, federal agencies, state governments and solution partners (e.g. university computing centers). NDEMC launched in 2011 and successfully helped small to medium-sized American manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) take advantage of MS&A technologies that were beyond their resources or expertise. NDEMC projects with twenty SMEs increased sales collectively by more than $20 million per year with half of those sales in exports. The SMEs created 160 new jobs in 2012 and developed three new products.
NDEMC, INC. & DMDI
In response to the success of the NDEMC partnership, the Council created NDEMC Inc. – a nation-wide, private entity to serve a broader swath of companies. NDEMC Inc. will serve companies of any size that are not taking advantage of HPC resources and MS&A tools. NDEMC Inc. will play an important role in the DMDI and enable next-generation manufacturing.
“NDEMC Inc. will no doubt become a powerful partner in the DMDI, offering a critical ingredient for continual innovation in product design, production, marketing, delivery, and evaluation, while creating collaborative relationships that will sustain American manufacturing through jobs creation and enhanced competitiveness,” said Deborah Wince-Smith, President & CEO, Council on Competitiveness.
Under the Digital Lab award, UI LABS will bring together 40 industry partners, more than 30 academia, government and community partners and more than 500 supporting companies and organizations to create the Digital Lab.
For more information about DMDI see
http://digitallab.uilabs.org/
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ABOUT THE COUNCIL ON COMPETITIVENESS
The Council on Competitiveness is the only group of corporate CEOs, university presidents and labor leaders committed to the future prosperity of all Americans and enhanced U.S. competitiveness in the global economy through the creation of high-value economic activity in the United States. The Council is a non-partisan and non-governmental organization. For more information, see the Council’s website and a full list of publications at http://www.compete.org. Check out the Council on Competiveness’ Facebook page for further updates or follow @competenow on Twitter.