EVERYTHING CONNECTED – Numorpho's Book of Business

MII – Manufacturing Innovation Institutes

INDEX

SECTION 1 – CHALLENGE OVERVIEW

To best protect and pursue our interests at home and abroad, the United States relies on a robust and innovative domestic manufacturing sector. The federal government has established Manufacturing Innovation Institutes (MIIs) to be national, public-private partnerships including leaders in industry, academia, and nonprofits.

The MIIs were established to develop, demonstrate, and accelerate the early adoption of advanced manufacturing by funding research, development, technology, engineering, education, and workforce development projects and by creating an ecosystem that advances advanced manufacturing.

Funding Opportunity: DoD Point of Need Manufacturing Challenge
In order to increase the flow of ideas and reduce the administrative time to implement, this project call will use a two-step submission process for selecting projects:

  • Step 1: Concept paper and Quad Chart submission. Review and down select.
  • Step 2: Presentation submission (by invitation only). Team presentation and supporting documents submission. Review and down select.

If projects are selected after Step 2, then the contracting process will occur through the Manufacturing Innovation Institute.

SECTION 2 – CHALLENGE OPPORTUNITY

MxD’s Call: We are excited to share a quick-turn project opportunity that came out of the Department of Defense today in the area of Point of Need.

Proposal submissions must come from a current member or members of the MIIs and must include the MII. MxD would love to work with our members to submit proposals to this call. This opportunity is particularly important because, if successful, it will be a new model for Manufacturing Innovation Institutes (MIIs) to deliver project funding opportunities to our members.

MxD will be holding a call on Friday, January 13 to discuss this opportunity and answer any questions organizations may have. If you are unable to attend the meeting, please reach out to Erin O’Donnell,  she will set up separate time for to discuss.

Point of Need Challenge Project Call Highlights 

  • Opportunity Description

OSD ManTech is working with each of its Manufacturing Innovation Institutes, leveraging their project call processes under current agreements, to assemble and review white papers that address dual-use applications that are responsive to specific needs of the Department of Defense (DoD) – and the domestic manufacturing industry. This project call is focused on a single Special Topic Area (STA), which is summarized in Section 2.2 below.  This STA has been derived from the DoD advanced manufacturing community and contains multiple challenges. Project teams can select one or more challenges to address.

  • Special Topic Areas | descriptions can be found in the attached project call overview
    • Build the FOB Challenge:
    • Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGV) Challenge:
    • Warfighter Medical, Health, and Nutrition Challenge
    • Power Challenge
    • Cyber Challenges
    • Staying in the Fight Challenge
    • Other
  • Available Funding: up to $1.5M to fund multiple projects, individual project budgets must not exceed $500K, cost share not required
  • Concept Paper Deadline: Tuesday February 7, 2023, 5:00 pm ET
  • In order to increase the flow of ideas and reduce the administrative time to implement, this project call will use a two-step submission process for selecting projects:
    • Step 1: Concept paper and Quad Chart submission. Review and down select.
    • Step 2: Presentation submission (by invitation only). Team presentation and supporting documents submission. Review and down select.

We’re very excited about this opportunity and look forward to discussing proposal topics and submissions.  If you have any questions please reach out to Erin O’Donnell.

SECTION 3 – TIMELINE DETAILS

MII_Timeline

SECTION 4 – CLASS OF SUPPLY DEFINITIONS

Classes marked with an asterisk (*) are represented in the challenge:

  • *Class I – Rations – Subsistence (food and drinking water), gratuitous (free) health and comfort items.
  • *Class II – Clothing And Equipment – individual equipment, tentage, some aerial delivery equipment, organizational tool sets and kits, hand tools, unclassified maps, administrative and housekeeping supplies and equipment.
  • *Class III – POL – Petroleum, Oil and Lubricants (POL) (package and bulk): Petroleum, fuels, lubricants, hydraulic and insulating oils, preservatives, liquids and gases, bulk chemical products, coolants, deicer and antifreeze compounds, components, and additives of petroleum and chemical products, and coal.
  • *Class IV – Construction materials, including installed equipment and all fortification and barrier materials.
  • *Class V – Ammunition of all types, bombs, explosives, mines, fuses, detonators, pyrotechnics, missiles, rockets, propellants, and associated items.
  • Class VI – Personal demand items (such as health and hygiene products, soaps and toothpaste, writing material, snack food, beverages, cigarettes, batteries, alcohol, and cameras—nonmilitary sales items).
  • *Class VII – Major end items such as launchers, tanks, mobile machine shops, some parachute systems and vehicles.
  • *Class VIII – Medical material (equipment and consumables) including repair parts particular to medical equipment. (Class VIIIa – Medical consumable supplies not including blood & blood products; Class VIIIb – Blood & blood components (whole blood, platelets, plasma, packed red cells, etc.).
  • *Class IX – Repair parts and components to include kits, assemblies, and subassemblies (repairable or non-repairable) required for maintenance support of all equipment.
  • Class X – Material to support nonmilitary programs such as agriculture and economic development (not included in Classes I through IX).
  • Miscellaneous – Water, salvage, and captured material.

SECTION 5 – PROJECT METRICS

All submissions will specify a set of key performance parameters (KPPs) for the project technology. The KPPs selected should be described as to their relevance to the proposed project, and the related project call topic areas. The related metrics that will be measured to evaluate achievement of each KPP should also be specified as well as a baseline for comparison, threshold for minimum achievement during the project, and objective for stretch goals during the project.

OSD requires that metrics be defined for each technology project that will be used to evaluate the progress in achieving the goals of the proposed project and the identified KPPs. A metrics and evaluation framework is provided that can guide what types of metrics should be specified for various aspects of a project, consisting of cardinal metrics (categories of measures: performance, productivity, efficiency, acquisition cost, sustaining cost, investment prudency) and project levels (elements of the project technology being measured by a metric: component, task, process, or system). Competitive submissions will consider and formulate all the cardinal metrics listed below for their projects:

  1. Performance: Measures of the characteristics of the entire advanced manufacturing system, its components, or the execution of a manufacturing task. Units for performance metrics will vary based on the advanced manufacturing system, component, or task they are applied to. Performance metrics include those both qualitative and quantitative. Types of performance metrics include accuracy, capabilities, completeness, ergonomics, generalizability, quality, reconfigurability, success/error rate, and usability. Performance metrics should align with the key attributes of Point of Need manufacturing systems listed below.
  2. Productivity: The rate at which a manufacturing process is occurring, expressed in units (e.g., items, articles, batches) per time interval (e.g., minute, hour, day). Types of productivity metrics include defect rate, first time yield, and throughput rate.
  3. Efficiency: The amount of time required to perform a manufacturing task or the percentage of time spent in set-up, calibration, transition, production, etc., compared to total cycle time of a manufacturing process. Units for these metrics should be time intervals (e.g., minutes, hours, days). Types of efficiency metrics include performance time, set-up time, and touch time.
  4. Acquisition: Cost for initial acquisition of the proposed system. Types of acquisition cost metrics include capital cost and implementation cost.
  5. Sustaining Cost: Costs, labor, and/or time measures associated with continued operation of the manufacturing process using the proposed system. Types of sustaining cost metrics include involved labor, operational cost, process cost, safety, SRR cost, and training time.

All metrics should be expressed in explicit measures using relevant units (e.g., microinches, seconds, dollars) and in terms of percentage improvement to a baseline. One or more metrics may be specified in each cardinal metric category, although it is not required that metrics for every cardinal metric category or project level be measured. If a cardinal metric is not relevant for a particular project, state so and explain in the project submission. If advancement in one or more cardinal metrics is more germane to demonstrating success of the project, this should be articulated in the proposal; e.g., consistency of sanding quality (Performance) will have higher impact on the industry than performing the task faster (Efficiency). This may present tradeoffs in the project KPPs/metrics, which should also be described; e.g., a more consistent sanding quality (Performance) is achieved by a system that is more expensive than the baseline (Acquisition Cost), but the savings in SRR costs are worthwhile (Sustaining Cost).

Eligible projects must also show through analysis and demonstration that they advance one or more of the key attributes of expeditionary (i.e., point of need) manufacturing:

1. Mobile
a. Designed to be moved with forces to include airlift, convoy driving, and offroad vehicle conditions. The system can be transported using Material Handling Equipment (MHE). Advanced manufacturing equipment can be transported and housed in shipping containers, expandable shipping containers, vehicle mounted shelters, expandable vehicle mounted shelters, and ruggedized containers (for example: Pelican Cases).

2. Rugged:
a. The system can function in the operational environment at the point of need. Proposers should consider how to enclose their demonstration systems if necessary, but proposers must recognize that high levels of cleanliness or very low levels of humidity might not be possible.

3. Secure:
a. Physical and cyber security steps are taken to prevent unauthorized operation, intrusion, corruption of data, or interruption of process. Authority to Operate (ATO) on DOD networks is not required for this demonstration. However, consideration towards cyber security design should be given to reduce the hurdles during the ATO process if DOD acquires the technology.

4. Reliable:
a. Proposers should consider that military end user will want the system will function when needed to operate. A specific mean time between failure or mean time between repair will not be specified here, but reliability will be a consideration during the demonstration.

5. Ease of use:
a. The system has intuitive user interfaces. Training or skill is minimized to the best extent possible. The skill level of operation is such that a junior enlisted member with the appropriate training can operate the equipment.

6. Fast:
a. The system produces parts at a relevant speed to the warfighter’s need. The speed of the demonstration system is better than existing field processes and better than the supply system.

7. Materials:
a. The materials being fabricated should be relevant to the DoD. The materials should have a performance level that meets DoD needs. Feedstock must be survivable and minimally reactive to ease handling and mitigate combat effect.

All proposed projects and their components should start no lower than Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 4 and/or Manufacturing Readiness Level (MRL) 4 and should intend to mature to, or make a significant advancement to, TRL 7 and/or MRL 7. All submissions must specify the start and end TRL/MRL for the project’s key components over the course of project execution, not just the project as a whole.

Successful submissions will clearly identify project deliverables and the benefit to other members of the Manufacturing Innovation Institute.

SECTION 6 – TRLS AND MRLS

ABOUT TECHNOLOGY READINESS LEVELS

TRL-KEY

MANUFACTURING READINESS LEVELS (MRL)

MRL2

SECTION 7 – PROJECT SYNTHESIS

Response to MxD (Jacob, Alex, Federico)

Thank you Jacob and Alex for allowing us to tour MxD with Jared Clemens who just joined us as an intern at Numorpho.

I showed Alex this testament of the Armadillo Helmet that he helped print for MxD’s 2022 Technology Showcase in December
https://numorpho.org/2023/01/05/20221229-armadillo-helmet-attestment/

The white helmet is one of the first prototypes of the design.

We also attended the MII DOD Funding Opportunity Webinar yesterday and thank you for inviting us.

As discussed with Jacob we will be proposing for two concepts:

PROJECT A will entail building an Operational Digital Twin to quickly enable the production of parts in the front line using Additive Technologies like 3D printers that woul be ported on-site.

Here we will utilize the Ecosystem we are building, some of which you have seen as part of our presentations for your SIP projects. We have already connected with Microsoft who will do the management of the data, and they are connecting us with the right folks at Siemens for the engineering basis, and Software AG for the integration aspects. All 3 are Tier 1 members at MxD.

This will relate to accomplishing the goal for article 5b in the Special Topic Area 1 for Cybersecurity Challenges: Digital backbone for FOB PoN manufacturing that Erin had also highlighted and matches the thesis for MxD.

PROJECT B will dovetail into PROJECT A in the sense that it will enable proving the ecosystem by enabling 3D printing in-situ in the front line of parts utilizing 3D printing.

In our case we will use the Armadillo helmet embedded with smart sensors to monitor items mentioned in Article 3 of the Special Topic Area 1 – Warfighter Medical, Health, and Nutrition Challenge: Class II – Wearables for physiological monitoring of warfighters.

In this concept we will band with NoMo (Tyler), another company based out of the mHUB and some others who are advancing sensor technology for medical devices, and AVNET for procuring the needed sensors. Our goal on this is also to adhere for safety, we are looking at printing the helmet in metal and other strong composite materials too.

Since there is an urgency in your request, time is of essence we would like to quickly ramp up next week to provide for the details that are due Feb 7 or earlier (5th). Jacob if you could forward this to your MII team to ensure that we have the right basis for our concepts that would be great.

I am including Dr. Sciammarella in this thread, but if you could also connect me with the right teams from Siemens and Software AG who are part of your Tier 1 structure that would be great. I already have Microsoft’s contact and we are working on the details for the foundation piece.

I am excited about this project, and me and my team look forward to working on it in the near term.

Forwarded to mHUB (Bill, Katie, Alex)
This project came about yesterday with one of MxD’s alliances – the DOD funded Manufacturing Innovation Institutes’ (MII) project.

We are proposing 2 projects for the initiative and one of them deals with attaching sensors to body gear to monitor health and well being of warfighters (See details of PROJECT B in the attached). Each project can be bid for up to $500k. We will be doing PROJECT A with our other partnerships at MxD and PROJECT B dovetails in nicely to add that hardtech flavor to the composition.

Since we will be collaborating with NOMO and other teams @mHUB that are proficient with Medical Devices, and since you are starting up with the new accelerator program for MedTech, was wondering if this fits with your thesis for the cohort program.

There is a fair bit of urgency for the project. Albeit it i going to be run by MxD, the initiator MII needs quick turnaround (EOY) for the concept validation. Attached is the full RFP from MxD/MII.

Let me know how we can work on this either within MedTech V2 or in conjunction with.

….and Katie has already agreed to be a tester for the Armadillo Helmet! JK.

Partnering with Microsoft

Have reviewed Microsoft’s underpinnings with Defense in detail based on the link you sent over:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/industry/government/defense-and-intelligence

Lets connect this week to evolve out the basis for:
Article 5b in the Special Topic Area 1 for Cybersecurity Challenges: Digital backbone for FOB PoN manufacturing in the request for proposal from MII.

I see a lot of synergies between what we are doing to enable Digital Twins and your infrastructure to orchestrate the composition for an operational micro factory on the front lines. It will also dovetail nicely to the Cloud for Manufacturing play that Indranil and team are working on.

I have sent over an email to MxD with our intentions to team with you and Siemens (Engineering process management) and Software AG (data integration). If you have the right connects at the two, please introduce us so that we can all band together to submit for the concept round of this proposal. I know several of the folks at both the companies but they are not involved with MxD on a day-to-day basis.

Also included in this email is Shish Sridhar, Global Retail Lead for Startups @ Microsoft who is one of our Advisors on our relationships with you.

Since time is of essence, let me know when we can meet. I am located in Chicago at the mHUB innovation center that is a stone’s throw from MxD where we are Tier 3 members.

I am open 10-12 Central time on all days this week from Tue-Fri.

Looking forward to hearing back from you.

Thanks, Matthew for arranging the call and the great conversation we had during and after.
And thank you, Randy and Wes for joining.
Randy, I look forward to your NDA from Siemens that Scott and I will quickly execute so that we have a go forward basis for our interactions.
Here is the official site for the MxD MII project details. As mentioned they have preponed the deadline to Feb 5 for the concept paper submission (5 pages per project).

We will be meeting with Dr. Federico Sciammarella on Wednesday since this is one of the requirements stipulated in the project details.

Project A 
The Operational Digital Twin we will be using our Digital Twine reference architecture to blueprint the interactions, data foundation, data transfer and cloud provisioning (if needed) will be Microsoft’s domain and Siemens will bring in the engineering and process management expertise.

The goal would be to create an in-situ micro factory for the front-line team so that necessary parts can be additively manufactured on demand be it for new equipment or replacement parts using Additive Manufacturing (3D printers).

As a test mule we will be using the Armadillo Helmet that we have created (the first prints were proto-typed in MxD last year) which will additionally have sensors attached to them (our Project B that we will be submitting for in conjunction with other companies in mHUB).

Data transfer from the helmets (or any other part in the future) will be via a secure wireless interface to store data in Edge servers that will also manage the Operational Digital Twin and will be part of Project A.

Looking forward to working with you and your team on this and its successful execution.

Will forward this to our connects at MxD and also mention to them that we will not be using Software AG for this project and rely on the Azure API for integration as discussed with Matthew.

Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

SECTION 8 – PROJECT DEFINITION

NUMO_MxD_MII_PoN

The diagram above showcases the two aspects of Project Armadillo that Numorpho Cybernetic Systems is proposing in conjunction with MxD to fulfill the immediate needs of the DoD MII Point of Need Manufacturing Challenge. It will be based on several MxD based SIP projects that we have proposed for based on our Digital Twine reference architecture, in particular:

  • MxD-22-05 – Interactive Digital Twins Playbook
  • MxD-22-03 – Digital Manufacturing Playbook
  • MxD-21-14 – Predictive Maintenance in Manufacturing
  • MxD-21-01 – AI Design Advisor

Our Digital Twine reference architecture enables the blueprinting of smart manufacturing solutions for process automation. We do this via a themed information management and systems integration based on the needs of the initiative. For this project we will create a new Use Case for the representation of the Point of Need concept solution that includes secure information, identity, privacy and access management, additive manufacturing on site, and the monitoring of sensor data to fulfill the needs for two Special Area topics highlighted in the challenge:

  • Cyber Challenges corresponding to Article 5b for Cybersecurity Challenges: Digital backbone for FOB PoN manufacturing
  • Warfighter Medical, Health, and Nutrition Challenge corresponding to Article 3  Class II – Wearables for physiological monitoring of warfighters.

Thusly, Project Armadillo will consist of the following two parts:

  1. PART A – Operational Digital Twin to facilitate the on-site management of data, enable additive manufacturing and the analysis of bio-metric information.
  2. PART B – Vanguard Well-Being to monitor health and bio-metrics of the war-fighters by embedding sensors in wearables.

For the Operational Digital Twin, we will be partnering with:

  • Microsoft Industry Solutions for Defense and Intelligence to create a secure framework for authentication and data management.
  • Siemens Mindsphere & Mendix for engineering process management of the digital threads and digital twins so that the cyber-physical aspect of the project is accounted for utilizing their Smart Manufacturing basis.
  • Markforged Off-line Eiger Platform  to manage the workflow for Additive Manufacturing in a closed and protected environment.

For the Vanguard Well-Being part of the project, we will be using the retractable helmet that we have prototyped at mHUB, MxD and the Richard Daley Advanced Engineering Center to enable it to be 3D printing in the frontline. We will also and embed sensors in the helmet and employ a bracelet to monitor bio-metrics of the warfighters in wearables. For this we will be partnering with our ecosystem of companies from mHUB:

  • AVNET for their advice on sensors and electronics and the help in procuring the right sensors.
  • NoMo Diagnostics for their unique helmet based sensor technology to not only monitor trauma for real-time concussion detection but also utilizing their miniaturized brainwave monitoring technology for enabling long term prognosis of conditions.
  • HabitAware for their smart bracelet technology to monitor and build awareness of unwanted behaviors and also ensure safe operations.

Bill Fienup, Co-Founder, VP, Innovation Services and Executive Director, MedTech Accelerator will provide us with a Letter of Support for involving our partners from the mHUB ecosystem.

  • We will be using Markforged to print the helmets for the concept project. Their X7 Field Edition printer comes in a rugged, field-deployable Pelican case that has already been used by the military for tactical responses to challenges in remote locations.

The final testing of Project Armadillo will be accomplished on site in the Mojave desert to account for the harsh conditions stipulated in the challenge specifications.

SECTION 9 – KEY PERFORMANCE PARAMETERS

Our basis for using Additive Manufacturing for the retractable helmet was to reduce volume thus reducing shipping costs and warehousing space, and also make it easy to use. For this project we add two more functionalities:

  • ability to print on site, and
  • add biometric sensors for safety and well-being.

Notes

  • ECIF – End Customer Investment Funding (Cost Share Model)
  • Numorpho in Microsoft Startup program to avail of licenses

NITIN UCHIL – Founder, CEO & Technical Evangelist
nitin.uchil@numorpho.com

numorpho

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