Building a digital manufacturing commons

Manufacturing has been undergoing a significant number of changes in recent years, and I’ve touched on a number of them on this blog.  Whether it’s the rise of TechShop style co-working spaces, or the opening up of intellectual property via communities such as Quirky.

Industrial giant GE have been at the heart of these things, so it is perhaps no surprise that they are leading an effort by the Digital Manufacturing Design and Innovation Institute (DMDII) to create a Digital Manufacturing Commons.

Opening up manufacturing

This will provide a digital marketplace to more effectively connect up supply chains.  It will consist of an open source platform along the lines of the platform developed by GE in partnership with DARPA and MIT a few years ago.

“The Digital Manufacturing Commons will open up innovation and collaboration in ways that create a whole new renaissance in manufacturing,” GE say. “The open source platform we are building with our DMDII partners truly will democratize access to the tools of manufacturing innovation for companies, universities, institutes and entrepreneurs big and small.”

The aim is for innovation within manufacturing to be supported, and tremendous potential unlocked for manufacturers within the US.  The project hopes to connect manufacturers, supply chains and entrepreneurs to accelerate new products to market.

With agility increasingly important, GE hope that the platform will bring the various facets of the supply chain together in a productive way, but especially between the physical and digital worlds that are so heavily influencing manufacturing today.

Creating the 21st Century assembly line

This is especially evident in the amount of data that’s generated throughout the lifecycle of a product, whether it’s in the design stage, the sourcing, production, distribution, point of sale or even when it’s being used by customers.

Maintaining a seamless flow of data across each of these stages is likely to be hugely valuable.  Whilst this is very far from the case at the moment, it’s hoped that the Digital Manufacturing Commons will provide a platform to support such sharing.

“Manufacturing operations will achieve the agility and speed that we have seen in other digital industries,” GE say.

With the plan being to recruit over 100,000 users within the next few years, this is certainly a project to watch with interest.

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