SMART MANUFACTURING INNOVATION CENTER AT
UCLA
About
The original 2016 CESMII award established UCLA as the CESMII HQ SMIC (then called RMC) for pressure testing, evaluating, demonstrating, and showcasing the use of the SM Innovation Platform (SMIP) and Profiles as SM Building Blocks for solutions encompassing Advanced Sensors, Controls, Platforms and Modeling (ASCPM), i.e., data and model systems applications, for increased manufacturing productivity, precision, and performance from the sensor to supply chain.
UCLA SMIC addresses the practice of accelerating and scaling the engineering, implementation, and adoption of SMIP-enabled operational data and modeled system applications for which there are steady-state and dynamic phenomena that are difficult to model with first principles. By benchmarking, documenting, and training on how to use the SMIP for engineering and implementing a full range of data and modeled system types within the SMIC.
The SMIC complements CESMII Platform development as a testbed and specifically addresses CESMII goals of demonstrating “Significant Industry Adoption of SM Technology” and “50% Reduction in Cost and Time to Deploy.” Collaboration on SMIP development utilizes their domain, modeling, and cyberinfrastructure expertise. In addition, they are developing SMIP-enabled Building Blocks, which are needed to document and train on application building in a DevOps environment.
Engineering Capabilities
- Software for automated implementation of model predictive control systems and tools
- Machine learning expertise and tools
- Design, fabrication, and embedding of sensors and wireless systems for harsh manufacturing environments
- Energy harvesting for remote sensor operation, in-situ measuring of machine energy consumption, performance, quality, and reliability
- Modeling and control of dynamic systems
- Extensive experience with sensing and actuation systems used in industry and design of soft techniques
- Development and implementation of real-time
- Intelligent Machine Monitoring Systems and
- High fidelity models and simulations schemes for chemical plants energy systems, materials process, and water treatment
Today new manufacturing, data, computing, and network technologies have gone beyond increased throughput, lower costs, and reduced downtime. These technologies are converging on faster, cheaper, and smarter manufacturing to increase customer focus, adapt to widely changing demand signals, ensure quality, and produce new and different products in record time. CESMII has developed new platform technologies in support. The CESMII network of Innovation Centers demonstrate and provide training on how to access, organize, and use these technologies to build your data-driven solutions.”
Panagiotis Christofides
Director, Smart Manufacturing Innovation Center
48-121G Engineering IV, 428 Westwood Plaza
Henry Samuel School of Engineering and Applied Science
University of California, Los Angeles
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1997
Email: pdc@seas.ucla.edu
Phone: (310) 794-1015
Facilities
The UCLA SMIC as a SMIP Testbed initially facilitated with an electrosynthesis lab scale reactor used to study the conversion of CO2 into valuable products.
The electrosynthesis reactor provides a manageable, small-scale chemical reactor that involves the modeling and operational management of a chemical process with complex, ill-understood phenomena. This reactor testbed also expands the CESMII Innovation Center testbed portfolio with a chemical reactor emphasizing chemical composition instrumentation.
In showcasing how to engineer smart AI and first-principles modeling and control solutions, the electrosynthesis reactor also showcases a process application for environmental sustainability. Modeled system objectives include AI/ML and first principles modeling of steady-state and transient phenomena, extending the models as control system models, and addressing the training, retraining, and validation of the models as new data becomes available. In addition, there is considerable flexibility to test and demonstrate a wide range of SMIP and Profile-enabled practices.
Chemical Biological Engineering (CBE) Lab: The testbed is an electrosynthesis lab scale reactor used to study the conversion of CO2 into valuable products. The electrosynthesis reactor provides a manageable, small-scale chemical reactor that involves the modeling and operational management of a chemical process with complex, ill-understood phenomena. In showcasing how to engineer smart AI and first-principles modeling and control solutions, the electrosynthesis reactor also showcases a process application for environmental sustainability.
Mechanical Aeronautical Engineering Lab (MAE): Two MAE machine operations will round out the UCLA SMIP DevOps testbeds so that the SMIP can be pressure tested with both chemical and machine operations. The CBE reactor is operated as a batch process but is extendable to continuous process modeling. The MAE machine operations will provide two distinct everyday functions in discrete parts manufacture. Both data and model systems will continue to focus on modeled systems, like the CBE reactor operation.
Satellite Locations
Funded Project(s)
ThinkIQ
ThinkIQ is the leader in Transformational Intelligence for Manufacturers, contextualizing data — both in-plant and across your supply chain — to improve yield, safety, quality, and compliance.
With ThinkIQ’s Transformational Intelligence platform, you’ll finally have a complete overview of all manufacturing operations — with our in-depth, industry-specific experience with supply chain and manufacturing concerns.
This data may help one manufacturer avoid recalls from a temperature spike or assembly line slow down, or another manufacturer spot a weakness in their product that could become a major safety concern. And it may help another find that a small change in raw ingredients or suppliers can significantly increase their bottom line.
We use industry benchmarking and your KPIs to surface the manufacturing issues that matter, across your plants, across your supply chains, and around the world.
Rob Schoenthaler
Chief Revenue Officer
rob@thinkiq.com
(323) 314-3414
Funded Project(s)
El Camino College
Automation, Robotics & Manufacturing Center: Automation, Robotics & Manufacturing Center provides the tools, and resources for students to reach their utmost potential. With industry leading CAD/CAM software, and stare-of-the-art equipment, imagination is the only limit for future students in Engineering, and Manufacturing majors.
The objective of the ARM center technology curriculum is to prepare students for gainful employment in the manufacturing industry, and/or review and upgrade the skills of employed industrial personnel. The capable graduate may expect to enter the industry as an advanced machinist apprentice, machine operator, or CNC operator and anticipate advancement to journeyman machinist, tool and die maker, R&D machinist, or CNC programmer.
Business Training Center: The El Camino College Business Training Center (BTC) has a proven track record of improving the bottom line for every kind of business and industry, large or small. The BTC can provide an immediate impact on your business by delivering high-quality training and assistance to help meet your need for a more productive and competitive workforce.
Jose Anaya
Dean, Community Advancement
(310) 225-8265
janaya@elcamino.edu
Funded Project(s)
Oregon State University
School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering (MIME): Our vision is to improve cost efficiency, productivity, quality and flexibility in current manufacturing paradigms, as well as conceive, investigate and develop novel hybrid manufacturing techniques to enable the commercial realization of emerging products. Effective unit-process innovation and development derives from an understanding of the physical and chemical phenomena influencing manufacturing processes. Therefore, a key part of our research involves the creation and experimental validation of computational models of the physics behind tool-material interactions in manufacturing processes, as well as the modeling and understanding of machine tool dynamics and tool-machine interactions. This fundamental knowledge is supplemented with the study of the metrology and characterization techniques needed to monitor the quality of manufacturing production.
Current areas of investigation in the field of process innovation and development at the Advanced Technology and Manufacturing Institute, a key research facility for the Advanced Manufacturing group, include: Additive manufacturing for low-cost tooling | Machine tool dynamics and controls | Materials forming | Materials joining | Nanomaterial synthesis | Photonic sintering techniques | Powder and polymer injection molding | Precision and electrically-assisted machining
Advanced Technology and Manufacturing Institute (ATAMI): Since its foundation in 2003, the Microproducts Breakthrough Institute (MBI) has served as a home for the School of MIME’s advanced manufacturing research breakthroughs. MBI is a collaborative space focused on the research, development and commercialization of microchannel technology.
The MBI is housed in a 70,000-square-foot building with research and development laboratories, fabrication facilities and offices for MIME and OSU faculty as well as a bevy of industry tenants representing a range of manufacturing sectors.
Research activity in the MBI has involved primarily two schools of engineering, MIME and CBEE, leading to breakthroughs in microchannel and nanotechnology for sustainable energy, biomedical devices, and chemical production.
Oregon State Energy Efficiency Center (EEC): The Oregon State University Energy Efficiency Center (EEC), primarily funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, performs energy efficiency assessments for small-to-medium-sized manufacturers in the Pacific Northwest. Student energy analysts tour industrial sites, collect data, and deliver a detailed report including recommendations to reduce energy and waste stream costs and increase productivity and profitability. Center operations provide an opportunity to spread Smart Manufacturing awareness to manufacturing sites.
Karl R. Haapala, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering
Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331
Mail: 204 Rogers Hall | Office: 218A Dearborn Hall
Email: Karl.Haapala@oregonstate.edu
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