Georgia Tech Cyber Manufacturing Research Team Awarded $3M NSF Grant

Shreyes N. Melkote, who holds the Morris M. Bryan, Jr. Professorship in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, has been awarded a $3 million Future Manufacturing Research Grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Melkote, who is also the associate director of the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute and executive director of the Novelis Innovation Hub, will serve as principal investigator alongside four other researchers, including Woodruff School Professor Emeritus David Rosen, and will explore a data-driven approach to cyber manufacturing. The grant will also support Melkote’s efforts to work with academic and industry partners to develop educational tools to train a future manufacturing workforce from diverse backgrounds.

“We are excited to have the resources that the NSF has provided,” Melkote said. “It’s the best type of resource because it allows us to do basic research.”

The grant is part of a wider national initiative that saw more than $30 million awarded to university-based research projects on advanced manufacturing and preparation of the manufacturing and STEM workforce for the future.

In a future cyber manufacturing ecosystem, the process is digitally unified across the supply chain and potential issues in fabrication can be flagged automatically and early in the design process, minimizing the need for multiple prototypes. The final design can then swiftly be routed to those best equipped to produce the product based on the specifications.

This vision of a fully automated, interconnected process has long been sought after and is considered the ‘holy grail’ of discrete parts manufacturing.

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