Digital Engineering

Digital Engineering

About Digital Engineering

Digital manufacturing requires production lines to be embedded with software and sensors, and for the data being collected by those sensors to be stored affordably in the cloud. Because only with the ability to send and receive data can the equipment improve itself and learn from every part produced in real-time. Digital engineering is designing and managing this loop of continuous information.
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What Is Digital Engineering?

Digital engineering powers continuous improvement. It’s all about gathering, capturing, integrating, analyzing, and using data to increase efficiency and reduce errors throughout the manufacturing process.

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What Does MxD Do?

MxD’s wide-ranging activities in design, product development, and systems engineering fall under the rubric of digital engineering. The primary steps are capturing data with sensors, sending that data to software for analysis, and then communicating those conclusions to operators so they can take action, or programming machines to make the fixes themselves.

Testimonials

“MxD is taking great ideas, scaling them, and then moving them in the right direction so they can be used by industry. And not only by the big companies but also by the small and medium-size companies. If my family still had their machine shop, we’d be all over it.”

Thomas R. Kurfess
Thomas R. Kurfess

Chief Manufacturing Officer, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

“By bringing together broad industries, government, and academic support to advance digital manufacturing technologies, MxD provides a platform to drive standards across the industry and throughout the supply base. All of these things are good for the American manufacturing landscape, the heavy-machinery industry, and Caterpillar. “

Craig Habeger
Craig Habeger

Division Manager, Manufacturing Technology & Solutions, Caterpillar

“U.S manufacturing has seen decades of underinvestment in both technology and capabilities, but we see a significant opportunity for many in the U.S. with a deeper investment in digital manufacturing.”

Tony Gambell
Tony Gambell

Partner, McKinsey & Company

“Emerging technology areas like artificial intelligence and machine learning are important elements of a dynamic national security environment. MxD fosters collaboration on standards and innovations that can help the U.S. maintain its leadership.”

Shane Fazzio
Shane Fazzio

Senior Research Engineering Manager, Lockheed Martin

Facts & Figures

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Facts & Figures

How fast is the Industrial Internet of Things growing?

Facts & Figures

Manufacturing IoT grew 84% between 2016 and 2017, the highest of any industry, according to Verizon.

Facts & Figures

What is industrial IoT replacing?

Facts & Figures

Paper. Often the first goal for a factory looking to modernize is to go paperless.

Facts & Figures

Which digital engineering jobs are in high demand?

Facts & Figures

By 2020, the lack of data science specialists/analysts will prevent three-fourths of all businesses from maximizing their IoT goals, according to Gartner.

Facts & Figures

How big is the industrial IoT market?

Facts & Figures

IoT Analytics estimates the industrial industry spent over $64 billion on IoT in 2018 and expects Industry 4.0 spending to increase to $310 billion by 2023.

More Success Stories

1.

Supply Chain Risk Alert

Dow, Microsoft, ITAMCO, and two universities teamed up to develop a system that 1) scours the landscape for events that could disrupt supply chains, 2) assesses the risks, and 3) suggests solutions.

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2.

Parts Designers Can Predict Performance With Click of a Button

This project led by Iowa State University created a software package (“ANA”) that allows designers to virtually test their products before spending money creating prototypes.

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3.

Digitizing Legacy Machines

Replacing or modifying legacy machines sometimes is too expensive or would disrupt production or void a warranty. So MxD funded the development of a sensor retrofit kit that communicates data through an industry standard MTConnect interface to a cloud dashboard.

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4.

Jobs Taxonomy: Defining Jobs of the Future

In 2017, MxD (under its previous name, DMDII) and ManpowerGroup released a digital workforce taxonomy, a groundbreaking analysis that identified 165 new data-centric manufacturing jobs—roles like “collaborative robotics technician” and “predictive maintenance systems specialist.” 

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