3YOURMIND and Phillips Corporation Federal Division are participating in the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS)’s distributed manufacturing experiment at the biennial Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) international military exercise over the next month.
Running from June 24 to July 31, the exercise aims to synergise and streamline workload across a distributed joint-force advanced manufacturing network.
Through the NPS Consortium for Advanced Manufacturing Research and Education (CAMRE) and its Partnership Intermediary FLEETWERX, the 3YOURMIND and Phillips Corporation efforts will validate a "C2 - command control" system for production orchestration to support the U.S. Department of War’s vision of delivering critical parts at the point of need.
NPS drives defence-focused applied research to solve complex operational challenges, such as the adoption of advanced manufacturing in the fleet.
"We're moving advanced manufacturing out of the lab and into the fleet. But to operationalise that during a massive exercise like RIMPAC, we needed absolute command and control over the digital supply chain," said Chris Curran, CAMRE Program Manager. "It’s about ensuring the right unit gets the right file at the exact right time, so they can print what they need to stay in the fight."
The initiative, organised under the CAMRE distributed manufacturing project, utilises the 3YOURMIND commercial-off-the-shelf product to provide the digital thread necessary for military readiness. By positioning 3YOURMIND's full suite of software capabilities, including part identification, order management, and production planning, the team aims to fulfil the military’s request to develop "the Uber for manufacturing capabilities delivered at the speed of Amazon."
Delivering on that mandate for speed requires the use of Partnership Intermediaries like FLEETWERX. Serving as a critical innovation hub, FLEETWERX leverages rapid prototyping and testing frameworks to give the warfighter access to tomorrow’s technologies today.
"Getting the right part to the right place at the right time remains one of the military's most persistent challenges," added Morgan Bower, Director, FLEETWERX. "RIMPAC allows us to evaluate technologies that help identify requirements, connect them to manufacturing resources and accelerate delivery to operators, providing valuable insight into the future of military sustainment."
The events organised by the Naval Postgraduate School serve as research experiments, whereby the findings will inform whether future investment in distributed manufacturing capabilities is necessary and/or viable. The project acknowledges that the government cannot operationalise advanced manufacturing without a robust digital thread to manage fragmented assets and personnel. The primary goal of these digital workstreams is to decrease response time for readiness, increase capacity for lethal capabilities, and enable rapid iteration of weapon systems. The 3YOURMIND system is intended to serve as a command-and-control system for orchestrating production requests and shipping tasking.
"Establishing a digitised manufacturing network is fundamentally an enterprise problem concerning fragmented people and assets," said William Cuervo, President of 3YOURMIND’s North American operations. "The strategy involves addressing this enterprise problem and tailoring the solution for military requirements."
Laura Griffiths
In addition to software, Phillips Corporation will deliver containerised hybrid advanced manufacturing technology–including milling and 3D printing–afloat on the USS ESSEX during the exercise.
“This partnership aligns part production with the optimal manufacturing solution,” said retired USMC Colonel Patrick Tucker, Strategic Business Development Manager at Phillips Corporation. “By coupling a unique part assessment tool with a common operational picture and a manufacturing tool, we are streamlining readiness at sea. We are pleased to employ our partnership in this real-world scenario. This exercise will show us how to best enable distributed manufacturing for the joint force.”
In addition to RIMPAC, 3YOURMIND and Phillips Corps. participated in two preliminary technical exchanges: Joint Inter-agency Field Experimentation (JIFX) at Camp Roberts in Monterey, California, and Valiant Shield in Okinawa, Japan, in May and June, respectively. The preliminary efforts follow a “crawl, walk, run” approach to validate technical compatibility and real-world feasibility at RIMPAC.
