Auburn Engineering was awarded a $1.04 million project from the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute for research on digital supply chain practices and technologies.

The project will result in the development of guides and strategies to accelerate the adoption of digital supply chain practices and technologies for original equipment manufacturers and small/medium manufacturers while also examining the state of the digitally-enabled supply chain across the commercial and defense manufacturing sectors.

Although industry aims to be model centric, significant levels of manual intervention in the supply chain exist because of unstructured communications, such as email and phone calls. This unstructured data does not easily allow for capture, analysis and re-use.

By developing a digital supply chain roadmap that manufacturers can rely on during the adoption of digital manufacturing and design capabilities, researchers aim to improve supply chain compatibility, interoperability and competitiveness of U.S. manufacturers.

Greg Harris, associate professor of industrial and systems engineering, is the principal investigator. Project partners include Rolls Royce, Rockwell Collins, Raytheon and the National Institute for Science and Technology, among others.