As you may recall, we awarded the first NCMS Collaborative Project Excellence Award at last year’s annual meeting in Nashville, where we recognized the five-year, $33 million Printed Wiring Board Program. It was a program, we said, that virtually turned around a beleaguered segment of the U.S. electronics industry.

Today, I’m happy to have the opportunity to recognize yet another NCMS collaborative R&D program…a program that is widely viewed—at NCMS, among our membership, in the industry—as a true success story in the field of pre-competitive collaborative R&D.

Let me first set the context…

The heat treatment of gears and other steel parts is an essential step in the manufacturing of high performance components for a variety of products—from automobile and aircraft engines…to helicopter transmissions…to sewing machines. Heat treating adds about $15 billion per year in value to metal components by imparting specific properties that are required if parts are to function properly.

But distortion from the heat treatment process is a pervasive manufacturing problem—a manufacturing problem that results in higher costs, waste from scrapped parts, long delivery times and negative environmental impact. It is estimated that efforts to correct heat treatment distortion costs U.S. industry hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Against the specter of intense global competition and the even more intense drivers to reduce manufacturing costs, nearly a dozen organizations teamed up with NCMS on a project to tackle this complicated and expensive manufacturing problem. Together—and under the sponsorship of Air Force Mantech, the Army Aviation and Troop Command, and the Department of Energy’s Office of Industrial Technology—they developed a computer simulation tool that can predict how parts will distort during the heat treating process. It can also predict the microstructural evolution and residual stresses induced during heat treatment.

This tool has not only shown tremendous promise in the reduction of manufacturing costs and product cycle times, it will also help the United States secure a leadership role in the worldwide heat treating field. In fact, project participants believe this breakthrough program could save domestic manufacturers millions of dollars annually.

One participant attributes much of the technical success of the project to the strength of the project team. According to The Torrington Company, "That strength comes in part from the technical capabilities of the team members themselves, but more so from the high degree of cooperation between and among the partners." Torrington credits the efforts of NCMS’s project managers for transforming a group of independent entities with a common need into a unified team working toward a common goal.

At this time, I would like to recognize both the participants and the NCMS staff people who seized an opportunity to address an important industry problem by contributing their time, talents and resources to the NCMS Predictive Heat Treat Program…As I call your name, please step forward to accept your plaque from NCMS Board Chairman Mark Medley and remain standing here by the podium…

For his contributions toward the formation and initial program management of this important initiative, I would like to recognize NCMS’s Chief Technical Officer, Dan Maas…

For her efforts toward successfully negotiating the Department of Energy CRADA that helped make the Predictive Heat Program possible, I would like to recognize NCMS Program Manager Constance Philips…

For their contributions toward the formation and management of the program, I would like to recognize the following companies:

• Ford Motor Company (Program Champion)
• General Motors Corporation
• The Torrington Company
• Eaton Corporation
• Deformation Control Technology
• IIT Research Institute
• Sandia National Laboratories
• Oak Ridge National Laboratory
• Los Alamos National Laboratory
• Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
• Colorado School of Mines

While I understand that some of the project team members of these organizations could not be with us today, I would like to ask those who could to come forward when I call your name:

Representing Ford Motor Company, Dr. William Dowling…

Representing General Motors Corporation,

Representing The Torrington Company, Dr. Doug Shick…

Representing Eaton Corporation, Mr. Harry Dodd…

Representing Sandia National Laboratories,

Representing Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Dr. Gerry Ludtka…

Representing Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,

Representing Los Alamos National Laboratory, Ms. Carolynn Scherer…

Representing the Colorado School of Mines, Dr. Glen Edwards…

Finally, for her contributions toward taking the program management reins from Dan, keeping the industry participants focused and ensuring that the program would press on to new levels of achievement, I would like to recognize NCMS Program Manager Tracy Pattok…

On behalf of the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences, I thank all of you…and I applaud all of you for your efforts and your contributions.