And here we are today… at the start of a three-day meeting…on a far from blustery day…in the heart of the most popular vacation destination in the world.

Times have changed…and so have we.

I’d like to take a few minutes this morning to review some of the changes we’ve experienced—particularly during the last year. I think you’ll find them quite remarkable.

In this year of change, we’ve seen major strides in the performance of cooperative research. Today, the results of some of our early and ongoing collaborative R&D projects are propelling our nation’s manufacturers to a global leadership position in key technology areas. Let me give you a few examples:

• The Predictive Heat Treat program team has developed a computer simulation tool that can predict how parts will distort during the heat treating process. This tool could save U.S. manufacturers billions of dollars annually. The project team will be honored today with the 1998 NCMS Collaborative Project Excellence Award.

• A feasibility study sponsored by NCMS two years ago showed that the technology innovation, acquisition and adoption processes used in U.S. industry are inefficient and not well coordinated between the value chains. A follow-on project, the Management of Accelerated Technology Insertion, is looking at new models for accelerating the innovation cycle—hoping, ultimately, to cut the technology insertion time for new technologies in half.

• The NCMS ARC Welding team is working on an innovative combination of hardware and software for monitoring welding conditions to enable control of both automatic and manual processes. This project could reduce welding costs by 10-30 percent and boost productivity by a factor of four.

• The NCMS Spindles project team has already built and tested three prototype spindles that have raised machining performance benchmarks. The project was honored in 1996 with the prestigious R&D 100 award. A spinoff project that developed the "HydroSpindle^TM Bearing won an R&D 100 award last year.

• The Advanced Centerless Grinding project team has designed and built a low-cost superabrasive centerless grinder with advanced performance features—effectively preserving a U.S. machine tool segment worth $50 to $100 million per year that was about to be lost to foreign competition.

• The NCMS Rapid Prototyping team is pushing the envelope in the RP field. At the conclusion of the highly successful six-year RPTA project last December, the team recognized that the horizons of Rapid Prototyping where beginning to mix with areas like high-speed machining and virtual reality. As a result, they decided to include these areas in the scope of a new four-year effort that is now underway. To better understand where these complementary technologies were headed the team decided to develop the first ever industry-developed roadmap for the RP industry…and you will be the first to see it.

In this year of change, we’ve seen the emergence of an important new partnership between NCMS and the Department of Defense. The Commercial Technology for Maintenance Activities, or CTMA, program will help integrate into the DoD logistics community commercial technologies and best practices that can reduce cycle times and costs while improving military readiness. Together, the DoD and NCMS have already identified more than 30 collaborative research projects from within the NCMS R&D portfolio that show great promise for pilot deployment at maintenance depot facilities. But there’s more. The participation of the commercial industrial sector provides immediate upgrades to the manufacturing capabilities of complementary manufacturing capabilities of DoD while offering a robust and dynamic validation platform for the emerging technologies and practices. This approach is effectively creating an environment of mutual high benefit between the participants.

In this year of change, we’ve seen major progress in the development and maturation of our for-profit subsidiary, Technologies Research Corporation. In the past 12 months, TRC has tripled its volume of business—partnering with over 35 individual organizations on eight projects in the automotive, CAD/CAM, electronics, materials and machine tool industries. TRC has even helped launch a consortium to bring cohesiveness to the fragmented aluminum metal matrix composites field. What we’re most pleased about is the fact that of the original $350,000 committed to helping TRC getting launched, only $150,000 has been expended. And to show how much NCMS members have taken advantage of the opportunity, TRC has a cash balance for projects of over $1.5 million dollars. That's great leverage for NCMS.

In this year of change, another NCMS subsidiary, the IDL Group, has developed and delivered over 35 interactive courses and is broadcasting on a weekly basis. IDL Group courses have been received by more than 45 companies and that number is growing. A pilot IDL program was simulcast over the IDL Group network and to the members and subscribers of the National Technical University (NTU). An extremely successful broadcast, many more IDL courses will be delivered through NTU. The IDL Group has also partnered with the Michigan Virtual Automotive College (MVAC). In the partner agreement, MVAC is funding the development of a number of IDL courses. Three training and education providers have taken advantage of this partnership and developed courses for join IDL/MVAC delivery. Finally, the new GM Dealership network of 8,500 downlink sites offers a tremendous opportunity for IDL Group course delivery in the coming year.

In this year of change, we’ve seen the successful merger of two new organizations into NCMS operations: InfoTEST and the Michigan Materials Processing Institute. These new business sectors offer exceptional opportunities for NCMS members to partner with others on projects of mutual interest in new fields of endeavor. The merger with InfoTEST, the world’s leading Internet alliance, has created the largest manufacturing-related information technology consortium in the United States. The impact of information technology on people and culture will change manufacturing more than any other factor in the near future. Clearly, with this merger, we are positioning ourselves to remain at the forefront of the myriad of opportunities information technology will provide. The MMPI merger will significantly enhance NCMS project efforts in the areas of polymers and composite materials. MMPI has sponsored over 60 collaborative projects in the past six years, and several emerging NCMS projects are aimed at commercializing technologies developed through MMPI. Descriptions of current and emerging projects are included in the exhibit area, and I encourage anyone interested in plastics and composites to look over the information and contact the appropriate people at NCMS about your active participation.

Each of these important initiatives—CTMA, TRC, IDL, InfoTEST and MMPI—have not only helped develop, but they have helped validate, NCMS’s new strategic focus toward a more business-sector approach to its operations.

Something else has changed in this year of change…something that isn’t quite as tangible as these accomplishments but is the basis for all of them: Now, more than ever, we know what we’ve always believed: Collaboration works.

Collaboration works.

Collaboration is both fundamental and integral to everything we do at NCMS. It’s the cohesive glue that binds us together, the compass that points us in the right direction, the leverage that helps us reach our goals more rapidly and more economically than we ever thought possible, and the mechanism for ensuring the ready deployment of research results. It’s the conduit for change…the key indicator for success…the core competency that NCMS has tried, tested and proven to a level that far exceeds that of any other organization in the United States.

Collaboration isn’t just what we do, it’s who we are.

In closing, I’d like to reference a quote from Henry Ford. He said, "Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success." The National Center for Manufacturing Sciences is a compelling success story. We aren’t successful simply because we want to be. We’re successful because we know we can be. And we know that working together—collaborating—is one of the best tools available to us to continue the work we set out to accomplish some 11 years ago.

Thanks, Mark.
So if this is the Number 1 vacation destination in the world, what are we doing in here?

Seriously, although I wasn’t affiliated with the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences at the time of that first annual meeting 11 years ago, I have always been a believer that great things can come from small beginnings. I understand that, even as his entertainment empire grew beyond his wildest and most ambitious expectations, Walt Disney frequently reminded his people to "never lose sight of one thing…that this was all started by a mouse."

In the last few minutes, Mark reviewed some of the accomplishments of the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences in the past year. It is now my task to review what you can expect in the next two and a half days. I believe you will find that we have a lot to offer.

As you know, the theme of this year’s conference is Achieving Your Technology Vision: The Role of Collaborative R&D. In the materials promoting the event, we told you that it would be about "making industry roadmaps and collaborative R&D an integral part of your company’s strategy to achieve its technology vision."

We told you that the technical program would be structured to help you see how you can leverage resources, share risks and pursue manufacturing technologies that are important to you. We told you that it would help you see the direction in which your company should be headed and, even more important, how to get there…that it would help you identify gaps, overlaps and intersections between current industry roadmaps and your company’s objectives. And we told you that Daniel Burrus, back with us at your request, would conclude the conference by discussing Finding the Right Recipe: How to Mix Your Collaborative Agenda with Technology Development.

That’s what we told you we would do here. That’s what we plan to do here. Let me take a few minutes to tell you why.

These are competitive times we’re living and working in. In order to survive, companies are increasingly extending themselves globally…entering exciting, yet sporadic and volatile, markets. They’re seeing the emergence of potential partners, and potential competitors, in the newly industrialized countries of the Pacific Rim and elsewhere. They’re working with R&D resource pools that have either remained stagnant for several years…or have declined. They’re turning to mergers, acquisitions, workforce reductions and reorganization strategies to remain competitive. They’re facing, on a daily basis, a daunting explosion of new technologies…technologies that offer both unprecedented opportunities…and incredible challenges.

This is the environment that everyone in this room lives in. This is the environment that we will all continue to live in. Only the pace will change.

Fortunately, companies are viewing collaboration…in many forms…as a mechanism for accomplishing their goals. As a result, we’re now seeing the development of collaborative R&D initiatives, both horizontal and vertical, within and among companies. We’re seeing the formation of cross-industry relationships to address pervasive technology needs. We’re seeing a direct link between how successful a company is and how well it is able to partner. And we’re seeing organizations like NCMS, perhaps especially NCMS, become a major player in helping companies understand, underscore and undertake collaborative R&D programs.

This conference is about making industry roadmaps and collaborative R&D an integral part of your company’s strategy to achieve its technology vision. As you attend many of the 15 sessions that we’ve set up for you, I challenge you to think about developing your collaborative R&D agenda. Consider which technology areas you would be interested in collaborating in. Define who you would like to collaborate with. Determine what the deliverables should be. Think about the extended or virtual corporation analogy into the R&D dimension.

We’ve provided you with a notebook containing reference materials and resource information to help you through this process…

…We’ve structured into this conference a number of opportunities to network…not just with people in your own industry but, broadly, across many industries…

…We’ve created a "forming and emerging’ projects area in the exhibit hall to help you see some of the collaborative work that is just underway among our partners…work that you can get involved in right now…

…We’ve complemented that exhibit with a display showcasing several collaborative project success stories, and, as Mark noted, we’ll be honoring one of these at lunch today…

…The exhibition hall itself provides nearly three dozen examples of collaboration at work…and exceptional opportunities to learn more about them.

…We’ve worked closely with Dan Burrus to ensure that you leave the conference with the proper mix of information and strategies to achieve your technology vision…collaboratively…

…We’ve brought most of our technical staff to Orlando. They, in turn, have encouraged their project teams to be here. Together, they can answer any questions you may have and share with you their experiences in collaborative R&D…

…Finally, we’ve planned a follow-on event, our second annual Fall Workshop Series, to help solidify the promising collaborative opportunities that we identify here.

As I told you, this conference is about making industry roadmaps and collaborative R&D an integral part of your company’s strategy to achieve its technology vision. We can help you with the tools. We can work with you on using them. But you will be successful only if you want to be…and believe you can be.