Automation Alley in Troy has been awarded a Phase I $7.5 million Task Order with a Base and Option under the Industrial Base Analysis Sustainment (IBAS) program, administered through the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM) IDIQ.
The contract supports the U.S. Army’s efforts to modernize defense supply chain sustainment through secure, distributed additive manufacturing (AM), also known as 3-D printing.
Under this first phase, Automation Alley will lead the design and validation of a secure digital manufacturing environment that enables intellectual property-protected streaming of manufacturing instructions to a distributed network of AM equipment.
The effort is part of Project DIAMOnD — Automation Alley’s flagship defense manufacturing initiative — and represents a significant step toward demonstrating that complex defense components can be produced on demand, at distributed locations, with full data security, traceability, and quality assurance.
Legacy defense components frequently face supply chain disruptions, long lead times, and limited domestic production capacity, according to Automation Alley. This program directly addresses those challenges by validating a “streaming manufacturing” model — analogous to how digital media is securely licensed and streamed — applied to the production of physical components.
Phase I technical work will include development of a secure encrypted digital workflow architecture aligned with Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) cybersecurity standards, identification, and validation of candidate polymer and metallic weapon system components. It also will focus on the production of additively manufactured parts using validated processes.
A core deliverable of the program is demonstrating secure, end-to-end transfer of smart product recipes (SPRs) to distributed manufacturers with complete digital quality assurance recipes for each part produced.
Automation Alley will execute the program in partnership with Markforged, a leading provider of industrial AM systems, and Fraunhofer USA, an applied research organization.
NCDMM, which manages America Makes — the nation’s leading public-private partnership for AM technology and education — will serve as the prime contractor. The collaboration brings together complementary expertise in AM technology, cybersecurity, and manufacturing process validation to deliver a program with meaningful and measurable impact.
“This award reflects years of work building a platform and a network capable of supporting the Department of War’s most critical manufacturing needs,” says Tom Kelly, executive director and CEO of Automation Alley. “Phase I gives us the opportunity to demonstrate, in a real and rigorous way, that secure distributed additive manufacturing is not just possible — it is ready.”
For more information, visit automationalley.com/.
