Rapid Response Manufacturing (RRM) is a joint venture program coordinated by the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (NCMS). The program is focused on pre-competitive collaboration in the development of specific CAE/CAD/CAM applications for the support of automated concurrent engineering. RRM is a Department of Commerce Advanced Technology Program (awarded in the fall, 1992) administered by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The joint venture partners are from industry, government and leading-edge suppliers of manufacturing technologies. Total funding for the five year program is set at $50.3M.
The object of the RRM program is to shorten the time-to-market, improve quality-to-cost and enhance product reliability in order to provide the U.S. manufacturing infrastructure competitive advantage in a variety of global markets. Specifically, the intent of the program is to provide the effort needed to effectively enable engineers to reduce the time required to design and manufacture in response to rapidly fluctuating market demands by one half.
The research and development objectives of this program include: Product Representation through feature-based modeling, Knowledge-based applications supporting the entire life cycle, Engineering environment built around object-oriented, distributed computing systems, and Direct Manufacturing incorporating present practices and freeform fabrication.
For more information, link to URL: http://cewww.eng.ornl.gov/rrm/home.html
To view some MPEG 3D models of the knowledge based applications, link to URL: http://cewww.eng.ornl.gov/rrm/knowapp.htm