Thermal Manufacturing Industries Advanced Technology Consortium (TMI ATC)

Goal: Lead and coordinate a national effort to develop and deploy advanced manufacturing technologies across the broad thermal manufacturing community, including equipment manufacturers and end users.

Lead: ASM International
9639 Kinsman Road
Materials Park, Ohio 44073

Award Number: 70NANB14H045

Federal Funding: $400,000

Project Duration:18 months

Thermal processes, such as melting, drying, smelting, heat treating, and curing, pervade U.S. manufacturing. ASM International intends to form the Thermal Manufacturing Industries Advanced Technology Consortium (TMI ATC) with a membership representing all industries that use heat-driven processes as well as suppliers of thermal manufacturing equipment and services. Unlike past efforts that were aligned with narrow industry segments, the new consortium will launch a roadmapping process that identifies common thermal manufacturing needs and challenges and delivers a unified set of research priorities and advanced-technology goals. The consortium will build on past roadmaps and, through a series of workshops, expand the range of stakeholders to encompass the full thermal manufacturing value chain.

Because of its wide and varied industrial use, thermal manufacturing directly and indirectly affects the employment of an estimated 8.3 million people in the United States at more than 262,000 companies, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. These companies—of which 98 percent are small and medium-sized enterprises—annually produce $3.4 trillion in total value of shipments. Advanced thermal manufacturing technologies, from improved waste-heat recovery to deployment of robust, real-time sensors to broader use of modeling and simulation, have the potential to greatly improve the energy efficiency and competitive performance of a broad swath of U.S. manufacturers, especially small and medium-sized enterprises.

For project information: Stanley C. Theobald, (440) 338-5410, stan.theobald [at] asminternational.org (stan[dot]theobald[at]asminternational[dot]org)

Funded Participants:

• Nexight Group, LLC (Silver Spring, Md.)

AMTech Project Manager: Jean-Louis Staudenmann, (301) 975-4866, jean-louis.staudenmann [at] nist.gov (jean-louis[dot]staudenmann[at]nist[dot]gov)