D.

B: The biggest challenge in adopting digital manufacturing is the concern that small
and medium enterprises have regarding safety. Their biggest fear is what would happen
if during predictive analysis, all of a sudden people hack into your machine tools and
either cause that machine tool to damage itself or cause it to produce a defect in a part
thats not observable until the part is actually out there in the product. We will have to
overcome this fear and figure out how to make it safe.
ASME: Whats your advice to engineers who are just starting out and want to
implement digital manufacturing in their production process?
D.B: In the field of advanced manufacturing today, its really important for engineers to
embrace their computer science partners. Everything in the future's going to be related
to Big Data, predictive analytics, and IoT. So if you're going to be designing a product as
a mechanical engineer, youre going to want to have a very close relationship with the
predictive analytics department consisting of statisticians and computer scientists.
My advice to mechanical engineers today is: Embrace those friendships youre making
with those computer majors. Because its all going to be so closely tied together.
ASME: What role organizations like ASME can play in accelerating the adoption of
digital manufacturing?
D.B: ASME has been a thought leader since its origin back in 1880. This is a new area
thats emerging and I think its imperative that ASME become a thought leader in this
area because theyve got over 120,000 members that are looking for ASME to make
them aware of these new emerging technologies. Another role ASME can play is in
workforce development, education and training, by staying abreast of all the future
things that are coming down the pike and providing training courses to become better
engineers.
ME: With these new technologies being embraced by the industry, what would a
typical factory floor look like in future?
D.B: A factory floor in the future will have every single machine tool with
multiple sensors streaming real-time data for feeds, speeds, depths cut, oil viscosities,
coolant viscosities, coolant temperatures, coolant volume flow, acoustic emissions,
vibrations, and cabinet temperatures. Everything you can sense on a machine tool, that
data is going to be streaming to the cloud. Predictive analytics will be able to alert you to
problems that might happen before they happen. You will be able to predict those kinds

of failures and have your maintenance crew on the weekend fix a problem before it
interrupts the first shift of production.
Watch the video of Dr. Dean Bartles interview.