The National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM) and AMT – The Association For Manufacturing Technology announce the start of the second part of the MTConnect Challenge: Creating Manufacturing Intelligence, a U.S. Department of Defense – Defense-Wide Manufacturing Science and Technology (DMS&T) ManTech-sponsored two-part competition.  MTConnect is an open, royalty-free communications standard intended to foster greater interoperability between manufacturing equipment, devices, and software applications thereby harnessing a wealth of information and data available from the shop floor. The MTConnect Challenge 1 sought ambitious yet achievable ideas that harness innovation and manufacturing intelligence breakthroughs. Five winners were awarded $5000 each. The MTConnect Challenge 2, which begins July 1, 2013, and closes Jan. 31, 2014, is seeking the development of software applications that harness innovation and manufacturing intelligence breakthroughs utilizing data acquired via the MTConnect standard. Important dates during Challenge 2 include:

• July 1, 2013 – January 31, 2014 – Submission period for Challenge 2
• February 21st, 2014 – Ten semi-finalists announced
• March 14th, 2014 – Five finalists announced
• April 2014 – [MC]2 Conference – Winners will be selected and announced

Participants will develop functional software applications that address the objective and criteria of the challenge. The MTConnect Challenge encourages submissions from a wide variety of diverse perspectives – students and professionals, scientist, and organizations, including manufacturing entities. Participation in Challenge 1 is not a prerequisite for participation in the MTConnect Challenge 2.

The grand prize of $100,000 will be awarded to the Challenge winner in April 2014. The second place award recipient will receive $75,000, and the third place finisher will receive $50,000.

The goal of the MTConnect Challenge is to engage and stimulate development of a broader base of advanced manufacturing intelligence software applications that acquire data using the MTConnect standard. The result will be a more efficient and competitive domestic manufacturing infrastructure for parts and assemblies for the defense enterprise. Additionally, the objective of this Challenge is to create valuable low cost software tools and applications that can be easily adopted by manufacturing enterprises, especially the mid and lower tier producers which represent a significant portion of the Department of Defense (DoD) supply chain, to enhance their manufacturing capabilities to produce parts and assemblies.

Those seeking more details about this competition can learn more at MTConnect2.challenge.gov.