Our lives are filled with smart devices - phones, rings, thermostats, speakers, doorbells, and more. But have you ever heard of smart manufacturing?

In short, smart manufacturing uses digitalization to improve productivity. Tools like artificial intelligence, robotics, big data analysis, and industrial internet of things (IIoT) machines can all be used to improve performance and energy productivity in manufacturing.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s (RPI) Smart Manufacturing Innovation Center (SMIC) is the hub in the northeastern U.S. for CESMII, the Smart Manufacturing Institute. CESMII, funded by the U.S. government, helps to facilitate companies’ digital transformation.

“SMIC helps us educate the next generation of manufacturing innovators,” said Craig Dory, SMIC executive director. “We focus our efforts on industry engagement, research, education, and training, and RPI students benefit from hands-on learning with state-of-the-art equipment.”

Haresh Malkani, chief technology officer at CESMII, attended the spring SMIC open house, and was very impressed by the RPI students’ work. “I was particularly impressed by the project done by Michael Aksen to deploy smart manufacturing onto a 40-year-old industrial bandsaw,” he said. “It made such a difference in the surface quality of the parts.”

Believe it or not, Aksen ’23 added computer control and data analytics to the decades-old bandsaw, vastly improving its operation. The bandsaw was owned and operated by The Factory Amsterdam, a startup founded by RPI students from the Inventor’s Studio classes. In the Inventor’s Studio curriculum, students learn to be creative and work collaboratively to innovate, build prototypes, apply for patents, and to scale up and manufacture.

The bandsaw project was Aksen’s master’s project. “The Inventors Studio course helped me grasp a higher-level understanding of the effect of my project on the operations of the company and demonstrate my project’s impact to interested parties,” he said. Aksen’s project was co-advised by Asish Ghosh, Ph.D., professor of practice of mechanical, aerospace, and nuclear engineering at RPI, and Dory.

“Michael’s project was a case study to explore deployment of smart manufacturing systems and processes into legacy manufacturing sites,” said Ghosh. “Michael utilized lean manufacturing and Six Sigma tools and processes that he learned in Inventor’s Studio courses.” Ghosh teaches Inventor’s Studio courses at RPI and is a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt.

Aksen was also a part of the Invent@Rensselaer Startup Immersion Program, which paired him with The Factory Amsterdam to integrate CESMII’s Smart Manufacturing Innovation Platform (SMIP) into its operations. The SMIP is a data historian and visualization application that allows for data producers, such as industrial machinery, to connect to it via standardized communication protocols and manage their data and visualize data insights.

“The goal of the project was to make the bandsaw machine more reliable when used and to reduce downtime when maintenance was inevitably needed,” said Aksen. “I began with no knowledge of PLCs (programmable logic controllers), industrial communication, or how to work with industrial machinery. Over the course of two summers and intermittent work over the school year, I was able to install the PLC onto the machine, rewiring all the electrical logic and signals of the machine through the PLC, and maintain the operational logic of the machine. This process seemed daunting at first, but every milestone and challenge was overcome through persistence and collaboration with my peers.”

Aksen also credits taking the Multidisciplinary Capstone Design with giving him a head start in understanding key smart manufacturing concepts and preliminary experience working with the SMIP system.

“Michael’s work demonstrates the successful integration of his education at RPI in smart manufacturing, mechanical engineering, and innovation to improve the functionality of a band saw,” said Antoinette Maniatty, Ph.D., head of RPI’s Mechanical, Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering Department. “Thanks to this experience, Michael founded his own startup to deploy smart manufacturing and Lean Six Sigma processes and has won an Inventor’s Studio Startup Founder Award.”

“This project taught me about how to learn independently, when and how to ask others for help, and it reaffirmed my own abilities and what I’m capable of doing,” said Aksen. “Overall, RPI has given me a great foundation to pursue a career in manufacturing and has equipped me to tackle any engineering challenges that I will encounter during my career. Furthermore, this project has given me invaluable experience working on industrial machinery and provided an immersive understanding of smart manufacturing applications and the world of the manufacturing industry.”