The Forging Defense Manufacturing Consortium: Activities within Aviation

The Forging Industry Association Department of Defense Manufacturing Consortium will illustrate several of its projects related to Aerospace Forgings and Aerospace Forging Supply Chains.  Since our last presentation at Aeromat in Dayton 2009 the FDMC has continued to invest in a host of projects of which we will highlight progress as of 2012.  The Metal and Process Optimization Project addresses the question of how to simultaneously tradeoff material and process for new or legacy systems.  Often forging is competed with machining, and the optimal selection is often influenced by the combined factors of order quantity and part performance.  Job Shop Lean Internships continue to produce results in forges in optimizing process flow with new algorithms and training future industrial engineers for forges.  The National Forging Tooling Database continues to perform while addressing the needs of new systems which are rapidly becoming legacy systems.  The FORGE-IT Team continues to reach out to Forging Designers and Buyers, and coupled, with our Modeling Team at Scientific Forming Technologies Corporation we have also addressed work force needs in forging design.  The presentation will also touch upon the elusive topic of affordable, rapid tooling for forgings.