POSE: Phase I: Scoping OpenDQM – an Open-Source Ecosystem for Distributed Quality Management

Award ID: 2617665

Ever since the Industrial Revolution, the predominant paradigm for manufacturing has been based on economies of scale through repeatability, mass production and centralized processes. However, in the Internet age, new paradigms of production have emerged that distribute the manufacturing of even complex products. Digital fabrication, online collaborative design and now AI-supported technologies are enablers of new production approaches that are based on economies of scope where lots of different products, rather than the same product over-and-over, can be made profitably. Quality management has not yet adapted to this new digital, distributed reality and now the biggest barrier to the adoption of distributed manufacturing is the challenge of distributed quality management. This Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (POSE) project aims to improve quality control and quality assurance for manufacturing in which many people and organizations produce goods in a distributed ecosystem safely and reliably. The project will explore how an open, shared ecosystem could help producers standardize and coordinate testing, documentation, and verification. This effort supports the national interest by supporting resilient supply chains, helping small manufacturers remain competitive, and ensuring products develop under quality oversight. A coordinated approach will also strengthen consumer confidence in distributed manufacturing. The team will map the needs of manufacturers, regulators, and other stakeholders to understand requirements for a shared quality management system. They will analyze existing tools, study where they succeed or fail, and create a taxonomy to guide future development. The project will prototype models for data exchange, governance, and shared validation processes. They will also engage regulatory bodies to understand compliance challenges and opportunities. Findings will determine the readiness for a development effort to build a fully functional open-source quality management ecosystem. Overall, massive numbers of small manufacturers could be positively impacted if the challenge of distributed quality management can be met, which would support new high value jobs everywhere. Such distributed management could ensure consumer, public and environmental safety in the new paradigm of production, where almost anyone can make almost anything almost anywhere. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Program Director: Florence Rabanal