NETL AVESTAR Center to Serve as Virtual Test Bed for Smart Manufacturing.

NETL’s AVESTAR Center has joined the Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition (SMLC) to participate in collaborative smart manufacturing (SM) R&D and serve as a virtual energy plant test bed for SM technologies.  AVESTAR’s high-fidelity real-time dynamic simulators will be used to test integration with the SM software platform and its plug-and-play interoperability with customizable real-time data-driven applications in areas such as modeling and simulation, sensors and control, process monitoring and fault diagnosis, and decision-making analytics and enterprise-wide optimization.  In an SMLC Forum held in Washington D.C. and attended by 70 participants from industry, academia, and government, Dr. Stephen E. Zitney participated in a government agency panel session where he discussed NETL’s perspectives on SM technologies and directions, as well as how AVESTAR’s research and training programs are aimed at accelerating progress toward achieving smart operation for clean energy plants.   Dr. Zitney also helped lead a breakout session on the role of physical and virtual test beds in facilitating smart.  The SMLC is a non-profit organization committed to overcoming barriers to industry-driven development and deployment of a shared SM infrastructure that will achieve transformational economic-wide impact, manufacturing innovation and global competitiveness.