MTConnect Institute Announces Student Challenge

College students with an interest in bringing together software and hardware solutions to improve manufacturing operations now have an opportunity to leverage their creativity and innovative know-how through the MTConnect Student Challenge, a competition that invites submissions for both ideas and applications utilizing the MTConnect standard.

Announced at the [MC]2 Conference in Chicago, the MTConnect Student Challenge is offering a total of $33,000 in cash prizes for winning submissions. MTConnect is an open-source, XML-based communications standard that fosters connectivity between manufacturing equipment and devices. This Challenge builds on the success of previous competitions that sought submissions from industry professionals related to the use of MTConnect.

The MTConnect Student Challenge is open to community college and university students at the undergraduate and graduate level and may be of particular interest to students who are studying manufacturing-related fields; electrical, mechanical or industrial engineering; as well as software engineering and IT-related studies.

“The MTConnect Student Challenge seeks to engage the higher education community to promote innovative thinking and ideas, and ultimately to enable manufacturing intelligence breakthroughs for the defense manufacturing industry,” said Douglas K. Woods, the president of the MTConnect Institute and the president of AMT – The Association For Manufacturing Technology (McLean, VA). “It is our collective hope that the MTConnect Student Challenge will inspire a broader base of software and system architects; build a new, skilled workforce by increasing students’ awareness of advanced manufacturing technologies; and develop MTConnect applications that can easily be adopted by manufacturers of all sizes.”

MTConnect Student Challenge – Idea Creation
For the Ideation competition, students will be required to interview manufacturers to identify their challenges; describe potential solutions to that challenge; and create a conceptual mockup for a solution. The prizes for this competition are $5,000 for first place, $2,500 for second place, and three $1,000 prizes for runners up. Submission opens on June 11th, 2015, and closes on September 18th, 2015. Winners will be announced October 15, 2015.

Full rules and submission details are available at: www.challenge.gov/challenge/mtconnectstudentidea

MTConnect Student Challenge – Application Development
For the Application competition, students will be required to develop an application that demonstrates innovation and the use of manufacturing intelligence breakthroughs. Submissions will be rated based on their potential to create achievable and measurable benefits to manufacturing operations, improving efficiencies, minimizing waste, reducing costs, etc.

The prizes for this competition are $10,000 for first place, $7,500 for second place, and $5,000 for third place. Submission opens on June 11, 2015, and closes on January 31, 2016. Winners will be announced April 20th, 2016, at the [MC]2 Conference in Dallas, TX.

Full rules and submission details are available at: www.challenge.gov/challenge/mtconnectstudentapp

The MTConnect Student Challenge is sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) Defense-wide Manufacturing Science and Technology (DMS&T) and executed by AMT – The Association For Manufacturing Technology, the U.S. Army Benét Labs, the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM), and the MTConnect Institute, in partnership with SME and the National Tooling and Machining Association.

www.amtonline.org