Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), Contracts Management Office (CMO), 3701 North Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22203-1714

A -- MANUFACTURING AUTOMATION AND DESIGN ENGINEERING (MADE) SOL BAA95-37 DUE 090595 POC Dr. Pradeep K. Khosla, ARPA/SISTO, FAX: (703)696-0564. The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) is soliciting proposals, in support of the Manufacturing Automation and Design Engineering (MADE) program, for research, development and demonstration of enabling technologies, tools, and infrastructure for the next generation of design environment for complex electro-mechanical systems. Proposed research should investigate innovative approaches to overcoming technical barriers and enabling revolutionary advances. Specifically excluded is research which primarily results in evolutionary improvement to the existing state of practice. PROGRAM OVERVIEW. The MADE vision is to create a highly flexible and responsive design environment that could be used to evaluate an order of magnitude more design alternatives than is possible today in an attempt to optimize product characteristics (such as quality, manufacturability, assemblability, and maintainability), and quickly prototype complex products and processes. The objective of the current phase of the program is to develop enabling technologies, tools, and infrastructure to provide cognitive support, during all phases of a design, to the engineer for vastly improving his/her ability to explore, generate, track, store, and analyze design alternatives. The enabling technologies, tools, and infrastructure developed by the MADE program must demonstrate the potential to support the design and manufacturing needs of the DoD and/or the needs of existing and forthcoming ARPA or DoD programs and ATD`s (e.g., AM3, IRFPA, JAST, SBD, etc.) in the areas of design and manufacturing. The program has two focus areas: 1) enabling technologies, and 2) tools and infrastructure. In both program areas, technology demonstrations will be structured in applications of significant military interest to evaluate the potential for large improvements in cost, quality and ability to respond rapidly to change. MADE addresses this by supporting the development of innovative concepts and enabling technologies, which are clearly motivated by high pay-off applications in the DoD, for collaborative and distributed design and manufacturing. PROGRAM INFORMATION A total of approximately $11 million is available in FY96 for funding multiple efforts in both focus areas beginning January 1, 1996. Additionally, funding for FY97 and FY98 may also be available. The sizes of awards and durations of efforts will vary according to the type of effort undertaken (see below). Teaming is strongly encouraged where necessary and appropriate. All efforts are to include description of proposed approach and how it supports scalability to larger, more complex problems that are representative of actual industry problems. Offerors may propose in one or more areas (in a single or multiple proposals). A. DEVELOPMENT OF NEXT GENERATION ENABLING TECHNOLOGIES: Of interest are new research efforts that emphasize revolutionary advances in design systems and research that complements accomplishments from the first two phases of the MADE program. Research efforts in this area may span from 24 to 36 months. The initial 24 months will be focused on development of a concept feasibility demonstration (CFD). The CFD will provide an environment to prove out the concept and justify committing further resources required for beta testing. Examples of enabling technologies include, but are not limited to, the following: (1) design space exploration, including generation of alternatives, processing of constraints and resolution of conflicts, (2) integration of design knowledge and engineering tools (e.g. representations that span system requirements, conceptual designs, functional designs and physical laws / constraints that drive decisions), (3) content and context based retrieval and indexing of product designs, (4) multi-level, multi-disciplinary product simulations/analysis and optimization, (5) automated design management systems, including design rationale and intent capture, that can be effectively shared across the entire product supply chain, (6) qualitative and quantitative simulations, and tools that integrate manufacturing process and/or cost models with design for use in early design phases ( i.e., evaluating design for manufacturability, assembly, and affordability), (7) enabling technologies for creating an information infrastructure for collaborative design (eg. design web, personal web, organizational web, etc.) and interaction with design tools, (8) tools and technologies for collaborative manufacturing to the extent that it is integrated with design. B. DEVELOPMENT, INTEGRATION AND DEMONSTRATION OF TOOLS AND INFRA STRUCTURE: Of interest are efforts to build generic, application ready, software-based tools that provide unique or novel capabilities for distributed, collaborative design and manufacturing and whose initial application to building systems or components can be demonstrated and evaluated within a reusable, instrumented, software-based infrastructure based on emergent object-oriented industry standards (i.e, a common tool environment). Also of interest are innovative approaches to facilitate the transition of those research results into integrated feasibility demonstrations (IFD's). Such efforts would include, but not be restricted to, test case construction, technology integration experiment support, visionary demonstration and IFD definition, value-added engineering, and IFD support. IFD's must present a development plan that shows a clear understanding of the product design process and the appropriate role of advanced software technologies in improving that process. The demonstration system must describe the range of electro-mechanical designs that will be supported, the facilities that will be used to design that product, the suite of technologies/tools to be developed and used to support collaborative design, the system architecture that incorporates those technologies, and a plan for periodic demonstrations over the project life. The proposals must describe how developments under area A will/could be integrated into a complete system and plans for transition of the IFD's to the DoD. GENERAL INFORMATION - OBTAINING PROPOSER INFORMATION An automated-response email address (baa-info@arpa.mil) has been established at ARPA to provide rapid electronic access to information on this solicitation. Proposers must obtain a Proposer Information Package (PIP), BAA95-37 PIP, which provides further information on areas of interest, the submission, evaluation, and funding processes, proposal and proposal abstract formats, and other general information. To obtain the PIP, send an email message whose message field contains the single word ''help'', the ''HELP'' file will be returned which contains a list of the files available along with instructions on how to retrieve them. Requests by US mail to the administrative mailing address below will be honored. Proposers are encouraged to submit brief proposal abstracts before full proposals. An original and five copies of the proposal abstract should be submitted to the mailing address below on or before 4:00 P.M. EDT, 28 July 1995. Proposal abstracts received after this date may not be reviewed. ARPA will provide a response by 10 August 1995 that encourages or discourages the submission of a full proposal. An original and five copies of the full proposal must be submitted to the mailing address below on or before 4:00 P.M. EDT, 5 September 1995. Abstracts and proposals submitted by FAX or E-mail will be disregarded. Proposals not meeting the format described in the PIP may not be reviewed. This notice, together with the PIP, BAA95-37, constitutes the total BAA. Requests for additional information will be disregarded. The Government reserves the right to select for award all, some, or none of the proposals received. All responsible sources capable of satisfying the Government's needs may submit a proposal which shall be considered by ARPA. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) and Minority Institutions (MI) are encouraged to submit proposals and join others in submitting proposals, however, no portion of this BAA will be set aside for HBCU and MI participation due to the impracticality of reserving discrete or severable areas of this research. This BAA will remain open for 12 months. Proposals received on or before 4pm EDT, 5 September 1995 will be considered for initial contract awards. Proposals received subsequent to 5 September 1995 will be considered for funding at later dates. Contract awards will be contingent on funding availability. EVALUATION CRITERIA: Proposals and abstracts will be selected through a technical /scientific /business decision process with technical and scientific considerations being most important. Evaluations will be performed using the following criteria which are listed in descending order of importance: (1) Quality and Technical Merit, (2) Contributions /Relevance to ARPA and DoD, (3) Capabilities and Experience, (4) Plans and Capabilities to Accomplish Technology Transfer, and (5) Cost Realism and Value to the government. Individual proposal evaluations will be based on acceptability or non-acceptability without regard to other proposals submitted under the announcement. However, all acceptable proposals may not be funded due to budgetary constraints. All administrative correspondence and questions should be directed to the administrative addresses for this BAA: (1) E-Mail: BAA95-37@arpa.mil (Email is preferred),(2) Fax: 703-522-6367 (3) Mail: Attn.: BAA95-37, ARPA/SISTO, 4301 N. Fairfax Drive, Suite 725, Arlington, VA 22203-1714. BAA and PIP are also available at the following URL on the WWW http://www.arpa.mil/sisto/solicitations/ (0177)

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