The Draper Scholars Program emphasizes empowering students in 16 key research areas to make the greatest impact. We encourage applicants to align their research with these topics.
New Product Design and Manufacturing
Draper NXT has established an Operations Organization that formalizes the product roadmap from development to production across disciplines, technologies and program offices. As we continue to explore state-of-the-art methods to advance electro-mechanical design of extremely high-performance systems harsh environments, and beyond, we must also find cutting edge methodologies and technologies to take these designs into production. Our goal is to fulfill the national challenge of Strategic Readiness through Fast to Production and Fast to Field capabilities.
We would be targeting PhD students for the development of novel approaches; and MS students for the application of existing approaches to specific problems of interest to Draper.
Technical Point of Contact
Research Interests
Fast-to-Production (F2P)
F2P will allow Draper to produce high reliability products that achieve mission critical timelines and requirements. Advancements are focused on supporting Draper in efficiently and effectively building technologically advanced products that have the capability and capacity to meet Customer requirements for the requisite mission duration. Examples include:
- Productization
- How to introduce Foundational Technologies into the New Product Integration (NPA) process to allow for minimal modifications of a base design to be tailored and produced with a quick tournaround time and high-reliability.
- Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) to be introduced into NPI, product development and production execution processes.
- Speed and Automation Capabilities
- Identify and develop technologies for build/inspection/test to increase speed and yield.
- Multi-Use Production Facility capabilities and capacity planning to sustain current programs and support identification of future needs.
- Early Issue Detection capability that would utilize tool data and inspection data to identify trending process indicators affecting Cpk that would give early insight for low-rate production to help reduce fall-out and guide improvements without multiple build iterations.
- Design, Test, and Production Requirements
- New methodologies (i.e. AI analysis) to understand and identify gaps in requirements/capabilities to support Make/Buy Decisions, Proposals, Design, Test, and Production Execution for new and current programs.
- New approach to MRL/TRL assessments and standardization across programs and product lines.
Fast-to-Field (F2F)
F2F will allow Draper to fulfill rapid turn prototypes in support of customer needs and proving out design thus minimizing the learning curve. In order for this to occur, Draper needs to define the minimum standard and process to produce these units. Advancements are focused on supporting Draper in efficiently and effectively building new industrial base capabilities that are directly introduced in the field within a critical timeline. Examples include:
- Productization
- Analysis of current industrial base capabilities to identify gaps for future Foundational Technologies.
- How to leverage Foundational Technologies for rapid development and deployment.
- Speed and Automation Capabilities
- Identify and develop technologies for build/inspection/test to increase throughput and minimize product specific training.
- Design, Test, and Production Requirements
- New methodologies (i.e. AI analysis) to understand and identify gaps in requirements/capabilities to support quick turn Design, Build, and Test.
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