Original Date: 04/07/1997
Revision Date: 04/14/2003

The Manufacturing Technology Consortium (MTC) is a technology outreach program for Rock Island Arsenal (RIA) Industrial Operations facilities. The program was developed as part of a national technology transfer initiative to assist small and medium-sized manufacturers to understand and implement new plant automation and management techniques to improve their competitive stance.

The consortium consists of five members Black Hawk College, Quad City Development Group, Rock Island Arsenal, Western Illinois University, and Eastern Iowa Community College District. Services available from RIA include technical assistance, applied research, augmenting partnerships, and training. The Arsenal has hands-on learning facilities for manufacturing, safety, Computer Aided Design/Computer Aided Manufacturing/Computer Integrated Manufacturing, environmental, and quality programs. Typical manufacturing assistance includes contract manufacturing and/or engineering services.

An example of the training benefit of the MTC at RIA is demonstrated by the ability of a new manufacturer to train employees at RIA before its own facility was completed. The educational members of the consortium have also used the equipment and classrooms at the Arsenal for instruction. Several projects have resulted in benefits to manufacturers including support of design and testing of a 60,000 lb. load cell; integration of programmable controllers into machining operations; contract machining for a machine tool company; Finite Elemental Analysis for a company; and production of a component for a particle accelerator that was considered unproducible. These are benefits which would have been difficult to achieve or would have not occurred without the MTC.

For more information see the Point of Contact for this survey.