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Open Call

How might we reduce the time and cost required to evaluate and qualify alternative components, materials, and sources while maintaining performance, quality, and supply continuity?

Context

Manufacturers need the flexibility to introduce alternative inputs as products evolve, technologies change, and supply conditions shift. Changes to a component, material, design, manufacturing process, or source may require engineering assessment, testing, and production validation before they can be adopted.

Qualification processes can be highly application-specific and dependent on sequential testing. The resulting time and cost can limit manufacturers’ ability to build qualified alternatives into their supply chains.

The opportunity is to make evaluation and qualification faster, more consistent, and scalable, while not compromising required performance, reliability, safety, and traceability standards.

Criteria
  1. 01

    Credible pathway to reduce component validation and requalification timelines by at least 50%

  2. 02

    Ability to meet applicable quality, safety, consistency, and end-to-end traceability requirements

  3. 03

    Demonstrated potential to reduce total qualification cost relative to traditional physical qualification processes

  4. 04

    Demonstrated capability to maintain or exceed incumbent component performance, reliability, and traceability for target applications

  5. 05

    Reduced dependence on geographically concentrated or single-source supply

  6. 06

    Potential applicability across multiple customers, industries, or end markets

Potential areas of innovation
  • AI- and physics-informed equivalency assessment
  • Simulated and digital twin testing
  • Automated functional equivalence testing
  • Accelerated reliability and durability testing
  • Digital-twin validation
  • Automated inspection and traceability
  • Standardized qualification frameworks
  • Technologies that reduce validation time, cost, or testing requirements
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