National Institute of Standards and Technology December 2016 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

In March 2016, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and ASTM International announced a new international standard that can ``map'' the critically important environmental aspects of manufacturing processes, leading to significant improvements in sustainability while keeping a product's life cycle low cost and efficient. Sustainability for manufacturing is beginning to be addressed through the recently approved ASTM Standard Guide for Characterizing Environmental Aspects of Manufacturing Processes (ASTM E60.13 E3012-16). The standard provides a science-based, systematic approach to capture and describe information about the environmental aspects for any manufacturing production process or group of processes, and then use that data to make informed decisions on improvements. NIST is announcing the Reusable Abstractions of Manufacturing Processes (RAMP) Challenge, with support from ASTM International, the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Manufacturing Science and Engineering Conference (MSEC) Organizing Committee, to familiarize the community with a recent standard for modeling manufacturing processes that was developed under the ASTM's E60.13 Subcommittee on Sustainable Manufacturing. The RAMP Challenge calls on participants (either as an individual or as a team) to model any manufacturing process and demonstrate application of the ASTM E3012-16 Unit Manufacturing Process (UMP) representation for purposes of information sharing and sustainability assessment. The RAMP Challenge will provide an opportunity for participants to put this standard into practice in modeling a process of their own interest, and to share experiences in applying the standard across a variety of processes. Formal methods for acquiring and exchanging information about manufacturing processes will lead to consistent characterizations and help establish a collection for reuse of these models. Standard methods will ensure effective communication of computational analytics and sharing of sustainability performance data. Results of the competition will assist in demonstrating the use of a reusable standard format leading to models suitable for automated inclusion in a system analysis, such as a system simulation model or an optimization program.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) invites organizations to provide products and technical expertise to support and demonstrate security platforms for the Multifactor Authentication for e-Commerce Project for the retail sector. This notice is the initial step for the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) in collaborating with technology companies to address cybersecurity challenges identified under the retail sector program. Participation in the Multifactor Authentication for e-Commerce Project is open to all interested organizations.

The Department of Commerce, as part of its continuing effort to reduce paperwork and respondent burden, invites the general public and other Federal agencies to take this opportunity to comment on proposed and/or continuing information collections, as required by the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995.