Dr. Martin Hardwick
President and CEO - STEP Tools, Inc.

Dr. Martin Hardwick, president and CEO, founded and incorporated STEP Tools, Inc. in 1991. Dr. Hardwick is a Professor of Computer Science at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. Hardwick. He can be contacted at hardwick@steptools.com.

Martin is the author of numerous papers and articles on digital manufacturing, engineering database systems and concurrent engineering. He has traveled internationally to present numerous public lectures on these topics. Dr. Hardwick is the team leader of the STEP Manufacturing group that is developing a suite of integrated standards for manufacturing and a member of the STEP Implementation working group (WG11). He was the deputy convenor of Working Group 7 of ISO STEP, the group responsible for the STEP Data Access Interface (SDAI) and the Part 21 file format. Currently he is the editor for the new edition of Part 21 which enables data sharing in multiple different data formats.

Hardwick was the project leader for the Model Driven Intelligent Control of Manufacturing program, known as the "Super Model" Project, which is supported by an Advanced Technology Program (ATP) Award issued by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency of the U.S. Commerce Department's Technology Administration. He has worked on multiple high profile data integration programs including the National Industrial Information Infrastructure Protocols (NIIIP), the DARPA Initiative in Concurrent Engineering (DICE), the ARPA Simulation Based Design Program, the NIST ATP PreAmp program, three NSF programs, and two Air Force programs. He is currently participating in the DARPA Advanced Vehicle Make (AVM) program.

Software libraries written by Dr. Hardwick is used for CAD and CAM data exchange at many fortune 500 companies. The libraries are in more than a million CAD workstations worldwide, and they are on track to being deployed on the shop floor to enable a new wave of intelligent manufacturing at large and small enterprises worldwide.

Education

Dr. Hardwick received a Bachelor's of Science Degree in Mathematics/Computer Science from Bristol University, England in June 1978. He received a Ph. D. from the same university in 1982 and based his thesis work on "Applications of Relational Databases to Graphics". From 1982 - 1985, Hardwick worked as an Assistant Professor for the Computer Science Department at the Texas Technological University. In 1985, he began teaching at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he has served as a Professor for fourteen years.

Selected Publications

• M. Hardwick, "Lessons Learned Implementing STEP-NC AP-238," with D. Loffredo, International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing, Special issue on STEP Compliant Process Planning and Manufacturing, X. XU, P. Klem, F. Proctor and S-H Suh, Guest Editors, Vol. 19, No. 6, September 2006, pp. 523-532, doi: 10.1080/09511920600627170
• M. Hardwick, "Third Generation STEP Systems that aggregate data for Machining and other Applications". International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing, Volume 23 Issue 10, October 2010, Pages 893-904 doi: 10.1080/0951192X.2010.490277
• "Enabling Machining Vision using STEP-NC",ASME International Manufacturing Science and Engineering Conference, Notre Dame, Indiana, ,June 4-8, 2012. http://www.nist.gov/manuscript-publication-search.cfm?pub_id=910870
• M. Hardwick, Y. F. Zhao, F. M. Proctor, A. Nassehi, X. Xu, S. Venkatesh, D. Odendahl, L. Xu, M. Hedlind, M. Lundgren, et al., "A roadmap for STEP-NC-enabled interoperable manufacturing," The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, Volume 66, Nos. 1-4, Springer Verlag, March 2013. doi: 10.1007/s00170-013-4894-0
• M. Hardwick, D.Loffredo, J.Fritz and M.Hedlind, "Enabling the crowd sourcing of very large product models", New Prolamat 2013, IFIP, Dresden, October 2013. http://www.steptools.com/stds/step/Enabling_crowd_sourcing.pdf