Professor and CoT Coordinator, Purdue University

Bruce A. Harding is a professor and CoT coordinator at Purdue University. Professor Harding's scholarship and engagement activities revolve around the development and application of American National and ISO standards dealing with Technical Product Documentation (TPD) as it broadly relates to product realization and other technical aspects of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). In turn, this expertise is woven back into his classroom instruction and research.

These activities span the spectrum of standardization from standards concerning the operation, conformance and interoperability among 3D CAD systems, to those concerning the interpretation of manufacturing intent expressed in specifications such as geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) and metrology. He has been involved with technical standards for nearly three decades; as an industrial practitioner with Westinghouse, Olin Mathieson and IBM, as a university professor, and as a consultant and industrial trainer. He has authored or been the editor for over 80 technical publications on PLM and related topics in the U.S. and abroad. Included in these is his work as Technical Editor for Modern Drafting Practices and Standards, an industrial practitioner manual, two commercial videos titles on GD&T, and authorship of the GD&T and surface finish chapters of the 26th and 27th Editions of Machinery’s Handbook, plus those topics and more for the 28th Edition.

He is active on a number of American National standards developing committees including engineering drawing paper, dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T), 3D digital product modeling and the Y14 main committee overseeing all U.S. standards for engineering drawings and related documentation practices. He chairs the ASME committees for graphic symbology standards, the committee on screw thread representation, and the U.S. Technical Activities Group to ISO/TC 10 (TAG). This committee consists of U.S. technical experts on Technical Product Documentation. Harding also serves at the next level as vice-chair of the ASME Board on Standardization and Testing which oversees the main committees developing ANSI standards for fasteners, geometric dimensioning & tolerancing, metrology, tools, pallets, threads, gaging, plumbing fixtures, metal mill products, chemical pumps, instrumentation, performance test codes and others. Harding was recently elected to the ANSI national Board of Directors. He also serves as vice-chair of the ANSI Committee on Education (CoE), which oversees all Institute initiatives related to standards and conformity assessment education and outreach, to fulfill the objectives of the United States Standards Strategy (USSS), plus serves on The Institute’s national advisory Panel on Personnel Certification Accreditation.

Internationally, he has served as the Head of Delegation (HoD) for U.S. technical experts to International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Technical Committee meetings in North America, Asia and Europe. Currently he chairs the 62-country ISO/TC10 committee whose Secretariat is based in Sweden. The committee writes worldwide standards for technical product documentation for PLM, including engineering drawings, graphics symbology, 3D CAD modeling, and related practices. Within ISO/TC10, Harding serves as a U.S. expert on ISO/TC10/WG16, the committee responsible for ISO 16792, Digital Product Definition Data Practices, the seminal international standard for 3D CAD operation, and on ISO/TC10/SC10, the committee writing worldwide technical symbology standards.

As a subject matter expert at Purdue, Professor Harding has led funded research on PLM and has provided technical engagement and training services for a number of companies including Alcoa, Federal Mogul, Bosch, Stanley, Allied Signal, Wabash National, Miles, Sabin, Caterpillar, Cummins, Excel, Bayer, Sealed Power, Exide, Nyloncraft, AM General, TRW, Revere Copper & Brass, Adapto, Eaton, Johnson Controls, IBM, Hendrickson Suspensions, Wabash National and many others, as well as technical societies such as SME and ASQ. He has been a beta tester for a number of CAD systems, and at the U.S. federal level, has been certified by the U.S. Government Services Agency (GSA) as a subject matter expert on geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T), providing expert commentary in state, national and international judicial arenas.