Authentise announced an important partnership with Kform to develop “DDNA”.
DDNA is an abbreviation for “digital DNA”, and it’s a comprehensive workflow process designed for manufacturing products in the defense industry.
Authentise has provided some of this for quite some time. Their services include advanced methods for engineering design collaboration, along with process management. Their Flows system provides a customizable, AI-powered workflow for additive manufacturing operations.
Kform focuses on manufacturing for the US defense industry in a variety of ways. One of them is “manufacturing as a service”. The service provides “on-demand access to rapid engineering, prototyping, and integration to support defense innovation”.
It seems that the two companies are combining these features together into “DDNA”. The result is a sophisticated workflow system that begins with only an idea, which is carried through the process by Authentise’s Flows system, ultimately being produced through Kform’s engineering and prototyping. Here’s what it looks like:
This allows projects to iterate through solution variants, yet keep track of everything, almost in real time, throughout the process.
The benefits would certainly be a dramatic decrease in project duration, and a lot fewer surprises along the way due to a more transparent data environment.
Authentise provided some examples of how DDNA could provide an advantage over conventional approaches:
| PEO/PM Uncertainty | How DDNA Solves It |
| We don’t know how many units we’ll need | Transparent TDPs enable scale or one-off builds without redesign or rework |
| Can this scale to 10,000+ units? | DTT documents the process and BOM at every step, enabling handoff or in-house scaling |
| What if we need to come back in 5 years? | Persistent digital thread preserves knowledge, tooling, and manufacturing context |
| Can I trust a new vendor to pick this up? | Standardized, machine-readable outputs reduce onboarding time and ensure fidelity |
Authentise has provided notable workflow capabilities for a long time, and some customers could certainly have used it to gain some of the advantages. However, by teaming with Kform, Authentise and DDNA provide many missing integrations that complete the entire manufacturing picture.
Currently, the DDNA project is fully operational, and it seems that they have at least a couple of projects working through it. However, they’re seeking to connect with DoD projects that are interested in piloting an entirely new way of collaborative manufacturing.
Via Authentise, Kform and DDNA
