Options for a National Plan for Smart Manufacturing (2024)
Chapter: 6 Conclusion
6
Conclusion
The recommendations in this report aggressively address accelerating the breadth and pace of smart manufacturing adoption industry-wide to access significant untapped benefits and opportunities for company market share, U.S. manufacturing global leadership, U.S. supply chain resilience, and environmental sustainability impact. In Chapters 2, 3, and 4, there are detailed recommendations and options expressed to provide understanding of actionable items, how they group together, and estimated timelines. Importantly, the committee emphasizes that executing these recommendations within manufacturing’s current business and market structure is insufficient, if not ineffective, without a topmost recommendation to execute for disruption. How manufacturing is done today will not get the industry where it wants to go tomorrow.
Additionally, smart manufacturing is the utilization of next-generation technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, high-speed connectivity, advanced data analytics, and hard and soft automation that augments the human being in the workforce. To compete in a global market, the United States would benefit from continuously enhancing the productivity of its workforce to provide a better value proposition for utilizing the U.S. workforce than any other on the globe. What this means is that the workforce needs to be worth the higher rate that they are paid. Companies can go to other countries with lower labor rates; however, they will not see the productivity, flexibility, and capability that they will find here in the United States. That coupled with producing locally and avoiding long and complex international supply chains will provide a significant enticement to expand and reshore manufacturing operations in the United States.
Upgrading the U.S. manufacturing workforce and ecosystem will also provide next-generation capabilities in manufacturing. This will allow the United States to leapfrog its competition in a variety of manners. First, investing in smart manufacturing will ensure that the United States can deploy state-of-the-art capabilities in all manufacturing sectors including transportation, aerospace, agriculture and food, petrochemical, and energy. Many of these sectors are undergoing major changes such as the rise of renewable energy sources (e.g., wind and solar) or the transition from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles. A manufacturing ecosystem with strong roots in smart manufacturing, including workforce, technology deployment, and a cybersecure infrastructure (including classical and next generation infrastructures such as data and connectivity), will enable the United States to stay at the forefront of manufacturing in critical areas to the nation’s economy and security. The competition is and will invest in this area, and if the United States does not, it will lose its status as a leading manufacturing nation in the high-technology areas.
The proposed solutions in this report focus on technology development as well as a means by which that technology can be deployed to the U.S. industrial base at large. Programs will have to be developed to ensure that smart manufacturing is integrated not only into large multinational companies but also into the small and medium-sized manufacturers (SMMs). Furthermore, recommendations targeting certification and training provide a means to ensure that technology will be transitioned to the workforce, and a training and educational network will be established that will provide new highly trained personnel to the workforce as well as keep the skill set of the current workforce continuously updated to the state of the art.
Smart manufacturing is extensively horizontal, cross-industry, and crosscutting, and will require factory, industry, and government strategies. Manufacturing today is an industry organized for vertical optimization, transactional interaction, and data protectionism and isolation, not interoperability. Resources are architected, and people are trained for compartmentalization and managing to boundaries, while smart manufacturing and data-centered modeling (AI, physics-based, digital twins, etc.) draw power from increasing the flow and meaningfully scaled use of data and orchestrated modeling throughout the industry. Compartmentalized resources today are fragmented with respect to digitalization, without low-cost pathways, business models, and infrastructure with which to interconnect and tap into the cross-industry nature of smart manufacturing. There are no market drivers to support SMMs with smart manufacturing technologies or to disrupt the growing complexity of integrating data systems based on legacy compartmentalized data and software approaches. There are real business needs to think differently about how to aggregate and scale the use of data.
The execution strategy therefore needs to inspire change that disrupts current industry practice, stimulates new market drivers, motivates new ways of thinking about data, and opens new and faster ways of addressing environmental sustainability that are aligned with new opportunities for global manufacturing leadership and market share. To emphasize and reflect this strategy, over three chapters, this report has grouped recommendations into the following three primary levers for disruption:
- Build a cyber-ready, data-savvy workforce.
- Build a Cyber Interstate for cross-industry tools, platforms, connectedness, rules of the road, and industry-wide adoption of smart manufacturing with secure, scaled, and managed exchange of data and orchestrated modeling.
- Commit to smart manufacturing as a U.S. priority for addressing environmental sustainability.
The report has emphasized the cyber-ready, data-savvy workforce as the leading requirement but one that goes hand in hand with the commitment to the Cyber Interstate so that the workforce, tools, and data infrastructure are aligned for benefit and built at pace together. Environmental sustainability is a national objective that is a smart manufacturing outcome that drives government investment for government objectives. But now the government investment and objectives also are aligned to drive manufacturing’s investment and objectives for “manufacturing sustainability.” Once under way, economic gain must be an always-present driver and become the primary investment fuel for accelerating the breadth and pace of adoption.
There is a significant opportunity to empower the Manufacturing USA institutes to integrate and orchestrate these long-haul cultural, business, and market changes together; align agendas; and take action on categorized recommendations that lend themselves to the near-term and timeline-based benefits. The public–private partnership institute structure is equipped to bring industry, academia, and government together in tackling how to align sustainability, global competitiveness, national security, and business economic goals—inventing next-generation manufacturing, not just further optimizing a legacy structure. The Manufacturing USA institutes also have a track record with developing industry business and technology integration and implementation projects and industry-wide tools, training, and technology going well beyond in-factory technology projects. Use of the Manufacturing USA institutes to take on near-term recommendations while planning and orchestrating disruption investment and initiatives through the governance of public–private partnerships leverages a massive investment in relationship and trust building and the accepted process that is in place.
SUMMARY LIST OF REPORT RECOMMENDATIONS
Chapter 2 Recommendations
Recommendation: Within 1–3 years, all existing or new government-led smart manufacturing education activities should be assessed for their capacity to engage with stakeholder groups, given the current lack of coordination.
Recommendation: The Department of Education and local stakeholder groups and communities should provide financial and other incentives to instructors including at community colleges to help them keep abreast of new developments in smart manufacturing.
Key Recommendation: A national plan for smart manufacturing should offer a holistic, boldly orchestrated national approach to solve workforce challenges and leverage, support, and amplify existing workforce development infrastructures, investments, and systems. An effective initiative could take the form of an independent nongovernmental institute or organization, such as a National Academy for Smart Manufacturing Education and Training, that is chartered to drive workforce-related initiatives and support smart manufacturing education and training in the United States.
Recommendation: Several additional steps could be taken to address workforce training and education challenges as well as to increase the number of qualified workers with credentials in smart manufacturing and the quality of these credential-granting programs. The national plan for smart manufacturing could pursue several options including the following:
- Provide high schools, community colleges, and universities with monies to finance sabbaticals for their instructors for training in the latest developments in smart manufacturing.
- Provide need-based financial support for both new and returning students enrolled in smart manufacturing credentialing and upskilling programs.
- Provide grants to high schools and community colleges for smart manufacturing training laboratories.
- Fund the existing manufacturing institutes and the National Academy for Smart Manufacturing Education and Training workforce development programs to develop leverageable curricula as a national repository of learning materials for industry, high school, community college, university, adult education, and independent training in smart manufacturing for future and incumbent workers.
Recommendation: The Department of Defense, Department of Commerce, Department of Energy, Department of Labor, Department of Education, and National Science Foundation, in conjunction with industry and state and local governments, should invest significant resources in new initiatives that will address skills shortages and build an internationally competitive manufacturing workforce—from entry-level positions on factory floors to college- and PhD-level engineers trained in smart manufacturing.
Recommendation: The National Academy for Smart Manufacturing Education and Training should set aside resources to commission a rigorous evaluation of the effectiveness of each program. While it may be appropriate to vary methodology across program evaluations, it is essential to design such evaluations at the start of program implementation (not after the fact) to ensure that the appropriate longitudinal data from treatment and control groups are collected.
Recommendation: In order to provide direct investment and support for smart manufacturing skills development, the national plan for smart manufacturing could adopt one or more of the following initiatives:
- Option: Set up fellowship programs, traineeships, or E-corps (similar to the National Science Foundation’s [NSF’s] Innovation Corps [NSF I-Corps]) but for education) in smart manufacturing for individuals that emphasize the social and ethical implications, including privacy concerns, data ownership, and cybersecurity risks, for a responsible adoption of smart manufacturing technologies. Similarly, invest in much needed infrastructure (i.e., community-oriented equipment and facilities) and train the workforce of the future (Departments of Commerce, Labor, and Education; NSF).
- Option: Improve and modify existing continuing education programs (e.g., National Direct Student Loans could be forgiven if a student pursues a manufacturing profession) to provide funding for microcourses and microcredentialing opportunities, allowing subsidized access to the evolving world of educational offerings. Career and technical education and vocational education needs to include smart manufacturing.
- Option: Create a career exploration requirement in middle school with a federal mandate that covers it; the content delivered should be flexible in terms of career pathways.
- Option: Offer tax incentives (i.e., via extension of the advanced manufacturing credits) for corporations and grants for small and medium-sized businesses funding for job training and education.
- Option: Support wraparound services for students and workers with mentoring and implementation services to assist those pursuing entry-level positions with the requisite support systems (e.g., childcare, travel, connections for scholarships).
Chapter 3 Recommendations
Key Recommendation: A national plan for smart manufacturing should urgently support the establishment of national transformative data infrastructure, tools, and mechanisms to assist with (1) cultivating, selectively sharing, and securing the use of data in real time and at scale; and (2) sharing best practices to promote industry-wide technical data standards. Such infrastructure, developed as a national capability, could take the form of a secure digital network that facilitates the flow of data with controlled and credentialed access, such as a Cyber Interstate. It should be planned and coordinated with companies, government agencies, associations and consortia, and academic stakeholders.
Key Recommendation: The Department of Energy in partnership with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Department of Defense, and manufacturing institutes should establish manufacturing CASE (Calibration, Autonomy, Security, Evaluation) Data Banks (CASE-DB) with the next generation of secure manufacturing architectures.
Key Recommendation: Smart manufacturing is multifaceted, and technologies developed in one specialty area most likely will not be suited for other applications. The Department of Energy and other federal agencies should fund programs and consortia that develop technologies at the intersections of critical technologies (e.g., human–artificial intelligence [AI] co-piloting, sensing, AI/machine learning, platform technologies, digital twins, and uncertainty quantification), unit manufacturing processes (e.g., casting, forming, molding, subtractive, additive, and joining), and industry sectors (e.g., semiconductor, aerospace, automotive, biomedical, and agriculture).
Chapter 4 Recommendations
Key Recommendation: Funded by the Department of Energy, in consultation with other relevant federal departments and agencies, a framework should be developed to quantify the broader sustainability benefits of implementing secure smart manufacturing (considering three pillars: environment, economy, and society) as well as industry-wide sustainability metrics.
Recommendation: Industry associations and consortia should fund pilot programs that create case studies for data sharing and intellectual property retention and protection to be used by small and medium-sized enterprises with nascent efforts in smart manufacturing.
Recommendation: Agencies, such as the Department of Energy, with interests in smart manufacturing should support new programs to provide funding and resources for small-to-medium manufacturers to update and secure their current operations and equipment by deploying smart manufacturing technologies. Potential options include, but are not limited to, tax credits and loan guarantees.
Recommendation: Agencies, such as the Department of Energy, in collaboration with universities and consortia with interests in smart manufacturing should support the development of new programs to provide easy access to expertise and facilities and to aid in the design and development of prototype systems and processes design and development. Potential options include (1) developing shared smart manufacturing facilities at universities, national laboratories, and manufacturing institutes; and (2) creating new outreach programs at the Manufacturing Extension Partnership to provide access to smart manufacturing expertise.
Recommendation: The Manufacturing Extension Partnership program, the Industrial Assessment Centers, and the Manufacturing USA institutes should be empowered and funded by government agencies, such as the Department of Energy, to work together on smart manufacturing capabilities for small-to-medium manufacturers (SMMs). These same partnerships need to be empowered to work with the SMMs in sharing data and offering expertise.
Recommendation: Threaded through all of these conclusions and recommendations is the need for federal agencies to better coordinate resources, agendas, and operating expectations. Greater financial, administrative, and priority coordination among the agencies to take advantage of existing investments will go a long way. But there is a need to now consider strategic national alignment across agencies. Several of the recommendations in this report are national in scale and are simply not possible without strategic coordination among the federal agencies together with joint agreements on implementation. This leads to the important recommendation of forming a subcommittee of the federal agencies—for example, through the National Science and Technology Council—with the charge and support to address
and implement cross-agency strategic, financial, and administrative coordination in a timely manner. This should be supported by appropriate budget and resource allocations.
