Summary¹

The Manufacturing USA program, coordinated through the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Advanced Manufacturing National Program Office (AMNPO), was established in 2014 in an effort to create public–private partnerships designed to increase U.S. manufacturing competitiveness and promote a national manufacturing research and development (R&D) infrastructure.

The Manufacturing USA institutes, currently sponsored by the Departments of Commerce, Defense, and Energy have established important manufacturing technology development programs, supported significant advanced technology R&D, embarked on innovative workforce education efforts, and most importantly, supported the growth of nascent manufacturing sectors. In fiscal year 2023, the 17 institutes worked with 2,900+ member organizations, including 1,300 small manufacturers, across 50 states and Puerto Rico.^2,3 They facilitated the transition of innovative technologies into domestic manufacturing capabilities with over 920 applied R&D technology projects and engaged >150,000 individuals in workforce training opportunities. Collectively the institutes leveraged base federal funding of $160.4 million to attract over $379 million in additional funds from state, federal, and private sources. Critical to Manufacturing USA institutes’ success is active industry participation and engagement in defining industry roadmaps, prioritizing technology programs, and co-leading programs with institute members.

The report’s authoring committee (the committee) concludes that the Manufacturing USA institutes are now a proven model that needs expanding, providing a strong

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¹This Summary does not include references. Citations for the information presented herein are provided in the main text.

²This sentence was changed after release of the report to reflect that the institutes have membership in all 50 states. They have a physical presence in more than 14 states and several have multiple offices.

³This sentence was changed after release of the report to correct the fiscal year in which the data presented were collected.

foundation to build the public–private partnerships that U.S. manufacturing requires. The Manufacturing USA program is a critical policy mechanism that connects the key actors needed for advanced manufacturing: small and large industry, engineering and science expertise, state and local governments, and economic development stakeholders. In the past 15 years, however, competitor nations have developed systematic industrial policies, linking the economic power of the state with industry to pursue integrated technological advances and to gain production leadership for a host of critical technologies. By comparison, the lack of a U.S. Industrial Strategy or policy has led to under-resourcing of U.S. manufacturing programs such as the Manufacturing USA institute programs. This has resulted in the lack of scale-up investment, resulting in insufficient implementation of new advanced manufacturing technologies in the United States and is a primary cause of the declining rate of U.S. manufacturing productivity for the past 15 years as compared to increases for key competitor nations.

This reality presents an opportunity to reimagine the Manufacturing USA program as part of a larger industrial policy to create even greater impact on manufacturing in the United States. U.S. manufacturing is at a crossroads and is being systematically outcompeted. The committee concludes that now is the time for Manufacturing USA to “Go BIG.” Unless the United States accelerates its introduction of advanced manufacturing technologies and processes at scale, the nation will lack the productivity edge to compete. Upgrading the national asset of Manufacturing USA institutes is a critical means to meet that goal.

Conducted at the request of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, this report develops a new vision of where the program should be in the 2030–2035 time period.⁴ The report focuses on recommending ways to strengthen the program’s institute capabilities, cross-institute and cross-agency efforts, technology transfer and scale-up approaches, regional manufacturing ecosystems growth, and education and workforce development initiatives. Other key elements of the report are a review of federal sponsorship of institutes and international and domestic program comparisons and benchmarking.

BEST PRACTICES OF LEADING MANUFACTURING COUNTRIES

The committee considered a number of the approaches implemented by leading manufacturing nations in Europe and Asia to identify ways the Manufacturing USA institutes might evolve in the future. A significant difference in successful foreign models from Manufacturing USA is not in the details of institute design but in the broader context of these countries’ emphasis on industrial strategy, with manufacturing as a national priority. Underlying their industrial policy programs are financial systems that are aligned with government directives targeting manufacturing and patient-capital financing tools that are not available in the United States. Additionally, many competitor nations have a higher number of institute-like programs that are staffed and funded at a much larger scale than those in the United States, including China, which has approximately 45 Manufacturing Innovation Centers (MICs) with investments 10–100 times

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⁴This sentence was changed after release of the report to accurately reflect the study sponsor.

larger than Manufacturing USA’s. China spends some $500 billion annually in scale-up financing, and through various mechanisms about 4.6 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP). In contrast, the United States spends less than 1 percent of GDP on scale-up financing and little of that is specifically focused on manufacturing itself.

Another key difference is that competitor nations view manufacturing as a strategic sector that is crucial to their growth and economic and national security. For example, the Singapore Manufacturing 2030 vision is a strategic plan to grow manufacturing’s value-added by 50 percent by 2030. In China, the government identifies critical gaps in technology and lays out a 5-year roadmap with clear milestones and timelines and then invests accordingly. Although the United States publishes a National Strategy for Advanced Manufacturing and a National Security Strategy it does not currently have an accompanying industrial strategy.⁵

On the basis of its international benchmarking review, the committee found that Manufacturing USA–equivalent organizations only achieve large-scale technology adoption and national impact when embedded within national industrial strategies. Therefore, this report makes recommendations for a U.S. Industrial Strategy and the role of Manufacturing USA in that strategy.

Recommendation 2-1: In concert with the National Security Strategy, the National Economic Council, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Department of Commerce, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, and any other agencies supporting advanced manufacturing should convene and within the next 2 years issue a formal U.S. Industrial Strategy, integrating technology development, scale-up financing, standards leadership, trade, and workforce development to align resources and maximize the national impact of federal manufacturing programs, including Manufacturing USA institutes.

The report identifies several specific examples from foreign institutes that are useful models for Manufacturing USA institutes. For example, Belgium recognizes that infrastructure is key to its globally leading R&D center for microchip technology, IMEC (Interuniversitair Micro-Electronica Centrum VZW). Many U.S. companies and key suppliers to the U.S. semiconductor industry use IMEC as a critical R&D manufacturing resource. Through a distinctive R&D partnership model, corporate partners send staffers to IMEC to join teams undertaking the research.

The United Kingdom’s High Value Manufacturing (HVM) Catapult was designed to bridge the same gap seen in the United Kingdom as in the United States between early-stage publicly funded basic research and later commercialization. However, unlike the Manufacturing USA institutes, it has a large in-house engineering and scientific staff of over 3,500 employees. The Catapult centers also house the UK equivalent of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) Program and have multiple formal programs for collaborating with academics, including engineering PhD students.

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⁵This sentence was changed after release of the report to include the National Strategy for Advanced Manufacturing.

Germany’s Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft along with Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) are often seen as the world’s leading applied research organizations. With 75 institutes and more than 30,000 scientists, engineers, and other staff, the Fraunhofer’s 3.6-billion-euro budget comprises one-third from contract research, one-third from industry, and one-third from federal and state governments. However, in the broader context of the German economic model, this model is facing severe geopolitical challenges because of its reliance on imported energy (natural gas) and markets for exports. This demonstrates that institutes need to be understood in a broader context, including a country’s geopolitical strategy.

Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry oversees four national institutions focused on industrial science and technology development. This comprehensive ecosystem of support has contributed to Japan’s strong position in manufacturing. Likewise, the committee explored best practices from Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) Advanced Remanufacturing and Technology Centre. A*STAR is a public–private collaborative platform where industry leaders, research institutes, and government agencies co-develop and test advanced manufacturing solutions.

Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) provides an important example of how applied technology research institutes can be the basis for supporting the growth and launch of world-leading companies, such as the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), as well as educating government officials on future technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and potential implications for their national security and economy.

Critical Program Elements for U.S. Manufacturing Support

The U.S. financial model has led to manufacturing disinvestment. As one example, the size of the U.S. R&D tax credit lags that of other manufacturing nations. A 2024 Information Technology and Innovation Foundation analysis found that the United States ranked 31st out of 32 countries (28 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development nations and the 4 BRIC [Brazil, Russia, India, and China] economies) in their R&D tax credit support. Increasing the R&D tax credit could help incentivize the growth of domestic U.S. manufacturing (see Recommendation 2-2 and Overarching Conclusion 2-1).

Recommendation 2-2: By 2030, the U.S. Congress should take legislative action to define a globally competitive research and development tax credit for manufacturing processes and technologies and should actively explore expanding other tax reforms supporting manufacturing.

Other countries have pursued very different models for financing manufacturing, using multiple investment tools frequently missing in the United States, including subsidies, government-owned sovereign wealth equity funds, intellectual property–backed financing, and others (see Recommendation 2-3).

Recommendation 2-3: To address systemic capital gaps facing hardware-intensive technologies, the U.S. Congress, working with relevant agencies, should, within the next 2 years, authorize funding and set policy to create new federal manufacturing and financing mechanisms that include patient-capital funds, a sovereign wealth fund with a strategic focus on manufacturing, intellectual property–backed lending programs, coordinated public–private guidance funds, and other mechanisms. Manufacturing USA institutes should be formally integrated as advisors to manufacturing financing bodies, providing technical due diligence, scale-up roadmaps, readiness assessments, and first-of-a-kind validation data that de-risk future investments and inform investment decisions.

Moreover, a critical offering missing from the Manufacturing USA system versus international competitors is in-house business development (see Recommendation 5-1). Business development requires national-level, cross-institute solutions because it involves the broader scale-up and commercialization challenges facing U.S. technologies, as well as the specific challenges facing entrepreneurs. International programs also hold lessons for how the United States can close the productivity gap and improve the performance of small and medium-sized manufacturers (SMMs). A recurring feature of successful international manufacturing institutes surveyed by the committee was the capability for in-house prototyping and pilot production, as found at IMEC, the HVM Catapult, A*STAR, ITRI, and elsewhere. The underlying rationale for these shared physical facilities is that they are necessary to achieve economic competitiveness and help foster eventual commercial production of new technologies.

Additional best practices from international institutes include a focus on foundational technologies—broadly defined as technologies used for inputs in advanced technologies (see Recommendation 2-4), applied research conducted by an in-house engineering and scientific staff (see Recommendations 3-3 and 3-4), higher Technology Readiness Levels (see Recommendation 3-2), cross-disciplinary strategies (see Recommendations 4-3, 4-4 and 4-5), and a nationally aligned approach to standards (see Recommendation 2-5).

Recommendation 2-4: Manufacturing USA sponsoring agencies should immediately conduct a coordinated assessment to identify foundational manufacturing technologies in which U.S. capabilities have eroded or are in danger of erosion relative to those of international peers. Within 2 years, agencies should either (a) add foundational technology workstreams to existing institutes or (b) stand up new institutes where critical gaps exist.

Recommendation 2-5: The setting of standards is increasingly a geopolitical consideration; hence, within 2 years, Manufacturing USA institutes and the Advanced Manufacturing National Program Office should highlight the standards roadmaps that different institutes are generating, encourage the new National Institute of Standards and Technology–funded Standardization Center of Excellence to leverage these roadmaps, and obtain funding for actual standards writing as part of the institutes’ projects.

Opportunities also exist for collaboration between Manufacturing USA institutes and international institutes, particularly with those foreign institutes that have a presence in the United States and are working with U.S. companies and universities; however, collaborations with countries of concern as identified by Congress or the federal government should be excluded (see Recommendation 2-6).

Recommendation 2-6: With ongoing sponsoring agency review and approval, starting in 2026, Manufacturing USA institutes should pursue structured collaborations with leading international manufacturing institutes in areas where complementary strengths exist. These partnerships should focus on shared research, pilot-scale demonstration, standards development, and knowledge exchange that advances domestic technology transfer and scale-up.

VISION FOR THE FUTURE OF THE MANUFACTURING USA PROGRAM

Considering best practices and other information from competitor nations, the report evaluates and makes recommendations for the Manufacturing USA program regarding technology transfer, interagency and cross-network collaboration, regional economic development, and education and workforce development, which culminates in a Vision for the Future of the Manufacturing USA program.

Strengthening Technology Transfer

Strengthening technology transfer requires a clear understanding of what the term means within the Manufacturing USA context and how the institutes operationalize it through shared definitions, coordinated road-mapping, and convening a broad range of partners around common goals (see Recommendations 3-1 and 3-2). The diversity of stakeholders within the Manufacturing USA ecosystem defines both the opportunity and the complexity of technology transfer. These stakeholders include SMM and entrepreneurial firms, large multinational corporations, national laboratories and universities, federal agencies, and state and regional economic development agencies. Because the needs of these groups differ, maintaining flexible technology transfer mechanisms and adaptive governance structures in the Manufacturing USA network is essential.

Recommendation 3-1: Within a year, each Manufacturing USA institute should define “technology transfer” in its roadmap with measurable milestones. These should be updated annually and, where possible, aligned with existing Manufacturing USA performance metrics and reporting frameworks used by the Advanced Manufacturing National Program Office and sponsoring agencies.

Recommendation 3-2: Within a year, each Manufacturing USA institute should specify and clearly and consistently document its initial and target readiness levels (Technology Readiness Level [TRL], Manufacturing Readiness Level,

or Adoption Readiness Level, generally expressed as XRL) and demonstrate and document transitions to TRLs 7–9 using consistent reporting metrics coordinated through the Advanced Manufacturing National Program Office. These should be updated annually.

Additionally, institutes illustrate a variety of approaches to technology maturation. These approaches typically involve three interdependent activities including technical validation, pilot-scale demonstration, and business-case development. Furthermore, pilot-scale and scale-up facilities serve as the critical bridges between laboratory validation and industrial implementation (see Recommendation 3-3). The progression from validation to pilot-scale demonstration mirrors the capabilities embedded in international models reviewed by the committee and the workforce upskilling requirements needed for effective scale-up.

Recommendation 3-3: Manufacturing USA institutes, in conjunction with sponsoring-agency support, should begin immediate planning and initial implementation of pilot-scale and scale-up facilities, with defined milestones and early operational capability established by 2030 and full-scale operations, broadly accessible to small and medium–sized manufacturers, achieved by 2035. Implementation will require sustained federal funding and coordinated co-investment from industry and regional partners. Manufacturing USA institutes and such facilities should be supported through long-term, renewable federal sponsorship that reflects their role as enduring national manufacturing infrastructure rather than short-term projects, with periodic performance-based review rather than assumptions of self-sufficiency within a single award cycle.

Within the Manufacturing USA network, staffing structures and levels of in-house expertise vary depending on each institute’s mission, maturity, and technology domain. Institutes that maintain experienced, cross-functional teams tend to achieve faster and more reliable technology transitions. Skilled staff can identify manufacturability challenges early, anticipate barriers to adoption, and ensure that project outcomes align with industry needs. Furthermore, institutes’ coordinating function, whereby they convene members and partners through activities such as technical councils, road-mapping workshops, annual meetings, and thematic working groups, enables stakeholders to align with research priorities, coordinate investments, and accelerate the transition of innovations to industrial applications.

The best innovation institutes in the United States and internationally identify the technology transfer team and include them as part of the innovation process. Dedicated individuals, small and large system installation service companies and/or equipment/digital tool suppliers can serve in this role. The key is to identify who will serve as the technology transfer team for every institute project, which mechanisms will be used for transfer, and to have an active role for their participation during or near the conclusion of the projects. Equally important is to have dedicated institute staff in place to

enable effective technology transfer (see Recommendation 3-4), to establish metrics (see Recommendation 3-5), and to share best practices across Manufacturing USA (see Recommendation 3-6).

Recommendation 3-4: Within 2 years, Manufacturing USA institutes and the Advanced Manufacturing National Program Office should establish dedicated, well-staffed technology transfer teams and long-term staffing plans, leveraging existing federal technology transfer expertise and programs where appropriate.

Recommendation 3-5: Within 2 years, the Advanced Manufacturing National Program Office, with sponsoring agencies, should implement a standardized network-wide technology transfer metrics framework. If necessary, Congress should consider clarifying statutory reporting authorities to enable consistent performance metrics across all Manufacturing USA institutes.

Recommendation 3-6: Within a year, the Advanced Manufacturing National Program Office should establish a Technology Transfer Best Practices Office and formal cross-agency coordination mechanisms, building on lessons identified in previous National Academies and Government Accountability Office studies of Manufacturing USA institutes.

Inconsistent engagement models and unclear membership processes can limit the ability of smaller firms and new entrants to benefit fully from institute resources and collaborations. AMNPO leadership and coordination are critical for ensuring that lessons learned, best practices, and performance data are shared efficiently and systematically. Although AMNPO has made significant progress in coordinating the Manufacturing USA network, opportunities remain to expand its leadership role in aligning institute practices, facilitating data sharing, and disseminating best practices to accelerate technology transfer.

Strengthening Interagency and Cross-Network Collaboration

The wide-ranging technical waterfront covered by the current Manufacturing USA institutes offers a number of opportunities for enhanced interagency engagement and institute networking to spur innovation. More-robust national-level planning with detailed agency coordination on technology development would serve the nation better by concentrating resources and ensuring that all required stakeholders understand their roles in meeting strategy goals. Furthermore, cross-institute collaboration faces many of the same barriers to interagency engagement: differing mission focuses, administrative barriers, insufficient funding and staff, limited technical overlap, and differing maturity levels of the institutes as well as lack of incentivization. The creation of a directive body to guide strategy for integrating the institutes is needed (see Recommendation 4-1).

Recommendation 4-1: Within the next 2 years, Manufacturing USA institute-sponsoring agencies (currently the Departments of Commerce, Energy, and Defense) should create an Interagency Council as a formal, overarching directive body to set an integrated strategy for the Manufacturing USA institutes.⁶

Although the committee identified several best practices at various agencies and institutes, formal policies, processes, and incentives for interagency collaboration that could provide synergistic benefits with broader, national impact are not presently built into the Manufacturing USA network and are needed (see Recommendation 4-2).

Recommendation 4-2: The Advanced Manufacturing National Program Office, working with the Interagency Council and sponsoring agencies, should establish harmonized procurement, funds-transfer, intellectual-property, and data-management policies that enable seamless collaboration across agencies and institutes. This effort should be undertaken in consultation with the U.S. Manufacturing Innovation Council, as appropriate, and aim for harmonized policies and processes by 2030.

Limits to federal funding and adjacency of some technology areas covered by the institutes can create real or perceived competitive environments and inhibit collaboration across the Manufacturing USA network. Hence, the committee recommends a new initiative specifically focused on interagency and inter-institute collaboration to better promote innovation at the cross section of technologies (see Recommendation 4-3).

Recommendation 4-3: By 2030, Congress should appropriate funding on par with comparable international programs to the Manufacturing USA institutes to create an interagency initiative that would competitively award dedicated funds to incentivize cross-institute collaboration by addressing grand challenges in manufacturing. A project source selection team should comprise representatives from Manufacturing USA institute-sponsoring agencies (currently Departments of Commerce, Energy, and Defense) to ensure broad applicability across mission spaces and alignment with national manufacturing priorities.⁷

The current lack of cross-institute collaboration to develop integrated packages of advanced manufacturing technologies limits the ability of institutes to provide meaningful support to SMMs, a core Manufacturing USA constituency that has been slow in adopting advanced manufacturing. Moving forward, the network could consider partnering with MEPs and regional economic development groups to coordinate this development to ensure access by SMMs to these packages (see Recommendation 4-4).

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⁶This sentence was changed after release of the report to clarify that the recommendation applies to all institute sponsoring agencies.

⁷This recommendation was changed after the release of the report to clarify the budgetary reference and to clarify that the recommendation applies to all institute-sponsoring agencies.

Recommendation 4-4: The Advanced Manufacturing National Program Office should work with the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) program to create a process by 2030 that ensures that these integrated packages of advanced manufacturing technologies developed by institutes are disseminated to MEPs nationwide for implementation by small and medium-sized manufacturers.

There are tremendous technological needs, integration points, and standards that are pervasive across digital-native manufacturing technologies. To address these, an integrated strategy is needed across the Manufacturing USA network to chart a path forward (see Recommendation 4-5).

Recommendation 4-5: Within the next 2 years, the Advanced Manufacturing National Program Office, in coordination with the Interagency Council, should lead an interagency effort to develop a robust strategy specifically focused on digital manufacturing across the Manufacturing USA network.

Such a focus would help clarify roles and responsibilities across the digitally focused institutes, whose technologies are also largely horizontal (i.e., Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing, Collaborative Ecosystems for Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute, Cybersecurity Manufacturing Innovation Institute, and Manufacturing x Digital), to promote multidisciplinary innovation across the Manufacturing USA network, broaden considerations of cybersecurity across all the institutes, and address data management policies and standards across the network and industry.⁸ When considering cross-institute collaboration, it is recommended that institutes focused on horizontal, crosscutting technologies take the leading role.

Likewise, collaboration with federal laboratories, which have deep technical expertise, access to world-class facilities, and long-term R&D, is underutilized for a variety of reasons including cost recovery policies, administrative barriers, and inconsistent management and operations contract terms (see Recommendations 4-6 and 4-7).

Recommendation 4-6: Within the next 2 years, the Advanced Manufacturing National Program Office, in coordination with the Interagency Council, should create a multiprong strategy that enhances use of the Manufacturing USA network’s capabilities across federal and state government agencies and small and medium-sized manufacturers (SMMs), including coordination with the Manufacturing Extension Partnership network, and provides resources as to how agencies and SMMs can work with institutes to enhance interagency engagement.

Recommendation 4-7: Within the next 2 years, the Department of Energy (DOE) should work with national laboratories to explore modifying management and

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⁸This sentence was changed after release of the report to remove references to the SMART USA institute as a Manufacturing USA institute.

operations contractual agreements to be compatible with institute agreement terms and conditions. Additionally, DOE should make funding available to national laboratories for the specific purpose of collaborating with institutes on DOE priority projects.

Strengthening Regional Manufacturing Ecosystems

Although technology-based competition is global, ecosystems supporting manufacturing in the United States are inherently regional. To understand the Manufacturing USA institutes’ role in regional manufacturing ecosystems and economic development broadly, the committee examined the local focus of the Manufacturing USA institutes, the institutes as ecosystem integrators, and the institutes’ role in building the region’s advanced manufacturing skilled workforce, as well as its role connecting to state and other federal resources. At the regional level, new manufacturing technologies can be introduced and experimented with—providing the basis for moving toward national adoption at larger scale. The institutes’ role as ecosystem connector needs to be regional in focus because geographic distributions of capital equipment, infrastructure, know-how, and other assets are local; connecting assets requires local cooperative networks; and local stakeholder buy-in is needed to sustain the effort.

Institutes have the potential to serve as regional economic anchors that connect and build regional ecosystems; however, the narrow focus on technical missions, lack of strategic perspective, fragmented funding structures and absence of dedicated business development expertise prevent this. Furthermore, regional coalitions and pilot-scale facilities require time to mature, align stakeholders, and deliver economic impact. Funding structures that emphasize short-term awards and frequent re-competition undermine the ability of institutes to function as stable regional anchors. Renewable, longer-term sponsorship models will improve regional planning, workforce stability, and private-sector co-investment. (See Recommendation 5-1).

Recommendation 5-1: By 2030, Congress should provide sustained dedicated funding above current appropriations to establish business development offices at each Manufacturing USA institute to support commercialization, scale-up, and regional ecosystem integration for entrepreneurs and small and medium-sized manufacturers, working in coordination with regional economic development organizations and federal manufacturing programs.

Strengthening Education and Workforce Development

Education and workforce development is a core, but underfunded, mission of the Manufacturing USA institutes. Improved workforce education is vital to advanced manufacturing because it can enable a pipeline of workers with the skills to operate, maintain, and innovate with complex emerging manufacturing technologies in such areas as robotics, data analysis, digital production, and new materials. The committee found that the most widely cited example of interagency engagement by both agencies and institute directors was in the area of education and workforce development due to its

status as a core mission, being noncompetitive, and its ease of transitioning approaches across technologies. A number of best practices have been developed that create potential models for more broad-based approaches across the institutes. Recognizing this, the committee makes the following recommendations:

Recommendation 6-1: By 2030, Manufacturing USA institutes should adopt a broad range of programs to address workforce education needs in advanced manufacturing, based on best-practice programs developed by various institutes, including to develop advanced manufacturing curricula, develop online education, create advanced manufacturing credentials, support workforce education delivery, collaborate across institutes, and broaden the manufacturing talent base. These broadened programs should be executed in collaboration with regional stakeholders, such as area companies and education institutions, and should include efforts to reach small manufacturers with workforce education advisory services and training programs.

Recommendation 6-2: Within approximately 2 years, agencies sponsoring the Manufacturing USA institutes working with the Advanced Manufacturing National Program Office should develop a unified advanced manufacturing curriculum available online that combines and unifies curricula and materials developed by institutes along with successful education and workforce development programs. Supporting this, they should develop an outcomes measurement and a credentialing system coordinated with industry and aligned with Manufacturing USA workforce metrics and programs.

Even with some of these best practices in place, education, as well as attracting and retaining manufacturing talent, remains a challenge. Skilled talent is a particular problem for SMMs considering adopting advanced manufacturing and in turn contributes to low manufacturing productivity rates compared to those of larger firms. To address this gap, the committee recommends implementation of Recommendations 6-3 and 6-4.

Recommendation 6-3: By 2030, Manufacturing USA institutes should implement new technologist curricula, such as the Department of Defense’s Industrial Base and Sustainment–funded pilot projects. They should work toward implementing it in cooperation with regional partners in industry and community colleges and, if deemed appropriate, incorporate it into the recommended Manufacturing Academy.⁹

Recommendation 6-4: The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Domestic Policy Council should convene a cross-agency workforce education project and implement within the next 2 years a strategy to coordinate efforts across agencies to enhance Manufacturing USA institute

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⁹This recommendation was changed after release of the report to accurately reflect how programs are implemented.

and other agency manufacturing education programs. This would include relevant programs at the Manufacturing institute-sponsoring agencies (currently Departments of Commerce, Energy, and Defense), as well as at the Departments of Labor and Education and the National Science Foundation’s Advanced Technological Education Program.¹⁰

Advanced manufacturing workforce education faces major challenges at both technical and professional levels.

For the technical manufacturing workforce, there is a major “work–learn” barrier because of the following: schools and jobs are disconnected; community colleges lack resources; most vocational education ended in the 1970s and 1980s; apprenticeships are largely missing (see Recommendation 6-5); labor markets lack an efficient information system; the Departments of Labor and Education lack programs to upskill incumbent workers; curricula in advanced manufacturing skills are limited; small manufacturers lack the skilled talent for advanced manufacturing; online workforce education is limited; and technical manufacturing workers lack solid career paths that would encourage entry.

Recommendation 6-5: Given the need for apprenticeships in manufacturing, and especially to enable the scale-up of advanced manufacturing, within the next 2 years, Manufacturing USA institutes should become active promoters and enablers of manufacturing apprenticeships as part of their regional engagements.

Equally, for engineering professionals in manufacturing, the United States has long separated engineers doing design from factory floors. Engineering curricula contain little manufacturing content, and there is limited online professional-level courseware in advanced manufacturing. To address these challenges, the committee makes the following Recommendation 6-6:

Recommendation 6-6: A collaboration across Manufacturing USA institutes enabled by the proposed Interagency Council and the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Advanced Manufacturing National Program Office should build out a robust online Manufacturing Academy portal of advanced manufacturing online courses and programs. By 2030, the online portal should include simulations, virtual reality, and augmented reality material, developed by Manufacturing USA institutes. The online portal should include materials and links from other verified sources, as well as new material.

Together, these critical elements and recommendations support a Vision for the Future of the Manufacturing USA Program in 2030 and 2035. It describes a new vision and the work ahead for the institutes to “go bigger” by reaching SMMs with new

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¹⁰This sentence was changed after release of the report to clarify that the recommendation applies to all institute-sponsoring agencies.

technologies and processes, supporting entrepreneurship in manufacturing, deepening technology transfer capability, forming a new governance model, supporting regional connections, fostering collaboration across agencies and institutes, and expanding workforce education.