7

Vision for the Future

A NEW INSTITUTE VISION

The intent of this chapter is to synthesize the committee’s analysis and findings and recommendations described in the earlier chapters of the report into a comprehensive vision for the future of the Manufacturing USA program. The vision for the program is completely covered in the recommendations described in Chapters 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 and listed in total in Chapter 8. The Manufacturing USA institutes have established important manufacturing technology development programs, supported significant advanced technology research and development (R&D), embarked on innovative workforce education efforts, and most importantly, supported the growth of nascent manufacturing sectors. They are now a proven model that needs expanding, providing a strong foundation to build the public–private partnerships that U.S. manufacturing requires. No other policy mechanism connects the key actors needed for advanced manufacturing technologic progress: industry small and large, engineering and science expertise, and links to state and local government economic development. But the institute program has been under-resourced, limiting its potential for driving the scale and pace of systematic change needed for U.S. manufacturing to reassume a leadership role. The committee finds that the current federal sponsorship model for Manufacturing USA institutes, particularly its reliance on 5-year award cycles and uniform cost-sharing expectations, does not meet the requirements for manufacturing scale-up, pilot-scale infrastructure, coalition-based technology development, and workforce development.

This reality presents an opportunity to reimagine the program so it can provide additional impact. The U.S. manufacturing challenge is now huge; the committee emphatically feels that now is the time for Manufacturing USA to “Go Big.”

Forming a New Governance Model: Nearly all leading competitor nations have advanced manufacturing strategies. Although the United States has in recent years moved manufacturing near the top of its policy agenda, it has no overall manufacturing

industrial strategy. It needs one. In support of that effort, Manufacturing USA needs an overarching strategy for its Manufacturing USA institutes. Institutes all have industry-informed technology roadmaps, but an overall strategy on top of these is now needed. Institutes cannot remain stove-piped; they need to be integrated into a more collaborative model, as discussed next. A new Interagency Council shared between the agencies supporting the institutes is now needed to undertake this strategy and develop the institute collaboration, complementing the executive direction that the Advanced Manufacturing National Program Office (AMNPO) can provide. AMNPO can operationalize the interagency strategy and support corresponding coordination across the institutes. AMNPO’s current collaborative efforts with the institutes on workforce education illustrates how this can work. A critical element to the continued and expanded success of the Manufacturing USA institutes is a shift from treating them as time-limited experiments to managing them as long-term national manufacturing assets. This includes aligning funding duration, staffing expectations, and co-investment models with the realities of manufacturing scale-up. Periodic review, adaptation, and where appropriate, repurposing or sunsetting of facilities should remain integral to governance, but within a framework that assumes robustness and resilience rather than rapid self-sufficiency. Additionally, cost-sharing requirements do not always reflect who benefits from scale-up activities. For deployment-oriented projects, industry and government end users capture the primary value, suggesting the need for greater emphasis on industry-led co-investment and reduced reliance on university financial matching. Membership and cost-sharing structures should be reviewed to ensure that total participation costs do not unintentionally suppress industry engagement while preserving institutes’ operational flexibility.

Reaching Small Manufacturers with New Technologies and Processes: Small and medium-sized manufacturers (SMMs) make up nearly half of U.S. manufacturing output. A core mission of the Manufacturing USA institutes is getting the United States to advanced manufacturing because U.S. manufacturing productivity has been stagnating for 15 years. The worst productivity problems are in SMMs that lack the know-how and access to technology to implement it. Institutes have lacked the resources for significant outreach to the SMM “Main Street” manufacturing firms. Institutes need to provide technology adoption and business development advisory services for SMMs, working with them to identify productivity and efficiency savings from the advanced manufacturing technologies that best fit their processes. These are advisory roles that manufacturing institute programs in other nations often play. Institutes can do this by working with the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP), which has the outreach connections with SMMs across the country. SMMs are not in a position to adopt stand-alone technologies; they want the robotics integrated with a digital production system and other new technologies and processes. So, institutes need to be networked so they can create integrated packages of their advanced technologies ready for firms to adopt.

Supporting Entrepreneurship in Manufacturing: New ideas become innovations in the U.S. system typically because new and small companies nurture them and bring them into implementation. This entry is vital for transforming manufacturing.

But venture capital (VC), the means that the United States developed to support entrepreneurship, is overwhelmingly focused on software and services, and simply does not fund hardtech (i.e., combination of hardware and software) areas where goods need to be manufactured. Hardtech development does not match the VC timetable, risk, and cost framework. Yet, there is much innovation in hardtech in both technologies and processes, but hardtech manufacturing firms do not have the resources to scale them. Entrepreneurial firms require technological know-how, technology, and equipment. Institutes can provide this to move them into the risk range so that financing can come into reach. This includes offering business development services to advise innovating firms on technology value, production, potential financing, and possible customers. Facilities where new technologies can get thorough testing, demonstration, and pilot production can also be important institute assets. International manufacturing institutes, trying to emulate an American entrepreneurship model applied to hardtech, often have strong programs in this area and provide a benchmark for what is possible.

Deepening Technology Transfer Capability: Institutes were designed to undertake late-stage technology development, in Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) 4 through 7. But introducing innovation into the U.S. system requires a more in-depth program reach. Institutes need to continue late-stage technology development but go further into technology demonstration and pilot production testing. This means reaching TRLs 4–9, effectively crossing over the so-called valley of death for technology development and deployment resulting in successful commercialization. To achieve this, including the outreach to Main Street SMMs and entrepreneurial firms discussed previously, means having much stronger in-house technical expertise and staff. It also means having the advanced equipment for pilot production facilities. Pilot facilities, workforce-intensive operations, and multistakeholder coalitions require longer time horizons to reach technical maturity and economic impact. Short-term funding cycles create barriers to recruiting and retaining skilled personnel, discourage ambitious infrastructure investments, and complicate sustained regional engagement. Work on innovation in foundational manufacturing technologies is also required. If manufacturing is viewed as a pyramid, the tip is advanced manufacturing technologies, but the base on which they must operate makes up the rest of the pyramid—fields such as casting, welding, machining, molding, and lithography. Innovation needs to enter these foundational technologies as well, integrating advanced manufacturing capabilities throughout. A foundational technology focus may be needed within many institutes. Deepening the technology transfer reach of institutes also means they will need to connect their technology roadmaps with R&D agencies, universities, and national labs who are undertaking research at TRLs 1–3. This will require outreach efforts with these agencies to ensure this linkage. A number of international institutes illustrate this broader reach from research through product applications. Also required will be technology transfer advisory and business development teams to work with companies on implementing new technologies emerging from the institutes, as noted previously.

Fostering Collaboration Across Agencies and Institutes: Manufacturing USA institutes were organized to foster particular advanced manufacturing technologies, from robotics to 3D printing to advanced composites. Yet their technologies need to

be presented in integrated packages if they are to be readily adopted by industry, as noted previously. And institute strengths can complement each other. A new level of both cross-agency and cross-institute collaboration is now needed. This will require cross-agency leadership, hence the new Interagency Council suggested previously, supported by the AMNPO. A new common fund for groups of institutes to compete for in implementing new programs can support this collaboration and networking. This new mechanism, in turn, can promote cross-institute efforts to develop integrated technology packages. For example, there are five institutes working in the digital technology space; technology development coordination among them could enhance efforts at each. Coordination with the MEP program is also needed to ensure that manufacturing technologies get into the hands of SMMs, including the integrated technology packages noted previously.

Supporting Regional Connections: A new level of regional engagement is also needed. All manufacturing is local—it happens not nationally but in areas and regions. Manufacturing USA institutes, to make an impact, must be engaged in the regional manufacturing economies in which they operate, in addition to fostering manufacturing technologies at the national level. For regional ecosystem engagement, institutes need to have substantial, sustained, and dedicated resources focused on ecosystem integration, business development, technology transfer, and scale-up. To further this, Manufacturing USA institutes should have an office for regional economic development accountable for establishing and executing the institute’s regional economic development strategy. These offices should identify business growth opportunities and investment partners, engage with state and regional economic development officers, support new business development and entrepreneurship, attracting regional as well as national investments to facilitate rapid scaling and dissemination of institute technologies. Regional engagement by institutes is also important for empowering SMMs for growth, as discussed previously.

Expanding Workforce Education: Advanced manufacturing will not happen unless there is a workforce ready to implement it. Recognizing this, workforce education has been a manufacturing institute priority, although hindered by limited resources. Institutes have developed a series of innovative workforce programs in advanced manufacturing curricula, online education, skill credentialing, education delivery, and broadening the manufacturing talent base, but each institute has only been able to adopt one or two such programs. Instead, multiple best-practice workforce programs developed at institutes need to be adopted at each institute to increase their impact. Institutes have recently initiated a common advanced manufacturing workforce education curriculum which all can share and apply. In addition, this needs to include common outcomes measurement and an industry-recognized credentialing system. It could also build in the new “technologist” curriculum to create a new manufacturing career path between engineers and technicians trained in adopting advanced manufacturing for the factory floor. As noted previously, an advisory services program to bring advanced manufacturing to SMMs is needed; a workforce upskilling program for these SMMs must accompany this effort. Apprenticeship programs offer a much stronger entry pathway for manufacturing careers; institutes should collaborate with companies and

community colleges on these programs, ensuring that advanced manufacturing is part of the training. In addition, institutes should develop an online Advanced Manufacturing Academy for workforce education. It would include online courses and programs, including simulations and VR and/or AR material, developed by Manufacturing USA institutes and their partners, as well as links from other verified sources, so it could become a true Manufacturing Academy with in-depth offerings widely available to community colleges, industry, technical high schools, and workers seeking to upskill.

These recommendations would create significant new thrusts in the Manufacturing USA program. They amount to a new and bigger vision for the program. U.S. manufacturing challenges are long term and structural. This means scrapping the notion that institutes will be self-sustaining in the short term and substituting the idea that they should be around for the long term, requiring ongoing federal investments for continuing 5-year terms at least equal to the level of their initial terms. Their programs need to be comparable in scope to those offered by their international institute competitors, as discussed in Chapter 2. The nation will need new structures for implementing advanced manufacturing, including a financing mechanism for scale-up and an overall manufacturing strategy, and expanded institutes need to be one of them.

These are highlights but, with the detailed recommendations in the report’s chapters, they represent a potentially transformative model for the Manufacturing USA institutes, if they are provided with the additional resources required. U.S. manufacturing is at a crossroads and is being systematically outcompeted. Unless the United States introduces advanced manufacturing technologies and processes at scale, the nation will lack the productivity edge to compete. Upgrading the Manufacturing USA institutes is a critical means to meet that goal.

THE WORK AHEAD

Much work must be done on each of the areas discussed in the first section—from advising SMMs, to expanding technology transfer, to developing an overall strategy, to reaching entrepreneurial firms, to networking technologies across institutes, to workforce education—to obtain maximum benefit from the institute model. There are clear advantages of focus and concentration to institutes specializing in specific manufacturing technologies, but, in particular, there remains a need for further coordination across institutes and the agencies that support them, as well for a manufacturing strategy behind this. A new governance model will be essential in implementing these proposals, creating a role for a new Interagency Council shared across the agencies supporting institutes, and supplementing the AMNPO which can take on the needed operational and executive function.