“Manufacturing is the engine of society, and it’s the backbone of sturdy, resilient economies,” says John Hart, head of MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering (MechE) and school co-director of the MIT Initiative for Recent Manufacturing (INM). “With manufacturing a energetic topic in today’s news, there’s a renewed appreciation and understanding of the importance of producing to innovation, to economic and national security, and to every day lives.”
Launched this May, INM will “help create a metamorphosis of producing through recent technology, through development of talent, and thru an understanding of learn how to scale manufacturing in a way that permits imparts higher productivity and resilience, drives adoption of recent technologies, and creates good jobs,” Hart says.
INM is one in every of MIT’s strategic initiatives and builds on the successful three-year-old Manufacturing@MIT program. “It’s a recognition by MIT that manufacturing is an Institute-wide theme and an Institute-wide priority, and that manufacturing connects faculty and students across campus,” says Hart. Alongside Hart, INM’s faculty co-directors are Institute Professor Suzanne Berger and Chris Love, professor of chemical engineering.
The initiative is pursuing 4 foremost themes: reimagining manufacturing technologies and systems, elevating the productivity and human experience of producing, scaling up recent manufacturing, and remodeling the manufacturing base.
Breaking manufacturing barriers for firms
Amgen, Autodesk, Flex, GE Vernova, PTC, Sanofi, and Siemens are founding members of INM’s industry consortium. These industry partners will work closely with MIT faculty, researchers, and students across many points of manufacturing-related research, each in broad-scale initiatives and particularly areas of shared interests. Membership requires a minimum three-year commitment of $500,000 a yr to manufacturing-related activities at MIT, including the INM membership fee of $275,000 per yr, which supports several core activities that engage the industry members.
One major thrust for INM industry collaboration is the deployment and adoption of AI and automation in manufacturing. This effort will include seed research projects at MIT, collaborative case studies, and shared strategy development.
INM also offers firms participation within the MIT-wide Recent Manufacturing Research effort, which is studying the trajectories of specific manufacturing industries and examining cross-cutting themes reminiscent of technology and financing.
Moreover, INM will consider education for all professions in manufacturing, with alliances bringing together corporations, community colleges, government agencies, and other partners. “We’ll scale our curriculum to broader audiences, from aspiring manufacturing employees and aspiring production line supervisors all the way in which as much as engineers and executives,” says Hart.
In workforce training, INM will collaborate with firms broadly to assist understand the challenges and frame its overall workforce agenda, and with individual firms on specific challenges, reminiscent of acquiring suitably prepared employees for a brand new factory.
Importantly, industry partners can even engage directly with students. Founding member Flex, for example, hosted MIT researchers and students on the Flex Institute of Technology in Sorocaba, Brazil, developing recent solutions for electronics manufacturing.
“History shows that it is advisable innovate in manufacturing alongside the innovation in products,” Hart comments. “At MIT, as more students take classes in manufacturing, they’ll think more about key manufacturing issues as they determine what research problems they need to resolve, or what decisions they make as they prototype their devices. The identical is true for industry — firms that operate on the frontier of producing, whether through internal capabilities or their supply chains, are positioned to be on the frontier of product innovation and overall growth.”
“We’ll have a chance to bring manufacturing upstream to the early stage of research, designing recent processes and recent devices with scalability in mind,” he says.
Moreover, MIT expects to open recent manufacturing-related labs and to further broaden cooperation with industry at existing shared facilities, reminiscent of MIT.nano. Hart says that facilities can even invite tighter collaborations with corporations — not only providing advanced equipment, but working jointly on, say, recent technologies for weaving textiles, or speeding up battery manufacturing.
Homing in on the USA
INM is a worldwide project that brings a selected concentrate on the USA, which stays the world’s second-largest manufacturing economy, but has suffered a big decline in manufacturing employment and innovation.
One key to reversing this trend and reinvigorating the U.S. manufacturing base is advocacy for manufacturing’s critical role in society and the profession opportunities it offers.
“Nobody really disputes the importance of producing,” Hart says. “But we’d like to raise interest in manufacturing as a rewarding profession, from the production employees to manufacturing engineers and leaders, through advocacy, teaching programs, and buy-in from industry, government, and academia.”
MIT is in a singular position to convene industry, academic, and government stakeholders in manufacturing to work together on this vital issue, he points out.
Furthermore, in times of radical and rapid changes in manufacturing, “we’d like to concentrate on deploying recent technologies into factories and provide chains,” Hart says. “Technology will not be all the solution, but for the U.S. to expand our manufacturing base, we’d like to do it with technology as a key enabler, embracing firms of all sizes, including small and medium enterprises.”
“As AI becomes more capable, and automation becomes more flexible and more available, these are key constructing blocks upon which you’ll be able to address manufacturing challenges,” he says. “AI and automation offer recent accelerated ways to develop, deploy, and monitor production processes, which present an enormous opportunity and, in some cases, a necessity.”
“While manufacturing is at all times a mix of old technology, recent technology, established practice, and recent ways of pondering, digital technology gives manufacturers a chance to leapfrog competitors,” Hart says. “That’s very, very powerful for the U.S. and any company, or country, that goals to create differentiated capabilities.”
Fortunately, lately, investors have increasingly bought into recent manufacturing in the USA. “They see the chance to re-industrialize, to construct the factories and production systems of the long run,” Hart says.
“That said, constructing recent manufacturing is capital-intensive, and takes time,” he adds. “In order that’s one other area where it’s essential to convene stakeholders and to take into consideration how startups and growth-stage firms construct their capital portfolios, how large industry can support an ecosystem of small businesses and young firms, and learn how to develop talent to support those growing firms.”
All these concerns and opportunities within the manufacturing ecosystem play to MIT’s strengths. “MIT’s DNA of cross-disciplinary collaboration and dealing with industry can allow us to create numerous impact,” Hart emphasizes. “We are able to understand the sensible challenges. We may also explore breakthrough ideas in research and cultivate successful outcomes, all of the approach to recent firms and partnerships. Sometimes those are seen as disparate approaches, but we prefer to bring them together.”