The Role of Advanced Manufacturing in Innovation

Here is my testimony for "Make it in America: What’s Next?" panel organized by Congressman Steny Hoyer

1. The ability to innovate will increasingly depend on the presence of a vibrant manufacturing ecosystem.

In today’s global economy, the ability to innovate is crucial to creating new business opportunities and maintaining a healthy economy. The presence of a local manufacturing ecosystem is needed to maintain the US leadership in innovation and creating new industries. Designers need to understand how the manufacturing processes work to realize innovative products that are affordable and compete well globally. This understanding is difficult to achieve if the designers unable to closely interact with manufacturing engineers and experience manufacturing first hand. In today’s fast-paced world, designers need rapid access to manufacturing processes to try many different concepts to select the winner. Often the understanding of innovations in manufacturing processes can also lead to innovations in products. A nation cannot simply hope to continue to be at the forefront of innovations without having a healthy manufacturing infrastructure. There are many nations that are aggressively competing with the US in the innovation arena. The US has done remarkably well in leading the world in providing ground-breaking innovations. Many of these innovations came from companies located in Maryland. But the past performance alone cannot ensure continued future success. The US should make every effort to ensure that it maintains a healthy manufacturing sector.

2. A healthy manufacturing sector provides well-paying jobs and is crucial to the national security.

In addition to enabling innovation, a healthy manufacturing sector is necessary to provide well-paying jobs and maintaining favorable employment numbers. High-value manufacturing also creates export opportunities and helps with the trade balance. A healthy manufacturing sector is also needed to ensure national security. We should never be in a position to import parts that are critical to national security. In today’s era of constant cyber threats, we do not want to become vulnerable by importing parts that might have intentionally placed malware or serious security loopholes. Not doing so will simply give an opportunity to our adversaries to neutralize our technological superiority.

3. Recent advances in manufacturing are creating new opportunities for the US in high-value manufacturing.

The field of manufacturing is currently undergoing major changes. 3D printing is expected to revolutionize manufacturing. It enables designers to realize complex designs rapidly. The cost of 3D printers is dropping dramatically. This means that people who did not have access to manufacturing until now can buy 3D printers and make things themselves. Recent advances in robotics are reducing the need for manual labor and hence making manufacturing economically viable in high-wage rate regions. The Internet of Things technology is expected to lead to smart manufacturing. Companies need to offer high quality products of increasing complexity at a faster pace with lower prices. This makes manufacturing very challenging. Smart manufacturing technologies are expected to significantly improve manufacturing efficiency and productivity. These technologies can also be used to reduce negative environmental impact of manufacturing. Recent advances in materials such as digital materials, multifunctional materials, metamaterials, and programmable materials are expected to enable a new generation of products. Almost all of these advances originated in the US. We should leverage these advanced manufacturing technologies to grow manufacturing industry in the US and Maryland.

4. Advanced manufacturing will require a workforce with strong STEM background.

Advanced manufacturing requires a different kind of workforce. Rather than relying on manual skills, people are expected to work with sophisticated machines. The nature of the products is also expected to change rapidly. This requires a very different kind of workforce. Training the workforce for the next generation manufacturing technologies will require a strong emphasis on STEM subjects and a new pedagogical approach. Schools, colleges, and universities will need new labs with access to advanced manufacturing technologies. A closer partnership with industry will also be needed to ensure that the workforce training programs match the skills required by the industry. The University of Maryland is developing new labs and courses in the Advanced Manufacturing area to support Maryland-based businesses.

5. Recent technological advances are expected to create new business opportunities.

New markets and industries will be created around several emerging areas such as unmanned systems, driverless cars, electric vehicles, next generation batteries, intelligent prosthetic devices, smart appliances, and personalized medicine. Many of these technologies were developed in the US. The US should strive to become the leading world manufacturer and exporter of products in these emerging areas. The state of Maryland should lead the nation by demonstrating how to leverage recent innovations to launch new manufacturing-based businesses.

Eight Innovations that are changing the manufacturing industry

I spent the summer of 1987 being an intern at a leading truck manufacturing factory in India. Every day as I walked around the factory floor, I saw machines giving “birth” to new parts. This was the beginning of my fascination with manufacturing and automation technologies.

The field of manufacturing gives humans the capability to make things that do not exist in the natural world. All comforts of the modern life can be directly or indirectly attributed to manufacturing. I believe that automation augments human capabilities and allows us to realize more with less human effort and so the standard of living rises for everyone.

This post is focused on the manufacturing innovations in the last twenty five years and their impact. I would like to set the stage by first reviewing six notable limitations and constraints that existed in late eighties despite remarkable advances in manufacturing enabled by the use of robots, numerically controlled machines, and computers.

First, it took days to program robots and machines. It took even longer to debug those programs to make sure that they did not cause any accidental damage. Going from engineering drawings to physical parts took weeks if not months.

Second, if you were an inventor with a brilliant idea living in a small town, you had to physically travel to the nearest city that had an advanced manufacturing facility. So the access to the advanced manufacturing was limited.

Third, you would not use words “affordable” and “advanced manufacturing” in the same sentence unless you were telling a joke. The access to the advanced manufacturing required major capital investments.

Fourth, advanced manufacturing consumed a lot of energy and generated unwanted emissions and waste.

Fifth, your material choices were limited unless you had a multi-million dollar development budget. You simply could not open a catalog and find lightweight, thermally conducting, and electrically insulating material.

Finally, operating an advanced manufacturing facility required significant human expertise. For example, robots and machines had to be manually programmed using low level languages. You needed experienced operators to “babysit” machines and robots and be ready to hit emergency button if things went wrong.

The above described limitations and constraints had significant impact on the innovation process. It impacted who could participate in it, what kind of innovation could be realized, how long it would take to bring a new innovation to the market, and how much the resulting products would cost.

Many manufacturing innovations have emerged in the last twenty five years to address the above described constraints and limitations. The following eight, in no particular order, are my personal favorites:

1. 3D Printing: 3D printing (AKA additive manufacturing) allows converting 3D CAD models into physical parts automatically. It does not use part-specific tooling or setup. It can make very complex shapes and can be operated with minimal expertise. Designers are now able to access 3D printing processes over the Internet. Please see an earlier post for more details on 3D printing.
    
2. Second Generation Industrial Robots: The use of the first generation industrial robots was confined to simple tasks (e.g., welding, painting) on production lines. They were fixed in a cage and isolated from human workers to prevent injuries. Recent advances in robotics are fundamentally changing these norms. Mobile manipulators can go to workpieces to work on them. Dexterous hands enable robots to work on complex tasks. Robots can program themselves by observing human demonstrations (e.g., Baxter from Rethink Robotics). Safe Robots with novel safety features have been developed that enable human and robot collaboration on manufacturing tasks. Please see another post for more details on these developments.
    
3. Low Cost Laser Cutters: One can get a brand new laser cutter for less than $10K and can use it to go from a CAD model to a physical part in a matter of minutes for reasonably complex geometries. Currently this technology is limited to mainly cutting two-dimensional shapes. I would also like to mention waterjet cutters that can cut a wide variety of materials and can easily cut through several inches thick steel. Both of these processes are quite accurate, extremely simple to use, and can be setup in less time than perhaps what will take you to read this post. Please see another post for more details on this development.
    
4. Micro Manufacturing: Advances in manufacturing at small scale, especially micro molding and silicon micro machining have produced sensors and devices that are low-cost, small in size, energy efficient, and fast. These have helped in reducing the cost of manufacturing equipment and also led to many new products.
    
5. Internet-Based Manufacturing Services: Today, if you have Internet connection, you have access to manufacturing facilities. You can directly order parts from manufacturers (e.g., www.protomold.com), let a broker find you a manufacturer (e.g., www.mfg.com), work with a representative for manufacturers (e.g., www.quickparts.com) on the Internet. Please see another post for more details on these developments.
    
6. Desktop Virtual Manufacturing: The cost of computer-aided design and manufacturing has come down dramatically and these software tools can be used to speed up the manufacturing plan generation and simulate the manufacturing system before making the part. We have reached a point where we no longer need to do physical dry runs for programs and “babysit” machines and robots.
    
7. Green Manufacturing: Recent advances in manufacturing have significantly reduced the energy consumption (e.g., electric injection molding machines) and reduced negative environmental impact (e.g., coolant free dry machining).
    
8. Polymer Composites: By mixing polymers with micro and nano scale ingredients, new materials are being created that have remarkable properties. The ability to injection mold these polymer composites is reducing the processing cost and making polymer composites an economically viable option over metals in many applications. This development has created many new options for designers.

The purpose of this post is to celebrate ground-breaking manufacturing innovations that are reshaping the industry. But the limitations that I identified above still exist in many segments of manufacturing industry. Moreover, what appears to be a norm today is likely to appear a major limitation in the future. So we have to continue advancing the frontier.

I have shared my personal favorites based on my own biases and experiences. What are your favorite manufacturing innovations? I look forward to your comments.