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Summary and Goals
This chapter summarizes the trends we observe in technology research and development
that relate to the current and future state of advanced manufacturing. We first explain how
manufacturing has traditionally been defined and how the processes in a production plant
have been viewed as a mainly step-wise linear transformation of inputs towards finished
goods. We then provide an expanded definition of “advanced manufacturing” that expands
the traditional view in several ways and maps to seven key manufacturing technology
categories. Our findings on manufacturing technology innovation are based on a
combination of an internal scan of research at MIT, an external survey of U.S. programs in
manufacturing and an extensive literature search. Taken together these trends indicate
that there is much innovation happening in manufacturing technology research, both in
universities as well as in industrial firms, and that opportunities for entirely new products
and services, further productivity gains and game-changing processes are on the horizon.
However, none of these trends are likely to create large numbers of new jobs. However, the
jobs that will be created and maintained in advanced 21st century manufacturing require
higher levels of skills and a deep understanding of the underlying physics and economics of
manufacturing.
The overall goal of this chapter is to find how innovation in manufacturing processes and
associated product design impacts the prospects for manufacturing in the early 21st
century. While most of our data is based on research at MIT and other U.S. institutions we
believe that our findings apply to other industrialized nations as well. Our goal is to find
trends and promising areas of manufacturing technology research both at MIT and at other
universities and firms. Innovations in manufacturing are often reported one-at-a-time and
it is not immediately clear how these innovations fit together and how they collectively
impact the practice and economics of manufacturing. We seek to present advanced
manufacturing technology innovations in a larger context. In summary, we are looking for
potential game-changing approaches to new manufacturing and a clear definition of what
is “advanced manufacturing” in the 21st century.
The key results presented in this chapter are as follows:
1. A qualitative and quantitative assessment of 24 manufacturing technology areas in
terms of their importance and promise to have a positive effect on manufacturing in
the early 21st century. This also includes a discussion of which technologies are
universally viewed as promising and which ones are more controversial based on
the variances found through our external survey.
2. A suggested grouping of these 24 manufacturing technology areas into seven major
categories. We believe that these categories are clearer and more consistent than
lists of technologies that have been proposed in some other recent reports on
manufacturing.
3. A new definition of what advanced manufacturing is and the role that the seven
technology categories play or can play in this expanded view of manufacturing. The
seven technology categories are mapped to four major trends that turn
manufacturing from a traditionally linear step-wise process to a more integrated
and closed-loop enterprise. Based on our interviews we also provide selected
examples of how firms leverage new technologies for advanced manufacturing.
4. We summarize the hurdles faced by U.S. academic institutions in advanced
manufacturing research and suggest possible models and actions for improvement.
Position of this chapter in the overall PIE study
As discussed elsewhere the Production in the Innovation Economy (PIE) project was
inspired by the work of the MIT Commission on Industrial Productivity (1986-89). Early on
in our deliberations it became clear that the world is now a more complex and more
interconnected place than it was in the 1980s. While the need to grow productivity through
process improvements and technology exists today as it did 30 years ago, there are
substantial differences. China has displaced Japan as the leading industrial nation in Asia
and perhaps the world. Many firms have deverticalized their value chains and are now part
of global supply chains that offer new opportunities but also new risks such as supply
disruptions, theft of intellectual property and so forth. Many of the large U.S. firms have
closed or significantly reduced the size of their R&D departments and rely increasingly on
universities and the acquisition of young startup companies as a source of innovation. In
short, a deeper understanding of production in the 21st century requires viewing it as a
complex system with interlinked factors including innovation, the role of production
activities and supporting services, the impact on the labor force as well as the role that
regional and federal governments can and should play in creating an ecosystem that will
lead to long term economic prosperity.
Figure 1 depicts the role of production in an advanced economy as a complex system. The
position of this chapter (labeled as “module 1”) on advanced manufacturing technology is
at the interface between our innovation system and industrial production.
Innovation involves important feed-forward and feedback mechanisms in the real
economy. The invention of new products and processes, as well as the improvement of
existing processes, leads to higher productivity and expansion of product portfolios and
associated service offerings. In turn, the experience and insights gained from
manufacturing activities at scale often trigger ideas for new innovations at the front-end.
One of the main worries about separating R&D from production activities is that this
feedback mechanism (see arrow pointing from Production to Innovation in Fig.1) will be interrupted or dampened. Another mechanism in which innovation impacts the economy is
through patenting, licensing and the scale-up of new firms (see chapter on scale-up in this
book). Finally, there continues to be an important role for R&D investments by the federal
and regional governments to ensure that the pipeline of “radical” long-term innovations
remains healthy at the front end. We believe based on our research that if any of these
feedforward or feedback mechanisms are disrupted, that it will negatively influence the
whole system over time. In contrast to Made in America [1] which was a study decomposed
by different sectors of the economy (automobiles, chemicals, consumer electronics …) we
take a functional view in the PIE project and focus on different functions in the innovationproduction
system. Functions discussed in other chapters are the scaling up of young firms,
education of the workforce and management of collaborations across national boundaries.
The function considered in this chapter is that of inventing and improving the next
generation of manufacturing processes and products.
Research Approach
We carried out the research on advanced manufacturing technology innovation reported
here in the following four steps.
First, we conducted a scan of research happening at MIT by assembling a list of principal
investigators (PIs) that are involved in “manufacturing” research. We cast a wide net and
included researchers who are innovating in processes for creating new components,
artifacts and systems, even when they themselves do not label their research as
“manufacturing” or “production” related. This list of 147 PIs was subsequently expanded to
199 individuals based on 30 interviews and laboratory visits carried out between July 2011
and August 2012. This list of PIs also led to the subsequent formation of six manufacturing
working groups at MIT that closely mirror the seven technology categories we discuss in
this chapter.
Second, we conducted a survey of 85 U.S. programs in industrial and manufacturing
engineering to elicit their views on trends in advanced manufacturing technology research
and development. We achieved a response rate of 34% and obtained interesting insights,
many of them consistent with the findings from our internal scan at MIT. We also gathered
important inputs on what makes manufacturing research challenging in the U.S. and what
could be done to improve the U.S. manufacturing research enterprise. One of the key
results of this effort was the grouping of advanced manufacturing research into seven
distinct technology categories that complement each other. We believe that this grouping is
clearer than the lists of manufacturing technology that had been proposed in other recent
reports on manufacturing (see cross-comparison with reports on advanced manufacturing
by PCAST, AMP, IDA, the U.S. Manufacturing Competitiveness Initiative, and the McKinsey
Global Institute). A literature search of about 500 papers on manufacturing technology
research published since 2008 showed that U.S. research in advanced manufacturing is
active but quite distinct from the kind of research funded directly by industry firms.
Third, we extracted from the 200 interviews conducted as part of the PIE study examples of
firms that either develop or leverage innovations in advanced manufacturing to create or
gain access to new markets and improve their operations. We map these examples to the
seven technology categories.
Finally, we integrated our findings by providing an expanded definition of advanced
manufacturing and show how the seven technology categories impact the four major
trends that make advanced manufacturing different from traditional manufacturing.
Internal Scan at MIT
We begin our analysis by providing a scan of current manufacturing technology research
happening at MIT. Figure 2 shows an excerpt of our approach to identifying principal
investigators (PI) at MIT that are involved in manufacturing research. MIT PIs were
identified under the broad category “Manufacturing, Design and Product Development”.
The Office of Institutional Research in the Provost’s office compiled this list using a variety
of methods. They first performed a key word analysis of websites and subsequently sent
the results to individual faculty members to confirm. We subsequently augmented this list
with additional non-PI researchers based on our interviews and laboratory visits.