Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Federal and Industry Collaboration

Author
World Economic Forum

The COVID-19 global crisis continues to disrupt manufacturing and global supply chains with severe consequences for society, businesses, consumers and the global economy. This has raised new and unprecedented questions on the level of resilience of global value chains and the overall approach to manufacturing. The World Economic Forum, in collaboration with Kearney, brought together C-level executives from different industry sectors to identify best responses to the current COVID-19 crisis.

Author
World Economic Forum

The COVID-19 global crisis continues to disrupt manufacturing and global supply chains with severe consequences for society, businesses, consumers and the global economy. This has raised new and unprecedented questions on the level of resilience of global value chains and the overall approach to manufacturing. The World Economic Forum, in collaboration with Kearney, brought together C-level executives from different industry sectors to identify best responses to the current COVID-19 crisis.

Author
Ranita Jain, Nichola Lowe, Greg Schrock, Maureen Conway

This report evaluates a novel variation on the programming offered by the US Manufacturing Extension Partnerships (MEPs), public-private partnerships supported by the US Department of Commerce. In July 2014, with the support of the Chicagoland Workforce Funder Alliance (CWFA), the Illinois Manufacturing Excellence Center (IMEC) launched the Genesis initiative to improve both business success and job quality at small and medium-sized manufacturing firms in the Chicago region.

Author
Alan Berube

This report identifies 141 legacy communities, counties containing a city with between 20,000 and 200,000 residents, that have a significant history in manufacturing and experienced lower-than-expected job growth from 1970 to 2016. It compares their conditions, assets, and challenges to those in two other types of counties containing small and midsized cities: non-industrial and transitioned.

Author
Sifan Liu, Joseph Parilla

Research shows SBIR/STTR grants play a critical role in translating research and development (R&D) into commercially successful companies that would not happen otherwise. SBIR/STTR grants could, in theory, provide critical initial investment for many communities outside the large investment hubs and/or disadvantaged high-tech entrepreneurs who struggle to access private capital. The authors explored the distribution of grant awards from 2005 to 2017 using the SBIR/STTR award database.

Author
Josh Bivens

This policy memo focuses on one major economic argument in favor of increased infrastructure investment—that it would increase demand for American manufactured goods and, in turn, generate American manufacturing jobs. As this memo shows, more jobs will be created if policymakers take steps to reduce the yawning U.S. trade deficit that allows jobs to “leak” outside the U.S. economy as U.S. spending increases.

Author
Sridhar Kota, Thomas C. Mahoney

This MForesight report identifies fundamental weaknesses in U.S. manufacturing and the risks these weaknesses pose for long-term wealth and security. It emphasizes the need for concerted national action to rebuild and restore manufacturing skills, capabilities, and productive capacity. The problems have developed over decades but have become worse with time, now reaching the point where we have lost the ability to scale emerging technologies because of a weak industrial commons.

Author
Manufacturing Policy Initiative School of Public and Environmental Affairs Indiana University

Smart manufacturing depends critically on information governance: rules (formal and informal) concerning the collection, flow, and analysis of information, often in digital form. To explore information governance issues in depth, the Manufacturing Policy Initiative at Indiana University hosted a roundtable event in Washington, DC, with executives from nearly 20 manufacturers. Policy experts from academia were asked to contribute to papers on specific topics including AI in manufacturing.

Author
E. Jason Baron, Shawn Kantor, Alexander Whalley

This policy proposal seeks to shed light on the potential role of research universities as anchor institutions for local economic development. After carefully analyzing data and reviewing the literature, it is proposed that instead of establishing a new research university, lagging communities should focus on transferring productivity-enhancing knowledge to their local employers from existing research universities near their regions.

Author
Stephen J. Ezell, Robert D. Atkinson, Dr. Inchul Kim, Jeahan Cho

This report first defines digital manufacturing technologies. It then assesses the potential productivity and economic benefits smart manufacturing can produce. It next examines the extent of manufacturing digitalization in the U.S. It finds first that data on the topic is sporadic, incomplete, and at this point primarily survey-based. Second, it finds that, for all manufacturing digitalization’s promise, U.S. manufacturers have been particularly slow to adopt digital manufacturing practices.

Author
Stephen Ezell

This report explains how digitalization is transforming manufacturing globally, detailing what exactly smart manufacturing (or “Industry 4.0”) is and examining the productivity impacts that digitalized manufacturing promises to deliver. The report examines the small- to medium-sized enterprise (SME) manufacturing support programs and policies of ten nations—Argentina, Australia, Austria, Canada, China, Germany, Japan, Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Author
John Engler, Penny Pritzker, Edward Alden, Laura Taylor-Kale

The world is in the midst of a transformation in the nature of work, as smart machines, artificial intelligence, new technologies, and global competition remake how people do their jobs and pursue their careers. The Work Ahead: Machines, Skills, and U.S. Leadership in the Twenty-First Century, the report of a CFR-sponsored Independent Task Force, assesses the future of work and workers and the implications for the U.S. economy and national security.

Author
Mark Barteau, Sridhar Kota

A country is only as strong as its capacity to build. Managed properly, the availability of low-cost shale gas could catalyze a renaissance in U.S. manufacturing, revitalizing the chemical industry and enhancing the global competitiveness of energy-intensive manufacturing sectors such as aluminum, steel, paper, glass, and food. This report summarizes and expands upon the University of Michigan-sponsored daylong Symposium "Shale Gas: A Game- Changer for American Manufacturing".

Author
Daniel Trombley

The manufacturing sector accounts for about a third of primary energy consumed in the U.S. While most of that effort has sought savings from large manufacturers, more energy efficiency programs are beginning to address the needs facing small to medium-sized manufacturers (SMMs). This report discusses barriers, opportunities, and solutions to designing energy efficiency programs that result in significant savings from smaller manufacturers.