Innovation, R&D and IP

The MEP National Network created an Industry 4.0 guide for manufacturers that don’t have time to sort through overwhelming amounts of information about technologies. In the guide, we provide answers to some common questions and concerns, so you can decide if certain technologies make sense for your company.

IMEC, Illinois Manufacturer’s Association, Technology and Manufacturing Association, and the Valley Industrial Association have partnered with the W.E Upjohn Institute for Employment Research to hear directly from small and medium-sized manufacturers about what was driving technology adoption, how they are implementing it, challenges they face, the benefits and opportunities of advanced manufacturing technologies, and how workforce development needs are changing due to technology adoption.

MAGNET’s report, Make It Better: A Blueprint for Manufacturing in Northeast Ohio brings together insights from hundreds of manufacturing CEOs, community and business leaders, academics, workers, students and nonprofit leaders, with a vision to revitalize Northeast Ohio as a leader in smart manufacturing, create thousands of jobs and transform the industry.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had overwhelming impacts on our economy, not to mention the impact on lives and personal wellness. The critical lack of medical equipment to treat and protect those affected highlights the over-reliance of United States manufacturing sector on overseas production. The offshoring issue extends beyond current pandemic concerns, however, reaching far larger and more permanent concerns over industrial supply chains, worker training and even national security.

The Manufacturing Scorecard shows how each state ranks among its peers in several categories that are of particular interest to site selection experts for the manufacturing and logistics industries.

Using the EIBIS Digital and Skills Survey on digitalisation activities of firms in the EU and the US, this study confirms the trend toward a growing digital divide in the corporate landscape with, on one side, many firms that are not digitally active, and on the other side, a substantial number of digitally active firms forging ahead. Old small firms, with less than 50 employees and more than 10 years old, are significantly more likely to be persistently digitally non-active.

The IU Manufacturing Policy Initiative, in partnership with the Hudson Institute, organized a spring 2020 conference, to bring together leading thinkers to identify concerning trends and discuss policies that will enable domestic manufacturing to remain internationally competitive. The conference was postponed due to the emerging pandemic. Four academic papers from noted experts were commissioned for this conference. Taken together, these four papers describe weaknesses in U.S. manufacturing cap

This paper explores how small factory owners in Ohio conceptualize automation. Due to the risk of replacing entire production processes and the still-relevant capabilities of old equipment, the firms interviewed for this study primarily automated in order to complement rather than replace existing technologies.

The purpose of this report is to help SMMs focus on realistic objectives achievable with appropriate implementation of digital technologies to cut costs, improve existing processes, and lay the groundwork for continued progress. It is also important to recognize that the biggest hurdles to effective implementation are not likely to be technical, but rather managerial and cultural.

The 2019 Manufacturing and Logistics National Report shows how each state ranks among its peers in several areas of the economy that underlie the success of manufacturing and logistics. These specific measures include: manufacturing and logistics industry health, human capital, cost of worker benefits, diversification of the industries, state-level productivity and innovation, expected fiscal liability, tax climate, and global reach.

This report is the result of a collaboration between members of the World Economic Forum Council on Advanced Manufacturing and Production. It summarizes the main findings of work conducted on the application of advanced manufacturing and digital technologies on future production and supply-chain models. The applications set out in this paper highlight the importance of collaborations across supply-chain.

In this article, Deloitte discusses how smart factory initiatives could have a significant impact on manufacturing productivity.

For manufacturing enterprises, the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) will reshape the source of value creation, the formation of new business models, and the delivery of value-added services such as mass customization, predictive maintenance, and “product servitization”. As AI becomes more prevalent in various aspects of business management and operations, investing in people will become even more important.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution—Industry 4.0—calls into question the very definition of manufacturing, blurring the lines between tangible and intangible, digital and physical, product and service. At its core, Industry 4.0 redefines how manufacturers derive and deliver value. According to BDO’s 2019 Middle Market Industry 4.0 Benchmarking Survey, 99 percent of middle market manufacturing executives today are at least moderately familiar with Industry 4.0.

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.

Many companies are piloting Fourth Industrial Revolution initiatives in manufacturing, but few have managed to integrate Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies at scale to realize significant economic and financial benefits. The World Economic Forum, in collaboration with McKinsey & Company, scanned more than 1,000 leading manufacturers. Subsequent outreach enabled visits to the most advanced sites and identification of the few factories that are true guiding lights.

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.

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.

This report examines ten ongoing regional initiatives that support manufacturers. Drawing on a diverse group of individual case studies, the report identifies the key partners and their roles, the resources they accessed, the impact of the effort, and the prospects for the future. In particular, the case studies often note the many roles that the National Institute for Standards and Technology's Manufacturing Extension Partnership (NIST MEP) Centers are playing in the success of these efforts.

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".

The 2012 Edition of the Facts of Manufacturing is a collection of the key facts and figures that define the state of the U.S. manufacturing industry. The report provides 65 figures that show the importance of the manufacturing sector and challenges that our industry faces.