THREE ISSUES FOR MCDAM

Robo crane. Source Wikipedia Commons

Unlike Germany, the international leader in high value manufacturing, the United States does not have a national manufacturing policy.  Nor does the Commonwealth of Massachusetts have a well-defined manufacturing policy and direction.  However, in western Massachusetts, a strategy to support precision manufacturing has been developed through a partnership of the Hampden County Regional Employment Board (REB), Springfield Technical Community College and Holyoke Community College, vocational and comprehensive high schools, the University of Massachusetts/Amherst and, most importantly, area precision manufacturers organized via the Western Massachusetts Machining and Tooling Association.  This partnership has garnered state support to:

1) Bring together key constituents to assess the needs of area manufacturers and plan joint actions.

2) Quantify the need and skill level for new employees;

3) Employ, through a pilot project, a shared engineer to assist small manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) to develop new products;

4) Expand education and training of both incumbent and new employees.

Based on these experiences and drawing on research and the work of others,  new group the  Massachusetts Center for Advanced Design and Manufacturing (MCADM) has been established to advance manufacturing throughout the state by analyzing roadblocks, developing plans and implementing solutions.  MCADM’s goal will help the Commonwealth develop statewide policies to support the expansion of manufacturing, much as is being done nationally in Germany.   To assist manufacturing, MCADM is using an inside out model, that is, starting with the experiences in western Massachusetts and other regions of the state, a statewide approach will be developed.  If successful, this statewide initiative may stimulate other states to make similar efforts, leading eventually, one would hope, to a national manufacturing policy, leadership and advocacy.

Following the Preview of the MIT Production in the Innovative Economy (PIE) report, three challenges must be overcome to sustain and expand manufacturing in Massachusetts:

1) Training: expanding the number of trained employees including entry production workers, technicians and engineers.  While not in the MIT study, Alan Robinson, Professor at the Eisenberg School of Business, argues that training for manufacturing managers in lean and other modern techniques is also needed.  As a first step, MCADM should obtain data to determine the manufacturing employment and training needs in the Commonwealth.  

2) Technology transfer: Creating better linkages to diffuse new technology to new or existing companies.  In past decades, large manufacturing companies (OEMs) maintained their own research laboratories, developing new products that were then manufactured.  In the US, these companies have shed much of this capacity that now resides in university and specialized research laboratories.  The challenge is to facilitate the movement of this research into new products especially within small manufacturing enterprises (SMEs).  A local industrialist cites the related issue of preparing for the next wave of manufacturing change, the smart factory or factory 4.0 that will be highly automated and flexible, able to make efficiently make small batches of sophisticated products.

3) Financing: The MIT study identified this as the third critical issue: “Today, when innovation is more likely to emerge in small spinoffs or out of university or government labs, where do the scale-up resources come from? How available is the funding needed at each of the critical stages of scale-up: prototyping, pilot production, demonstration and test, early manufacturing, full-scale commercialization?”