With apologies to Frank Sinatra, Chicago may again be “my kind of (manufacturing) town.” At least that’s what a torrent of media coverage and press releases would lead you to believe following the news that Chicago had won the bid to host a digital manufacturing institute.
In late February, President Obama said Chicago’s Goose Island neighborhood would house the new Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute (DMDII), backed by $250 million from 41 companies, $70 million from the U.S. Department of Defense and $16 million from the state of Illinois. In addition, 23 universities, labs and other organizations are involved in the venture, which will be operated by UI Labs, a nonprofit spinoff of the University of Illinois.
It is hoped that DMDII will give Chicago, once a bustling factory town, a chance to become a modern manufacturing center.
As a resident of Chicagoland, I’m glad to see investment in manufacturing coming our way. If DMDII succeeds, it will help the rest of the country as well.
DMDII will focus on helping manufacturers use the latest digital technologies to work and create virtually. Potential projects include creating lighter, more powerful jet engines, reducing material waste in small-lot manufacturing and speeding product design.
DMDII will also be a classroom to train engineers, product designers and machinists. Manufacturing experts and university researchers are expected to work together on complex issues, and researchers will get help commercializing new technologies.
Commenting on the venture, Ray Johnson, senior vice president and chief technology officer for Lockheed Martin, said: “Advanced manufacturing is a competitive game-changer, bringing our nation’s research, engineering and production communities together. The combination of advanced materials, high-performance computing resources, modeling and simulation tools, and additive manufacturing practices is allowing large and small enterprises alike to design and build otherwise impossibly complex shapes and systems while reducing manufacturing costs and cycle times.”
In addition to DMDII, Detroit won the competition for an institute focused on lightweight and modern metals manufacturing. In 2012, the Obama administration set up a 3D printing institute in Youngstown, Ohio, and earlier this year announced an institute in Raleigh, N.C., targeting energy-efficient electronics.
These institutes may help address criticism that the U.S. has lost its technology edge. “The loss of the U.S. manufacturing base is only a symptom of the root disease causing America’s declining economic health,” said Michael Sekora, director of the Reagan administration’s Socrates Project and head of Operation U.S. Forward, in a Forbes blog post. “And just addressing this symptom and not the disease will not quell the symptom and will definitely not cure the disease.”
He faults financial-based planning with causing U.S. companies, governments and academic institutions “to divest the country of its manufacturing base, blinding them to the fact that this would cause a major shift in economic might from the U.S. to China and others.”
Sekora said the U.S. built its economic might by acquiring and using technology, based on what he calls technology-based planning. “In technology-based planning, outmaneuvering the competition in the acquisition and utilization of the technology required to produce the best product or provide the best service is the foundation of decision making.”
If these new institutes succeed, they may help provide the technology-based planning Sekora is calling for. Of course, they are just development “seeds,” and it will take many years for major changes to take root, but you have to start somewhere.
It’s ironic that DMDII will be housed in the former Republic Windows and Doors Co. building on West Evergreen Avenue. Republic was notorious locally for taking city development money, then locking its workers out and going bankrupt. Its owner later pleaded guilty to embezzling $10 million from the company and causing its demise. It will be good to see a new approach to developing manufacturing that takes root in the ashes of a failed venture. CTE
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