November 6, 2023 Engineering a Better Future for U.S. Manufacturing

To succeed in the future, American manufacturing must mobilize engineering research to improve productivity, agility, and competitiveness.

By Charles Johnson-Bey, Ph.D., Co-Principal Investigator, Engineering Research Visioning Alliance (ERVA); Senior Vice President, Booz Allen Hamilton

Envisioning the future of U.S. manufacturing from an engineering research viewpoint was the purpose of the March 2023 event convened by the Engineering Research Visioning Alliance (ERVA), an initiative funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). The event convened 56 participants (from small- to medium-sized manufacturing companies, plus researchers and technical experts from industry, government, and academia) to identify critical areas for engineering research in distributed manufacturing. This refers to the development of technologically advanced industry located within the U.S., widely distributed locally to maximize flexibility in the event of supply chain disruptions, and more sustainable than current global networks. The event’s findings were published in October in a report, Engineering the Future of Distributed Manufacturing.

Rethinking (and Saving) Manufacturing

Manufacturing in the United States has been on a 50-year downward trend as firms have offshored production. With a loss of more than 30% of manufacturing jobs since 1970 and the sector’s share of GDP shrinking from 27% to 12%, U.S. manufacturers may be forgiven for thinking the future is one of either moving production overseas or, if one is a small- or medium-sized firm unable to offshore, folding operations altogether. More recently, rising geopolitical tensions and risks have made offshoring less tenable. Moreover, the supply chain nightmares triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic drove home the critical need for increasing domestic and distributed manufacturing capability that can respond quickly to economic shocks.

Savvy manufacturers recognize these dangers. U.S. government policy, such as the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, aims to encourage investment in domestic manufacturing growth and innovation. But those incentives are limited. Legacy facilities, especially those with human-intensive production lines, will simply not be able to compete with Industry 4.0 – cyberphysical systems, the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML). Industry 5.0 is an even greater leap; it will combine human and machine intelligence to create a more personalized consumer experience at scale.

A Blueprint for Engineering Research In Industry

The report focuses on three crucial areas: (A) materials supply chains that are secure and distributed; (B) tools and processes to create any discrete manufacturing product/tool anywhere, and in any lot size, without loss of quality; and (C) data and quality assurance to improve the efficiency of production processes regardless of lot size, optimize inventory management, reduce downtime, and enhance the quality of products and services. To drive progress across all these areas, manufacturers and engineers should take five actions:

1. Engineer new, sustainable materials for use in advanced manufacturing: Manufacturers and engineers must collaborate to develop bio-based feedstocks, alloys, and composite materials to replace current materials that will be difficult to obtain in the long run. This will boost both supply chain resilience and reduce manufacturers’ carbon footprints.
2. Enable new business models that better manage supply chains to build resilience, minimize disruption, and reduce wasted time and materials: Converting to a more circular economic model is necessary to drive resilience and sustainability, and that means using data analytics to capture and analyze information across supply chains to locate and eliminate waste.
3. Design next-generation machines that are small, agile, and reconfigurable: Research should focus on developing the potential of machine neural networks for distributed machining of large parts or end products, researching self-assembly of parts, and manufacturing software that can serve as a “Chat GPT for parts manufacturing” that can continuously develop new machine tools.
4. Create common, effective, and affordable standards for data collection, analysis, and communication: In Industry 4.0 and 5.0, data is crucial to decision-making. Manufacturers must be able to continuously collect data that is decision-useful (for example, by using a cell phone app) while protecting the data against cyberattacks.
5. Develop greater connectivity across the sector and work to eliminate silos: Research data and best practices in manufacturing must be shared across organizations and sectors. To re-energize manufacturing, companies must share de-identified data. Nobody gains from compartmentalizing information that could increase quality and efficiency for all.

Toward a New American Industrial Century

U.S. manufacturing can have a strong future – but it will require innovative vision and cross-functional, cross-industry collaboration to survive and thrive. ERVA’s latest report is a call to action on that front, and one America’s manufacturers should heed.

Charles Johnson-Bey
Co-Principal Investigator, ERVA; Senior Vice President, Booz Allen Hamilton

As a senior vice president for Booz Allen Hamilton, Charles Johnson-Bey develops and executes innovative technology strategies that position the company as a leader in the development of next-generation solutions that are recognizable and branded in the market. He is also co-principal investigator the Engineering Research Visioning Alliance (ERVA), a five-year, NSF-funded initiative that convenes, catalyzes and empowers the U.S. engineering community to identify nascent opportunities and priorities for engineering-led innovative, high-impact, cross-domain, fundamental research that addresses national, global and societal needs.

Johnson-Bey has over 25 years of engineering experience that includes emerging technologies in information warfare, cyber resilience, digital signal processing, system architecture, prototyping, and hardware. He has worked for Lockheed Martin Corporation, Motorola Corporate Research Labs, Corning Incorporated Science & Technology Division, and he served as an electrical engineering professor at Morgan State University. He earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from Johns Hopkins University and both master’s and doctorate degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Delaware.

He received the 2018 Black Engineer of the Year Award for Career Achievement- Industry. He is on several boards including the Whiting School of Engineering Advisory Board at Johns Hopkins University and the Electrical and Computer Engineering Advisory Boards at both Johns Hopkins University and the University of Delaware. He is also on the Cybersecurity Institute Advisory Board for the Community College of Baltimore County.

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