Strengthening American Manufacturing The Role of the Manufacturing Extension Partnership: Summary of a Symposium (2013) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Overview
Overview
Pages 3-26
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 3... ...
The PCAST report notes that "The United States was the world's leading producer of manufactured goods from 1895 through 2009; some experts estimate that China surpassed the United States as the leading manufacturing country last year." Access at |
From page 4... ...
In 2012, the NIST Manufacturing Extension Partnership had a budget of $128 million. The total NIST-MEP headquarters staff numbers some 45 people who focus on setting strategy, evaluating the needs and demands of clients, helping facilitate the development of tools, and "gluing together the Centers into a network that can share best practices." NIST funding is matched 1:2 by individual state Centers, using funding primarily from state governments and client fees.
|
From page 5... ...
Gregory Tassey of NIST and Dr. Sridhar Kota, then of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, also underscored the relevance of a robust manufacturing sector for the United States in their workshop remarks.
|
From page 6... ...
Kota highlighted the importance of sustaining an "industrial commons," a term he said that describes the complex and enduring partnerships among manufacturers, universities, technical colleges, firms, research institutes, financing entities, and other links in the supply chain. He drew attention to recent reports by the 5 "Total hourly compensation in the manufacturing sector is, on average, 22 percent higher than that in the services sector.
|
From page 7... ...
Kota affirmed that a key goal of the Obama Administration's Advanced Manufacturing Partnership is to "jumpstart domestic manufacturing capability essential to our national security." As the military comes to rely more heavily on complex and advanced technology systems, retaining the capacity and knowledge necessary to manufacture these goods in the United States becomes more important. The ability to source critical infrastructure components, from communications equipment to power 8 Department of Commerce, U.S.
|
From page 8... ...
Ginger Lew, formerly of the White House National Economic Council, reminded the participants of how much ground the U.S. manufacturing sector has lost to foreign competition in recent years.
|
From page 9... ...
SOURCE: Gregory Tassey, Presentation at November 14, 2011 National Academies Symposium on "Strengthening American Manufacturing: The Role of the Manufacturing Extension Partnership." They noted that, in part, this decline is the result of greater competition from low-wage countries, leading to the off-shoring of low-skilled jobs to lowercost locations.13 Manufacturing employment fell by 16.1 percent from 2003 to 2009, before recovering by 4.6 percent to end 2012.14 Growing Trade Deficit These employment and wage trends also roughly coincide with the increased foreign competition faced by the U.S. manufacturing sector.
|
From page 10... ...
all manufactured products, 1988-2010. SOURCE: Gregory Tassey, Presentation at November 14, 2011 National Academies Symposium on "Strengthening American Manufacturing: The Role of the Manufacturing Extension Partnership." 15 U.S.
|
From page 11... ...
Although the United States had been the "first mover" in developing many commercial technologies, "poor technology life-cycle management" has led to a gradual loss of market share in products such as oxide ceramics, semiconductor memory devices, semiconductor production equipment, lithium ion batteries, flat-panel displays, robotics, and advanced lighting. Forward Integration in Asia Many emerging economies have begun to integrate forward along supply chains.
|
From page 12... ...
Kota said that MEP Centers can "serve as a glue" between the small and medium manufacturers and the resources that are being developed by the Advanced Manufacturing Initiative -- a plan to "support innovation in advanced manufacturing through applied research programs for promising new technologies, public-private partnerships around broadly-applicable and precompetitive technologies, the creation and dissemination of design methodologies for manufacturing, and shared technology infrastructure to support advances in existing manufacturing industries."17 17 See the opening letter to President Obama from the PCAST Chair and Co-chairs in the June 2011 PCAST report, President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, Report to the President on Ensuring American Leadership in Advanced Manufacturing, op.
|
From page 13... ...
Historically, he said, MEP has focused on promoting lean manufacturing, quality, and cost effectiveness. While those are still key services delivered by MEP Centers, they are considered today to be one important element of a broader portfolio.
|
From page 14... ...
manufacturers. Expanding Supply Chains In her workshop remarks, Susan Helper of Case Western Reserve University noted that rapid changes in global economies have brought pressures on SMEs to change rapidly.
|
From page 15... ...
Shapira, Product and Service Innovation: Report to the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Atlanta, GA, and Arlington, VA: Georgia Tech Program in Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy, and SRI International, 2006.
|
From page 16... ...
There are internal company barriers, with SMEs lacking information, experience, training, resources, strategy, and confidence to adopt new technologies. There are also external barriers in the costs of vendors, customers, consultants, and other business assistance sources that might be useful to SMEs.22 For these reasons, as James Watson of California Manufacturing Technology Consulting noted in his workshop presentation, simply reaching those SMEs best positioned to take advantage of MEP advice is difficult.23 Identifying and Sharing Lessons Learned Finally, MEP, as a national program, faces the challenge of developing and sharing the best practices across the system.
|
From page 17... ...
Building Local Innovative Capacity Echoing these themes, Mr. Kilmer noted in his remarks that while the founding focus of MEP was to promote lean manufacturing, quality, and cost effectiveness, these early activities are now considered not "the end of the journey, but the beginning." NIST-MEP has come to believe that cost efficiency alone is not sufficient, and that companies needed to think about growth strategies as well.
|
From page 18... ...
Petra Mitchell of the Catalyst Connection, a Pennsylvania-based MEP Center, described her organization's T-RIC, or Technology Acceleration in Regional Innovation Clusters Initiative. The objective of this program, she said, is to develop a consortium of regional clusters focused on accelerating technology within the small manufacturers in the region.
|
From page 19... ...
In particular, he cited the significance of the independent follow-up surveys required by MEP, which he said, is a key distinction separating it from other groups who offer consulting to small and medium manufacturers. "We go back to each client annually through independent third-party survey research to confirm each client's individual successes in sales increases, cost reductions, and profitable investments.
|
From page 20... ...
Watson, who leads California Manufacturing Technology Consulting (CMTC) , began his presentation with a sketch of manufacturing in California, where about 44,000 manufacturers employ approximately 1.2 million workers.
|
From page 21... ...
However, she noted that this diversity presents challenges for a small Center like the Catalyst Connection that seeks to offer manufacturing extension services across different types of manufacturing industries and sub-industries.
|
From page 22... ...
Finally, Catalyst is developing a consortium of regional clusters focused on accelerating technology within the small manufacturers in the region. Current partners in this initiative include the University of Pittsburgh, National Energy Technology Laboratory, Innovation Works (a Ben Franklin Technology Partner)
|
From page 23... ...
b Philip Shapira, Jan Youtie, and Luciano Kay, "Building Capabilities for Innovation in SMEs: A Cross-Country Comparison of Technology Extension Policies and Programs," International Journal of Innovation and Regional Development, 3-4: 254-272, 2011. MEP's Assessment Efforts In his conference presentation, Gary Yakimov noted that that MEP's performance has been reviewed on several occasions, with what he described as generally positive outcomes by the Office of Management and Budget, the National Academy of Public Administration (in 2003)
|
From page 24... ...
This is the broadest level of evaluation, and includes productivity growth of SMEs, global competitiveness of U.S. based manufacturers, supply chain efficiency, job opportunities for workers, and rates of business survival.
|
From page 25... ...
"I think one of the challenges we have across our system is to create a sense of urgency in small/mid-size manufacturers about the need to grow, innovate, export, and become more sustainable. What's really important about this survey is whether we have products and services to meet this list of needs, and the fact is that we do, and we continue to develop them." Survey Challenges Daniel Luria of the Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center, an experienced reviewer and participant in the development of the MEP program, noted that while the current evaluation system is logical, consistent, and works "passably well" in generating "large-seeming sum-of-impacts" that generally help the program and motivate Centers, it does less well when it asks MEP clients to compare their current situation "with an imagined situation without MEP services." This difficulty is compounded by survey queries that require dozens of calculations to answer meaningfully.
|
From page 26... ...
We want to look at the activities in addition to the outcomes and impacts." IN CLOSING This workshop summary provides a variety of perspectives on how the Manufacturing Extension Partnership seeks to strengthen the nation's small and medium manufacturers. This overview highlights key issues raised by speakers in the course of a National Academies workshop including, more broadly, the importance of manufacturing for the U.S.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.