MIT today launched its Initiative for Latest Manufacturing (INM), an Institute-wide effort to reinfuse U.S. industrial production with leading-edge technologies, bolster crucial U.S. economic sectors, and ignite job creation.
The initiative will encompass advanced research, progressive teaching programs, and partnership with firms across many sectors, in a bid to assist transform manufacturing and elevate its impact.
“We would like to work with firms big and small, in cities, small towns and all over the place in between, to assist them adopt recent approaches for increased productivity,” MIT President Sally A. Kornbluth wrote in a letter to the Institute community this morning. “We would like to deliberately design high-quality, human-centered manufacturing jobs that bring recent life to communities across the country.”
Kornbluth added: “Helping America construct a future of recent manufacturing is an ideal job for MIT — and I’m convinced that there isn’t any more necessary work we are able to do to fulfill the moment and serve the nation now.”
The Initiative for Latest Manufacturing also announced its first six founding industry consortium members: Amgen, Flextronics International USA, GE Vernova, PTC, Sanofi, and Siemens. Participants within the INM Industry Consortium will support seed projects proposed by MIT researchers, initially in the world of artificial intelligence for manufacturing.
INM joins the ranks of MIT’s other presidential initiatives — including The Climate Project at MIT; MITHIC, which supports the human-centered disciplines; MIT HEALS, centered on the life sciences and health; and MGAIC, the MIT Generative AI Impact Consortium.
“There’s tremendous opportunity to bring together a vibrant community working across every scale — from nanotechnology to large-scale manufacturing — and across a wide-range of applications including semiconductors, medical devices, automotive, energy systems, and biotechnology,” says Anantha Chandrakasan, MIT’s chief innovation and strategy officer and dean of engineering, who is an element of the initiative’s leadership team. “MIT is uniquely positioned to harness the transformative power of digital tools and AI to shape future of producing. I’m truly enthusiastic about what we are able to construct together and the synergies this creates with other cross-cutting initiatives across the Institute.”
The initiative is just the most recent MIT-centered effort in recent many years aiming to expand American manufacturing. A college research group wrote the 1989 bestseller “Made in America: Regaining the Productive Edge,” advocating for a renewal of producing; one other MIT project, called Production within the Innovation Economy, called for expanded manufacturing within the early 2010s. In 2016, MIT also founded The Engine, a enterprise fund investing in hardware-based “tough tech” start-ups including many with potential to became substantial manufacturing firms.
As developed, the MIT Initiative for Latest Manufacturing is predicated around 4 major themes:
- Reimagining manufacturing technologies and systems: realizing breakthrough technologies and system-level approaches to advance energy production, health care, computing, transportation, consumer products, and more;
- Elevating the productivity and experience of producing: developing and deploying recent digitally driven methods and tools to amplify productivity and improve the human experience of producing;
- Scaling recent manufacturing: accelerating the scaling of producing firms and remodeling supply chains to maximise efficiency and resilience, fostering product innovation and business growth; and
- Transforming the manufacturing base: driving the deployment of a sustainable global manufacturing ecosystem that gives compelling opportunities to employees, with major efforts focused on the U.S.
The initiative has mapped out many concrete activities and programs, which is able to include an Institute-wide research program on emerging technologies and other major topics; workforce and teaching programs; and industry engagement and participation. INM also goals to ascertain recent labs for developing manufacturing tools and techniques; a “factory observatory” program which immerses students in manufacturing through visits to production sites; and key “pillars” specializing in areas from semiconductors and biomanufacturing to defense and aviation.
The workforce and education element of INM will include TechAMP, an MIT-created program that works with community colleges to bridge the gap between technicians and engineers; AI-driven teaching tools; skilled education; and an effort to expand manufacturing education on campus in collaboration with MIT departments and degree programs.
INM’s leadership team has three faculty co-directors: John Hart, the Class of 1922 Professor and head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering; Suzanne Berger, Institute Professor at MIT and a political scientist who has conducted influential empirical studies of producing; and Chris Love, the Raymond A. and Helen E. St. Laurent Professor of Chemical Engineering. The initiative’s executive director is Julie Diop.
The initiative is within the technique of forming a college steering committee with representation from across the Institute, in addition to an external advisory board. INM stems partly from the work of the Manufacturing@MIT working group, formed in 2022 to evaluate lots of these issues.
The launch of the brand new initiative was previewed at a daylong MIT symposium on May 7, titled “A Vision for Latest Manufacturing.” The event, held before a capability audience in MIT’s Wong Auditorium, featured over 30 speakers from a wide selection of producing sectors.
“The rationale for growing and remodeling U.S. manufacturing has never been more urgent than it’s today,” Berger said on the event. “What we try to construct at MIT now shouldn’t be just one other research project. … Together, with people on this room and out of doors this room, we’re trying to alter what’s happening in our country.”
“We want to think in regards to the importance of producing again, since it is what brings product ideas to people,” Love told . “As an example, in biotechnology, recent life-saving medicines can’t reach patients without manufacturing. There’s an actual urgency about this issue for each economic prosperity and creating jobs. We have now seen the impact for our country when now we have lost our lead in manufacturing in some sectors. Biotechnology, where the U.S. has been the worldwide leader for greater than 40 years, offers the potential to advertise recent robust economies here, but we’d like to advance our capabilities in biomanufacturing to keep up our advantage on this area.”
Hart adds: “While manufacturing feels very timely today, it’s of putting up with importance. Manufactured products enable our each day lives and manufacturing is critical to advancing the frontiers of technology and society. Our efforts leading as much as launch of the initiative revealed great excitement about manufacturing across MIT, especially from students. Working with industry — from small to large firms, and from young startups to industrial giants — can be instrumental to creating impact and realizing the vision for brand spanking new manufacturing.”
In her letter to the MIT community today, Kornbluth stressed that the initiative’s goal is to drive transformation by making manufacturing more productive, resilient, and sustainable.
“We would like to reimagine manufacturing technologies and systems to advance fields like energy production, health care, computing, transportation, consumer products, and more,” she wrote. “And we would like to succeed in well beyond the shop floor to tackle challenges like the way to make supply chains more resilient, and the way to inform public policy to foster a broad, healthy manufacturing ecosystem that may drive many years of innovation and growth.”
