A SPECIAL REPORT
defense goods alone; it also includes “our nation’s energy security, food security, heath security, cybersecurity and economic security.”
Bridging the “Valley of Death” After the Great Recession, US leaders began to seriously regroup on this challenge, with a mind toward securing US leadership in manufacturing for the 21st Century. President Obama commissioned a number of committees and reports, and meetings were held nationwide, as the depths of America’s manufacturing challenge were explored.
Although the NNMI was just one of many
recommendations that came out of those sessions, it was a centerprice proposal “because it prioritized reinvestment in manufacturing research,” said Steven R. Schmid, a professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, IN. Schmid served at the Advanced Manufacturing National Program Offi ce, where he helped design the NNMI program. America’s lack of investment in manufacturing research, he told ME, is “a key area where other countries are blowing us away.”
America was failing, in particular, when it came to what is designated as “technology readiness levels 4 to 7,” an area also known in scientifi c circles as the “valley of
death” along the path from converting an idea into a commercial product. Generally speaking, readiness levels 1 to 3 are where a concept is formulated and proved out with basic scientifi c research. Levels 4 to 7 are when a proven idea is further de- veloped and scaled for a manufacturing environment through what is known as “applied research.” Levels 8 and beyond are when a technology is ready for prime time and produced in a production environment for sale to customers, who then use the technology to build products.
Schmid noted that the US lags far behind other countries in manufacturing research investment—a stinging blow consider- ing that foreign governments spend heavily to develop manu- facturing technologies for the purpose of making products actually invented in the US.
For the US to catch up to Germany’s or Japan’s level of spending in this area alone, it would have to spend $6 billion a year, according to a white paper produced by the North American Manufacturing Research Institution of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (NAMRI/SME). “The numbers are astounding,” Schmid said. Take Singapore, an island nation with a population and
Government & Universities
Gap in Manufacturing Innovation Gap
Private Sector 1 2 3
Technology Readiness Level 4
5 6
area roughly equal to Chicago, he said. Singapore alone invests more annually in applied manufacturing research than the US. Scaled by economy size, the US would need to spend $25 billion to match Singapore’s commitment. Matching South Korea’s investment would require $175 billion an- nualy; matching China’s investment would take $222 billion annually. What would the US be like if it spent as much as, say, Ger- many? “They didn’t lose any manufacturing jobs since 2000—we lost 6 million,” Schmid said. “And they have a higher labor rate than us.”
7 8 9 Source: AMP Steering Committee
Time, Money and Patience Why does this so- called valley of death exist in the fi rst place?
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AdvancedManufacturing.org | June 2015
Investment
System Test, Launch & Operations
System/ Subsystem Development
Technology Demonstration
Technology Development
Research to Prove Feasibility
Basic Technology Research
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