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Manufacturing USA

Gain Access To State-Of-The-Art Facilities, Equipment, And Workforce Training

Sixteen different manufacturing innovation institutes comprise Manufacturing USA. These institutes are public-private partnerships that each have distinct technology focus areas but work towards a common goal: to secure America’s future through manufacturing innovation, education, and collaboration.

Manufacturing USA institutes focus on moving promising, early-stage research into proven capabilities ready for adoption by U.S. manufacturers. Their membership includes manufacturers as well as researchers from universities and government laboratories. The institutes provide members with access to state-of-the-art facilities and equipment, as well as workforce training and skills development customized to support new technology areas. Collaboration at the institutes and across the network creates an innovation community ushering in the next generation manufacturing supply chains located in America and employing Americans.

The national Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP)—a network of hundreds of organizations like MassMEP and the other MEP centers—is playing a role in moving the institute’s newly developed technologies into the small companies that comprise the bulk of the U.S. manufacturing base.

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Small and mid-sized manufacturers can get involved by:

  • Becoming members of an institute. Membership in most institutes is tiered to be more affordable to small companies. Membership tiers provide different levels of access to institute facilities, expertise, and IP; as well as benefits like involvement in institute governance, technical roadmapping, and marketplaces or technical commons.
  • Partnering with other companies and universities to bid on R&D “project calls” issued by the institutes.
  • Receiving training and toolkits from your local Manufacturing Extension Partnership center when they have been made available. For example, toolkits to help companies adopt digital manufacturing technologies will be available soon.

Advanced Functional Fabrics of America (AFFOA)

Recent breakthroughs in fiber materials and manufacturing processes will soon allow us to design and produce fabrics that see, hear, sense, communicate, store and convert energy, regulate temperature, monitor health and change color—the dawn of a “fabric revolution”. AFFOA will accelerate widespread commercialization of highly functional fabrics. AFFOA is built on a simple premise: functional fabrics necessitate deep fiber innovation and predictive manufacturing. AFFOA has America’s leading IP cache in semiconductor fibers and assemblies.

  • Founded 2016
  • Headquarters: Cambridge, MA
  • Website: affoa.org

American Institute for Manufacturing Integrated Photonics (AIM Photonics)

AIM Photonics is an industry driven public-private partnership that focuses the nation’s premiere capabilities and expertise to capture critical global manufacturing leadership in a technology that is both essential to national security and positioned to provide a compelling return-on-investment to the U.S. economy. The Institute’s goal is to emulate the dramatic successes experienced by the electronics industry over the past 40 years and transition key lessons, processes, and approaches to the photonic integrated circuit (PIC) industry.
AIM Photonics supports small and mid-sized enterprises, providing practical access and technology on-ramps for U.S. industry, government, and academic communities. They are creating a national PIC manufacturing infrastructure, widely accessible and inherently flexible to meet the challenges of the marketplace with practical, innovative solutions.

NextFlex, America’s Flexible Hybrid Electronics Manufacturing Innovation Institute

This Institute is focused on developing a new era in flexible hybrid electronics (FHE) manufacturing by catalyzing the US flexible hybrid electronics ecosystem to commercialize technology through investments in FHE materials scale-up, thinned device processing, device/sensor integrated printing and packaging, system design tools, and reliability testing and modeling.

  • Founded 2016
  • Website: nextflex.us
  • Headquarters: San Jose, CA

Advanced Robotics Manufacturing (ARM) Institute

To foster and grow the national manufacturing ecosystem, the Advanced Robotics Manufacturing (ARM) Institute has formed a national, public-private partnership to develop, demonstrate, and facilitate early adoption of novel robotic solutions. Based in Pittsburgh, ARM is led by a newly established national nonprofit called American Robotics, which was founded by Carnegie Mellon University and includes a national network of 231 stakeholders from industry, academia, local governments and nonprofits.
ARM’s 10-year goals include increasing worker productivity by 30 percent, creating 510,000 new manufacturing jobs in the U.S., ensuring that 30 percent of SMEs adopt robotics technology, and providing the ecosystem where major industrial robotics manufacturers will emerge. ARM focuses on critical growth sectors that are ripe for rapid adoption of robotics in manufacturing, including aerospace, automotive, electronics, and textiles.

  • Founded 2016
  • Website: arminstitute.org
  • Headquarters: Pittsburgh, PA (Carnegie Mellon University)

National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals (NIIMBL)

NIIMBL will help to advance U.S. leadership in the biopharmaceutical industry, foster economic development, improve medical treatments and ensure a qualified workforce by collaborating with educational institutions to develop new training programs matched to specific biopharma skill needs. Traditional pharmaceutical production relies on chemistry to create medical treatments. Biopharmaceutical production relies on biology—living cells produce the treatments or their components—which requires a complex manufacturing process. Biomanufacturing is used to produce many widely-used treatments for a growing number of health conditions such as cancer, autoimmune disorders and infectious diseases—and generates billions of dollars in revenue worldwide. However, innovation is needed to allow more rapid and flexible production to meet healthcare demands and ensure U.S. leadership in the industry.

  • Founded 2017
  • Headquarters: University of Delaware
  • Website: niimbl.org

Biofabusa

This institute, led by the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute (ARMI), Inc., will develop next-generation manufacturing techniques for repairing and replacing cells and tissues, which may one day lead to the ability to manufacture new skin for soldiers scarred from combat or develop organ-preserving technologies to benefit Americans waiting for an organ transplant.

  • Founded 2017
  • Headquarters: Manchester, NH
  • Website: armiusa.org

America Makes: The National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute

America Makes focuses on helping the United States grow capabilities and strength in 3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing. America Makes facilitates collaboration among leaders from business, academia, nonprofit organizations and government agencies, focusing on areas that include design, materials, technology and workforce and help our nation’s three-dimensional (3D) printing industry become more globally competitive.

Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation (IACMI)

Advanced composites are currently used for expensive applications like satellites and luxury cars. Researchers at IACMI will work to develop lower-cost, higher-speed, and more efficient manufacturing and recycling processes for them. Bringing these materials down the cost curve can enable their use for a broader range of products including lightweight vehicles with record-breaking fuel economy; lighter and longer wind turbine blades; high pressure tanks for natural gas-fueled cars; and lighter, more efficient industrial equipment. The Institute will focus on lowering the overall manufacturing costs of advanced composites by 50 percent, reducing the energy used to make composites by 75 percent and increasing the recyclability of composites to over 95 percent within the next decade.

  • Founded 2014
  • Website: iacmi.org
  • Headquarters: Knoxville, TN

LIFT – Lightweight Innovations for Tomorrow

LIFT is part of a national network of research institutions and industrial companies geared toward advancing America’s leadership in manufacturing technology. The center will speed development of new lightweight metal manufacturing processes from laboratories to factories for products using lightweight metal, including aluminum, magnesium, titanium and advanced high-strength steel alloys.

MxD (The Digital Manufacturing Institute)

MxD (The Digital Manufacturing Institute), a Manufacturing USA® institute, addresses the global competitiveness challenge U.S. manufacturers face from overseas competition by accelerating the development and adoption of digital technology across manufacturing operations to positively impact the way we work.
Digital manufacturing and related design technologies connect different parts of the manufacturing life-cycle through data. That information enables organizations to make smarter, more efficient decisions and improve production times. Manufacturing innovations are connected through a digital thread – from retrofitting legacy machines with advanced cybersecurity to the use of digital models and augmented reality for enhanced productivity. MxD provides factories with the digital tools and expertise needed to build things more efficiently, more quickly, and at less cost so that U.S. manufacturers can compete for business and jobs.

CESMII (Clean Energy Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute)

The Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition (SMLC) will lead the new Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute in partnership with the Department of Energy. This coalition of nearly 200 partners from across academia, industry, and non-profits—hailing from more than thirty states—will spur advances in smart sensors and digital process controls that can radically improve the efficiency of advanced manufacturing.

  • Founded 2017
  • Website: cesmii.org
  • Headquarters: Los Angeles, CA

Clean Energy Manufacturing Innovation Institute for Reducing Embodied-energy and Decreasing Emissions in Materials Manufacturing (REMADE)

As global competition and resource scarcity increases, U.S. manufacturers will look for new solutions to help them reduce the cost of raw materials, energy, water and more by becoming more efficient and sustainable. The mission of the REMADE Institute is to not only pioneer these solutions to make U.S. manufacturing better by reducing net-energy costs and reducing costly manufacturing waste materials and emissions, but to also grow new clean-tech and clean energy businesses and jobs.

Rapid Advancement in Process Intensification Deployment (RAPID) Institute

This institute will focus on developing breakthrough technologies to boost domestic energy productivity and energy efficiency by 20 percent in five years through manufacturing processes in industries such oil and gas, pulp and paper and various domestic chemical manufacturers. Traditional chemical manufacturing relies on large-scale, energy-intensive processing. The new Institute will leverage approaches to modular chemical process intensification—for example combining multiple, complex processes such as mixing, reaction, and separation into single steps—with the goal of improving energy productivity and efficiency, cutting operating costs, and reducing waste. In the chemical industry alone, these technologies have the potential to save more than $9 billion in process costs annually.

PowerAmerica

The mission of PowerAmerica is to develop advanced manufacturing processes that will enable large-scale production of wide bandgap (WBG) semiconductors, which allow electronic components to be smaller, faster and more efficient than semiconductors made from silicon. WBG semiconductor technology has the potential to reshape the American energy economy by increasing efficiency in everything that uses a semiconductor, from industrial motors and household appliances to military satellites.

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