Extreme Manufacturing – What are the technology needs for long-term US Manufacturing Competitiveness?

NIST in partnership with DARPA, NSF and NASA is seeking to identify the new, long-term technology advances needed to make future US manufacturing competitive. This workshop is the first step in a series of events exploring the role of technology in America's manufacturing future.

The workshop will address the following questions:

• What are the characteristics of US manufacturing that would make manufacturing radically different and more competitive in the future than it currently is?
• What are the broad dimensions of performance that could make a big difference if pushed to extremes today?
• What long-term technology advances are needed to make these advances possible?
• What are the technological barriers to achieving these innovations?
• How can the US build and use its innovative capabilities to foster the creation and implementation of future manufacturing leadership?

Topics for this workshop will include:

• Future Intelligent Manufacturing Systems
  
• Extremely Efficient and Effective Manufacturing: Affordability and Sustainability
• Frontiers of Manufacturing Science: Self-assembly and Biomanufacturing
• The Future Manufacturing Enterprise

It is anticipated that these discussions will result in cross cutting issues that need to be addressed to create the capabilities needed in the future.

Desired outcomes from the workshop would include:

• A long-term vision of future manufacturing.
• The identification of the technologies needed to reach this vision and the roadblocks to future success.
• The identification of crosscutting and enabling R&D investments needed by the federal government to build the innovation infrastructure for successful US manufacturing enterprises.  
• A forum for interagency initiative discussions.
• The establishment of the foundation for initiating roadmaps for selective manufacturing areas. These roadmaps would encompass measurable milestones.

Themes

Extreme Manufacturing: What are the technology needs for long-term US Manufacturing Competitiveness?

• This is a first step to identify the new, long-term technology advances needed to make future manufacturing competitive in the US.
• What are the characteristics of US manufacturing that would make it radically different and more competitive in the future than it is today?
• What are the dimensions of performance (broadly speaking) that could make a big difference if pushed to extremes?
• What long-term technology advances are needed to make these new levels of performance possible?
• What are the technological barriers to achieving these innovations?
• How can the US build and use its innovative capabilities to foster the creation and implementation of future manufacturing leadership?

• The US faces increasingly global competition as other countries seek to establish prominence in advanced manufacturing and the products of the future.
• The US needs to offset the globalization of traditional manufacturing of products based on low cost volume production of commodities for creating comparative advantage in high-value product areas based on product and processes innovation and the implementation of emerging technologies  
• This workshop seeks to define and focus US priorities on providing the means to effectively develop and implement new technology-based concepts for future US manufacturing as a basis for  

• High-value jobs
• Wealth creation
• Sustained economic growth
• National security
• Sustained economic growth

Topics for the Extreme Manufacturing Workshop

 Future intelligent manufacturing systems

• Extremely agile, adaptive, responsive and robust manufacturing
• Rapid product realization: scale-up of new products based on emerging technologies and materials
• "Snap-together modular process and system modeling and simulation building blocks
• Highly integrated control of complex, precise processes throughout distributed multi-level production
• Multi-tiered intelligent and interactive collaboration environments and models

Extremely efficient and effective manufacturing: affordability and sustainability

• Exceptionally competitive-affordable customized production
• 3D printing: From prototyping to manufacturing
• Extreme improvements in usability of advanced technology for small and medium-sized manufacturers
• Designed-in sustainability for value-based enterprises
• "Condominium" approach for dynamic, modular, affordable facilities infrastructure

Frontiers of manufacturing science

• Advanced bioscience and biosystems for manufacturing
• Computational biology for process control
• Precise, high volume directed self-assembly of multi-functional nano-microsystems
• Future additive manufacturing—new ways to create durable, high-quality functional parts

The Future Manufacturing Enterprise

• Dynamic collaboration across extremely complex multi-level, reconfigurable supply chains
• Rapid engineering and production of integrated high-confidence cyber-physical products and systems
• Tightly integrated design, test, validation across vastly distributed production environments
• Potential new game-changing production paradigms:

• Digital direct manufacturing of complex products and assemblies
• Service-oriented manufacturing
• Cloud manufacturing

Industry, Academic, and Government participation needed to

• Provide the long-term vision of future manufacturing 
  
• Identify the technology needs to reach this vision and the roadblocks to overcome to ensure future success
• Inform the US public/private manufacturing community -- and stakeholders -- of the crosscutting and enabling R&D investments needed to build the innovation infrastructure for successful US manufacturing enterprises