Industry Connect

When President Obama announced the creation of the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute earlier this year, it signaled a new national priority to advance domestic manufacturing, create jobs, and make domestic production more competitive. Oregon State University’s School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering was tapped as a key partner with the institute.

The partnership gives the school an opportunity to share research expertise in digital manufacturing, which uses computer modeling to greatly reduce physical prototypes and testing. “If you can simulate product performance computationally, then you have higher confidence that you have the right design and can go to manufacture quickly,” said Rob Stone, head of the School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering. “Computation is cheap compared to cutting metal multiple times and going through several iterations.”

Besides the promise of helping the U.S. stay competitive, the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute is an opportunity for the College of Engineering at Oregon State to work closer with industry.

“Our involvement with industry partners on manufacturing research is really a win-win-win — for industry, who can tap our research expertise; our students, who get to participate in solving real-world problems; and our faculty, who can match industry needs to relevant curricular content,” said Stone. “It really is why we are here as a school, and it’s an exciting time to be involved with the manufacturing renaissance in the state.”

Participation in the institute is just one initiative aimed at building capacity for the manufacturing industry in Oregon and beyond. The school recently received an award from the National Science Foundation’s Industry/University Cooperative Research Centers program, which connects Oregon State with its industry partners through the Center for e-Design. The center combines industry needs with academic resources to produce more efficient, effective, and collaborative electronic design processes and tools. By engaging manufacturers, designers, engineers, consumers, and other key stakeholders, the center aims to stay on the forefront of an emerging manufacturing industry.

“Our industry involvement is engineering’s part in the land grant mission of OSU,” said Irem Tumer, associate dean for research and economic development for the College of Engineering and co-director of the OSU Center for e-Design, along with Stone. “With the talent of our graduating engineers and the research capabilities of our faculty, we are poised to make a major impact for manufacturing across the country.”

At the state level, the school is involved in getting the Northwest Collaboratory for Sustainable Manufacturing off the ground. The collaboratory is a cooperative venture among universities and industry in the Pacific Northwest that cultivates education, research, and outreach opportunities to advance the manufacturing sector in Oregon.

“There was about $1.5 million put into the initiative, the bulk of which is targeted to building research capacity at Oregon universities to support manufacturing,” Stone said.

Involved universities have been hosting a series of “roadshows” across Oregon, where they meet with manufacturing companies to understand industry challenges.

“The focus on the meetings is to conduct brainstorming sessions and listen and interact with companies about manufacturing problems they are experiencing,” said John Parmigiani, the director of industry research and outreach at the School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering. Parmigiani has been instrumental in getting the collaboratory off the ground.

Collaboratory members have met with large companies such as ESCO and Daimler Trucks in addition to smaller manufacturing companies. “Our goal is to have something that addresses the big companies’ needs but also the small and medium ones,” Parmigiani said.

The collaboratory’s next step is to identify common problems among various companies and then propose a few projects that address those problems. Participating manufacturing companies pay a membership fee that supports collaboratory projects.

The school’s involvement in national and state-level initiatives is a promising sign for manufacturing on the home front. New technologies such as digital prototyping and 3D printing allow the U.S. to remain competitive and on the cusp of new trends.

“We’re starting to see some of the manufacturing that went out to Asia come back. In some cases, the cost advantage to sending manufacturing overseas is not as significant as it used to be,” said Stone. “If we can get to the point where we leverage the digital manufacturing institute, Center for e-Design, and the collaboratory — and we can essentially be smarter about the design process and competent before we manufacture — that’s going to be our advantage.”

— Abby P. Metzger