Sponsored by NSF Award Number 2036806
A Roadmap
Executive Summary
Rapid advances in artificial intelligence and computational capability have underscored the need for targeted government investment in research that advances new manufacturing capabilities to both boost national productivity and increase national security, but also assure the resilience of manufacturing supply chains to global disruption and unexpected events.
This report offers preliminary results of a roadmapping effort by the Future of Manufacturing: A Network for Cybermanufacturing in Machining project to uncover critical research needs that not only support industry initiatives to transform manufacturing and machining within their companies, but also inform consortium building efforts such as the open competition to establish a new Manufacturing USA institute focused on the use of AI to increase the resilience of US manufacturing, recently announced by the National Institute of Standards (NIST).
Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), this Future of Manufacturing project focuses on cyberphysical systems for machining and machine tools—leveraging the convergence of advances across artificial intelligence and computing to materials and metrology to identify research endeavors that would be transformative to the machining industry. Many of these same research needs and future advances are also critical to the goals of the NIST call for the new Manufacturing USA Institute on AI for resilient manufacturing.
The Future of Manufacturing project established a network of world-class industry and academic researchers and practitioners in cybermanufacturing to engage in a series of roadmapping events to create and mature a basic research roadmap for cyberphysical systems in machining and machine tools. Participants were trained in the roadmapping procedure developed at the National Center for Defense Machining and Manufacturing (NCDMM) and previously used by other Manufacturing USA Institutes and government agencies.
Machining is one of the most widely practiced of all manufacturing operations and supports virtually every economic sector and product family, either by direct manufacture of the product’s critical elements, or through fabrication of the tooling and equipment used to manufacture and distribute the product. Machining technology is a critical contributor to the vitality of the entire U.S. manufacturing economy. The overall machine tool industry captures a growing $70 billion in annual capital expenditure and has both direct and indirect resources of over $2 trillion.
Conceived as a longitudinal study, roadmapping events have been held annually from 2021 to 2024 at the International Machine Tool Show (IMTS) and North American Manufacturing Research Conference (NAMRC) in alternating years. The first roadmapping event in June 2021 took place virtually, due to COVID. Subsequent events have been convened at IMTS in 2022, NAMRC/MSEC in 2023, and IMTS in 2024.
“Democratizing” of decision-making is the driver of the proposed roadmapping effort, gathering input of diverse research topics from a broad coalition of members and synthesizing these inputs into consistent themes that can be evaluated as to their difficulty and importance for prioritization. The roadmapping activity involves the following three broad phases.
- Ideation of Research Topics. The starting point for the roadmapping process is the creation of a creative matrix defined by the intersection of research pillars and cross-cutting technologies. These creative matrices facilitate a modified brainstorming approach for identifying research topics that fall within the cells of the matrix. Allowing for flexibility, the creativity matrices that were developed for the various roadmapping events comprised some that were broad in their scope, while others allowed for “deep dives” on specific topics, notably artificial intelligence, and the scale of research projects (machine, cell, factory, globe).
- Affinity Clustering. Similar research topics generated during ideation are grouped through affinity clustering, a graphical technique used to organize large amounts of data or creative ideas into logical topic areas or themes that allow collaborators to draw insights and new ideas out of otherwise disparate pieces of information. The topic areas that emerge can be easily prioritized, and the data in the affinity clusters can be used to develop funding opportunity announcements (FOAs) or justify expenditures in different research topics.
- Difficulty/Importance Assessment. Positioning of these topic areas on a difficulty/importance quad chart allows prioritization of research topics and provides guidance for the establishment of research institutes and the funding of larger programs. Difficulty/importance charts that resulted from the accumulated results of the four Future of Manufacturing roadmapping events to date are shown in Figs. 1 and 2. A unique feature of the difficulty/importance charts is that they are derived not by individuals or specific representatives from academia or industry, but instead represent a consensus of the participants who were drawn from all groups interested in machining.
This report contains selected results of the roadmapping events to date. These results are being shared now given their relevance to current efforts to build research entities around manufacturing and artificial intelligence, including the NIST competition for a new Manufacturing USA institute.
The results of roadmapping to date represent a consensus starting strategy for research investment, as reached by academic/industry/professional society involvement.
Work under this Future of Manufacturing: A Network for Cybermanufacturing for Machining project is continuing.
Read the entire report on the NIST Website: https://www.nist.gov/system/files/documents/2024/12/12/FMNET_2024Report.pdf