National Academies Press: OpenBook

Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education (2023)

Chapter: 1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing

« Previous: Summary
Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×

1

Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing

The world is experiencing what has been described as the “fourth industrial revolution,” with rapid advances in manufacturing and other technologies that are expected to result in transformational changes in technological capabilities in a wide variety of areas, including defense technologies. However, realizing the full potential of these new technologies will require engineers with skillsets that are significantly different from those required in more traditional engineering

This chapter provides background and context for the remainder of the report. It defines advanced manufacturing and explains its potential for revolutionizing the manufacturing industry. It discusses the challenges to fulfill that potential associated with the current state of undergraduate engineering education. And it describes what an ideal future might look like, with engineering graduates having the skills and mindset necessary to take full advantage of advanced manufacturing technologies.

WHAT IS ADVANCED MANUFACTURING?

It is difficult to offer a precise definition of advanced manufacturing. In the most general sense, the term refers simply to manufacturing technologies at a given point in time that have been developed most recently, particularly those that have not yet been adopted widely, so the list of manufacturing

Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×

technologies that are considered advanced will change over time. Often that change happens gradually, with incremental technological improvements resulting in relatively little difference between well-established technologies and those on the cutting edge. But sometimes change comes more rapidly, with major improvements and fundamentally new capabilities appearing in a short period of time, offering tremendous potential but also tremendous challenges.

Those who study technology and manufacturing speak of four industrial revolutions that have taken place over the past three centuries.1 The first, in the 1800s, was driven by the mechanization of production using water and steam power; the resulting dramatic increase in productivity and sharp decrease in the cost of manufactured objects led to a shift from an agrarian economy to an industrial one. The second industrial revolution, from about 1870 to 1914, was rooted in the development and proliferation of electric power and other technologies, such as railroad networks, the telegraph, and eventually the telephone; one of the hallmarks of this era was the development of mass production via moving assembly lines in factories, which increased productivity and decreased costs even further. The third began in the mid-1900s with computers and other types of information technology being used to automate production; still more increases in productivity and decreases in cost followed.

The term “fourth industrial revolution” was coined by Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum, who argued that a number of new technologies are coming together to make possible a type of manufacturing and production that is fundamentally different from anything that has gone before.2 Most, if not all, of these technologies are dependent on and made possible by the exponential increases in computing power and memory over the past several decades. The technologies that Schwab identified as underpinning the fourth industrial revolution, including artificial intelligence, advanced robotics, gene editing, and additive manufacturing (three-dimen-

___________________

1 K. Schwab, 2015, “The Fourth Industrial Revolution: What It Means and How to Respond,” Foreign Affairs December 12, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/world/fourth-industrial-revolution; K. Schwab, 2016, “The Fourth Industrial Revolution: What It Means, How to Respond,” World Economic Forum, January 14, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-what-it-means-and-how-to-respond.

2 Ibid.

Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×

sional [3D] printing),3 tend to blur the lines separating digital and physical (and biological) realms.4 This cyberphysical information-based industrial revolution is proceeding much more rapidly and with much broader impact than the previous industrial transformations, Schwab argues, that “the breadth and depth of these changes herald the transformation of entire systems of production, management, and governance.”5

In the context of the fourth industrial revolution, advanced manufacturing can be defined as manufacturing techniques and technologies with a certain suite of characteristics. First, it consists of newly developed approaches that are improvements over traditional methods and are not yet widely adopted. Most advanced manufacturing technologies today are highly digitized, producing products designed using digital tools, often simulated and/or tested digitally, and manufactured with computer-controlled equipment that follows the digital design and incorporates digital feedback. A “digital thread” of data and control information flows through manufacturing processes, created and verified by software tools, interpreted as control information for physical processes such as machining.

As with the first three industrial revolutions, the fourth promises to make it possible to increase productivity and decrease the costs of many products, but its potential goes far beyond cost and efficiency. One result, for instance, will be a dramatic increase in the ability to customize products, with the possibility of producing small batches or even making individual items to a customer’s specification at an affordable cost.6 For example, customized parts made with additive manufacturing are used for orthopedic and dental implants and in prosthetics. Often additive manufacturing dramatically simplifies the manufacturing process and the number of manufacturing

___________________

3 Some feel that the terms “3D printing” and “additive manufacturing” are equivalent labels for processes that create objects by adding material. For others, 3D printing refers to a subset of additive manufacturing in which material is added in a sequence of layers, as in stereolithography, where a light beam is steered over a vat of polymer to polymerize (solidify) a two-dimensional (2D) region on top of previously solidified material. Other additive manufacturing techniques, such as selective laser sintering and electron-beam melting, can also be viewed as adding material in layers. But some extrude material from a nozzle that is steered to sites to deposit new material on an object; the deposits may or may not occur in layers.

4 K. Schwab, 2017, The Fourth Industrial Revolution, New York: Crown Business.

5 K. Schwab, 2015, “The Fourth Industrial Revolution: What It Means and How to Respond,” Foreign Affairs December 12, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/world/fourth-industrial-revolution.

6 The Economist, 2012, “The Third Industrial Revolution,” The Economist, April 21, https://www.economist.com/leaders/2012/04/21/the-third-industrial-revolution.

Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×

steps required to achieve a finished product. Rocket Lab, for example, has produced over 300 rocket motors with 3D printing of materials that can withstand extreme heat and stress (see Figure 1-1).

Advanced Manufacturing in the Aerospace Industry

The types of techniques and technologies that make up advanced manufacturing will vary from industry to industry. For example, manufacturing of pharmaceuticals, automobiles, aircraft, and integrated circuits use different technologies. Given that this report focuses on advanced manufacturing in the defense industrial base, it is useful to get a sense of some of the specific

Image
FIGURE 1-1 3D-printed rocket motor by Rocket Lab, produced in Long Beach, California. As of September 2022, more than 300 had been produced, most of them have flown successfully on Rocket Lab rockets.
SOURCE: Rocket Lab, “Rutherford Engine,” rocketlabusa.com, accessed September 30, 2022. Courtesy of Rocket Lab USA.
Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×

advanced manufacturing technologies that are important in that sector. This section focuses on one particular example and examines the various roles played by advanced manufacturing in the construction of the F-35 at the Lockheed Martin plant in Fort Worth, Texas.

For many years through the late 20th century and into the 21st, advanced manufacturing was mainly associated with the extensive automation used in automobile, electronics, and appliance industries. In the aerospace industry, by contrast, manufacturing automation was slow to develop because of the relatively low rates of production and large capital costs. Instead, the one defining technology that spurred advanced manufacturing technology in aerospace was the creation and consumption of 3D models, sometimes called the “digital thread,” beginning in the 1980s. The term refers to the creation and use of digital representations of designs on the engineering flow from concept to design, manufacturing, assembly, and other steps throughout the product life cycle (see Figure 1-2).

Additive manufacturing (see Box 1-1) depends on the digital thread to specify the components to fabricate. For aerospace (and other) products, digital threads involve models that are created in the design process and then used in manufacturing as the digital targets for automation and metrology applications and also for sustainment functions during the product’s period of use. The digital thread enables a variety of advanced manufacturing technologies, including robots and automation, additive manufacturing, advanced metrology, augmented reality, robotic application of coatings, equipment specialized for a product (e.g., drilling airframe components for fasteners), and optical projection using augmented reality to guide assembly, as well as robotic delivery systems that pick and deliver materials in aerospace and other factories (see Figure 1-2). Its development has led to increased use of modeling and simulation in design and manufacturing, the use of advanced inspection technologies, and the ability to use models for direct numerical-control programming and robotic assembly.

Many of the advanced manufacturing techniques used in cutting-edge aerospace manufacturing places are enabled by the digital thread. For example, it makes possible the robotic coating systems that provide the accuracy and control necessary for coatings on sophisticated aerospace products like the F-35. Digital design specifications facilitated the creation of a technology called optical projection, whereby engineering data are projected onto parts and assemblies, making it possible to accurately locate such things as fasteners and holes; this is significantly more efficient than using drawings and manually labeling the holes using a pencil. Mixed-reality techniques, a form

Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×
Image
FIGURE 1-2 The digital thread.
NOTE: Assy, assembly; NC, numerical control.
SOURCE: D.A. Kinard, 2019, “F-35 Digital Thread and Advanced Manufacturing,” pp. 161–182 in The F-35 Lightning II: From Concept to Cockpit, J.W. Hamstra, ed., Volume 257, Reston, VA: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×
Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×

of virtual reality, are used to help workers route and install wiring harnesses in the aircraft. Digital models are also used in 3D inspection technologies, such as structured light and laser scanning, which can be used to validate that an item has been built to specifications. One particularly convenient use in the construction of the F-35 is to inspect bracket locations prior to the assembly of large bulkheads to prevent downstream issues during system installations. Although it is currently used only intermittently during fabrication and assembly, it will eventually be used to provide real-time inspection monitoring during complex assemblies.

Digital threads play a role in robotics, which is finding its way into aerospace manufacturing even with the industry’s typically low rates of production. In one segment of F-35 production, for example, countersinking robots use digital geometry data to roughly locate the desired holes and then use an advanced metrology system to locate the center of the hole and provide a tightly controlled countersink depth.

The digital revolution is also enabling the use of augmented reality in aerospace manufacturing. In one application, augmented reality is used to aid workers in installing wiring harnesses, a challenging task because of complex 3D routing geometries. Other advanced manufacturing technologies used by aerospace companies include automated fiber placement for composites, advanced machining to tightly control part and assembly tolerances and reduce assembly costs, automated material kitting and delivery to the production floor, and modeling and simulation technologies to lay out the factories of the future, simulate product build to reduce issues during actual assembly operations, and accurately develop cost, span, staffing, and manufacturing plans.

The bottom line is that advanced manufacturing technologies hold tremendous potential for revolutionizing industries in the U.S. defense industrial base and, indeed, many others as well. Use of the digital thread opens up many possibilities for rapid development and prototyping, exquisite control of robotic operations, and quality control via comparing measured outcomes with the digital model. And additive manufacturing opens the door to the rapid and cost-effective production of complex parts in small batches as well as making possible the creation of items that would not be feasible to build with traditional methods.

But advanced manufacturing comes with a major challenge as well: Because the technologies are new and rapidly evolving, taking full advantage of them will require engineers with the proper training and mindset, but most U.S. undergraduate engineering education is geared more toward the

Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×

technologies of the past than to those of the future. The next section examines some of the weaknesses of U.S. undergraduate engineering education in terms of what is required for advanced manufacturing, particularly in the defense industrial base.

CHALLENGES TO FULFILLING THE POTENTIAL OF ADVANCED MANUFACTURING

As Schwab observed in his 2015 article, the complex, rapidly evolving, and customizable nature of the technologies that the fourth industrial revolution is bringing creates great demands on the skills and adaptability of those developing and operating the technologies. “I am convinced of one thing,” he wrote, “that in the future, talent, more than capital, will represent the critical factor of production.”7 Unfortunately, an examination of the current state of U.S. undergraduate engineering education indicates that the nation is not producing the engineers necessary to ensure that advanced manufacturing can reach its full potential.

Engineering education has evolved over time, generally in response to changes in technology.8 Through the 1800s, for instance, the education of engineers in the United States focused mostly on practical skills, such as shop and foundry skills and manufacturing tasks. Then in the first half of the 20th century, as engineering practices became more standardized and scientific knowledge played an increasing role in design, engineering education began placing more emphasis on theory and science and less on practice. The professionalization and standardization of engineering education was driven in large part by the Engineers’ Council for Professional Development, established in 1932 and in 1980 renamed the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (now, since 2005, ABET). Over time, the focus on analysis and theory in engineering education was supplemented by more hands-on and project-based learning, along with a change in focus from prescribing required courses to achieving necessary student outcomes.9

___________________

7 K. Schwab, 2015, “The Fourth Industrial Revolution: What It Means and How to Respond,” Foreign Affairs December 12, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/world/fourth-industrial-revolution.

8 National Academy of Engineering, 2017, Engineering Technology Education in the United States, Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, https://doi.org/10.17226/23402.

9 ABET Engineering Accreditation Commission, 2021, “I. General Criteria for Baccalaureate Level Programs,” In 2022–2023 Criteria for Accrediting Engineering Programs, Baltimore, MD, https://www.abet.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/2022-23-EAC-Criteria.pdf.

Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×

Many of the changes in engineering education in recent decades have undoubtedly been for the better, and the graduates of U.S. undergraduate engineering programs are highly skilled and competent in many areas. But gaps remain. One of the largest—and the main concern of this report10—is that most of today’s undergraduate engineering students are provided with very little, if any, knowledge or understanding of manufacturing.11 Manufacturing topics are offered predominantly as electives, and advanced manufacturing topics are typically not integrated into the curriculum at the undergraduate level.12 Furthermore, while opportunities exist for undergraduate students to learn about manufacturing through participation in extracurricular activities (e.g., involving racing cars, rockets), these activities are often limited to only a small fraction of students.13 Similarly, while capstone design projects and certain lab courses introduce students to basic manufacturing, they are limited in scope and rarely extend beyond prototyping. One result of this is that manufacturing has not been presented to undergraduate students as a viable career path; instead, students’ impression of manufacturing is often that it is a dirty environment (and may even be perceived as a “low-tech” field).

Many factors have contributed to this general failure to teach undergraduate engineering students about manufacturing, but one underlying factor is particularly important in the context of this report: Mechanical engineering curricula appear to assume slowly changing manufacturing technologies that allow design and realization to be effectively separated: a design engineer’s education can focus on the principles and techniques involved in creating effective designs, while on-the-job learning from colleagues will provide local manufacturing know-how. Even “design for manufacturing” is focused more on the economic implications of designs than on the manufacturing technologies used to realize them. Given this perspective, it makes sense to focus undergraduate engineering education on the general principles involved in creating effective designs, with the understanding that, once

___________________

10 This report is the result of a study sponsored by the Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment (IBAS) Program at the Department of Defense. The statement of task and work plan are in Appendix A.

11 G.A. Harris, 2021, “Engineering Education and Advanced Manufacturing,” presentation to the committee, December 2, Washington, DC: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

12 K. Ward, 2022, “SME Insights: Manufacturing Integration into Engineering Education,” presentation to the committee, January 27, Washington, DC: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

13 Ibid.

Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×

they go to work for a particular employer, engineering graduates will be able to pick up what they need to know about the specific requirements of that manufacturing setting.

It is arguable that such an assumption may have made sense 10 or 20 years ago. At that point, manufacturing was in a relatively stable phase where although improvements were regularly being made, they were the sorts of incremental improvements that did not change the overall nature of manufacturing. Thus, it may have been possible to put forth sets of design principles rooted in how manufacturing was done at the time, teach those principles, and have a reasonable expectation that engineering students using those principles could develop effective designs for manufacture. And, indeed, the ABET standards adhered to by most of the nation’s engineering programs assume a mature, stable situation, reflecting the fact that manufacturing has been mostly stable for the past several decades.

That is changing now, however, as advanced manufacturing techniques have the potential to radically change how companies approach the production of manufactured goods. The application of these new techniques will allow for the introduction of new efficiencies in production and manufacture of new designs that are not practical or possible with existing technologies. But taking advantage of this potential requires the development of engineers who are skilled in creating designs tailored to advanced manufacturing techniques as well as traditional manufacturing methods, and the current failure to consistently address advanced manufacturing in undergraduate engineering education is limiting the nation’s ability to harness advanced manufacturing to grow the U.S. economy. Note that because advanced manufacturing technologies permit many new kinds of products to be produced, it is not only “manufacturing engineers” who must adapt, but many kinds of engineers who conceive problem solutions, design components, develop materials and structures, invent new materials, and so forth.

Unfortunately, despite the growing importance of introducing undergraduate engineering students to manufacturing—and to advanced manufacturing in particular—there has been little movement in this direction in the U.S. university system. One result is that manufacturing topics are often offered only as electives to undergraduate engineering students, and even those undergraduates who choose to take manufacturing electives typically do not learn about advanced or smart manufacturing, which are normally offered only at the graduate level.

Furthermore, while “realization” is mentioned in the ABET standards under Engineering Education, there is no mention of the associated manu-

Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×

facturing knowledge, skillsets, technologies, processes, or tools that are necessary to actually realize a design. Finally, although engineers going into manufacturing need to be comfortable working with those in other disciplines and jobs, engineering undergraduates have relatively few opportunities to develop such collaborative skills, since engineering disciplines are siloed and there are limited cross-program collaborations and learning opportunities.

A request for information by the study committee shows that only 28 percent of the respondents from academia commented positively that the ABET assessment criteria include advanced manufacturing knowledge or skills as objectives or outcomes.14 While most in academia consider advanced manufacturing to be an important topic, they also express the concern that the engineering curricula are already packed solid, leaving little room for adding new content such as advanced manufacturing. Instead, most schools offer a single manufacturing course as part of their required courses, with advanced manufacturing topics typically offered as electives in a structured way to serve as a link between the BS degree and corresponding 3+2 and 4+1 MS programs. Typical elective courses include smart and intelligent manufacturing, additive manufacturing, manufacturing processes, materials (micro and nano) in manufacturing, design for manufacturing, industry automation (Factory 4.0), and mechatronics and robotics.

Compounding the problems caused by the lack of exposure to manufacturing in undergraduate engineering education is the fact that colleges and universities are generally disconnected from manufacturing (and other) workforce education, as well as disinvestment by government and employers.15 There is also a lack of fundamental integration between industry, academia, and government in manufacturing. Findings of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine study also show that U.S. manufacturing productivity is at historically low levels, with the United States losing one-third of its manufacturing workforce from 2000 to 2010.16 The study notes that a new model for workforce development is needed—one

___________________

14 Details of the request for information are in Appendix C.

15 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), 2021, DoD Engagement with Its Manufacturing Innovation Institutes: Phase 2 Study Final Report, Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, https://doi.org/10.17226/26329.

16 Since the 2021 NASEM report DoD Engagement with Its Manufacturing Innovation Institutes, the manufacturing workforce has recovered somewhat. See Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2020, “Forty Years of Falling Manufacturing Employment,” Chart 1 in Beyond the Numbers: Employment & Unemployment 9(16):November, https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-9/forty-years-of-falling-manufacturing-employment.htm.

Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×

that prepares manufacturing engineers as technologists (not just technicians) with the ability to design, operate, maintain, and manage manufacturing systems in order to correct the continued decline in manufacturing jobs, which could otherwise lead to social disruption related to decline in the U.S. middle class.

The current failure to include manufacturing as a regular aspect of undergraduate engineering education hurts the U.S. manufacturing sector in a number of ways. The most obvious is a shortfall in the number of engineering graduates choosing to go into manufacturing.

The shortage of engineering graduates with an understanding of manufacturing—and of advanced manufacturing—is a particular problem for small and medium-sized manufacturing firms. Because these newly minted engineers did not learn enough about manufacturing during schooling, they must be provided with significant on-the-job training to bring them to the point where they can make significant contributions in their new careers. This is not a major problem for large manufacturers, such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, or General Dynamics, which have their own in-house training for engineers, but it is a significant challenge for smaller manufacturers. These companies often cannot afford in-house training programs, and while new engineering hires entering these companies can learn from fellow employees about machines that have been around for 20 years, there may be no one to teach them about advanced manufacturing techniques. The result is that many smaller manufacturing firms really struggle to adopt advanced manufacturing approaches.

A separate issue is that engineering graduates who have not been trained in advanced manufacturing techniques are not likely to be able to take full advantage of the potential for new approaches and designs opened up by advanced manufacturing. Because this is an area that is still growing and evolving, there is no “bible” for how to use advanced manufacturing technologies or what sorts of items can be made with them. Instead, it is an area ripe for exploration and innovation. But such exploration and innovation require a fundamentally different mindset from engineers than working with well-established manufacturing technologies whose capabilities and limitations are well understood; instead of focusing simply on design, engineers exploring the potential of advanced manufacturing need to see their jobs as spanning both design and realization. Advanced manufacturing engineers will also need an understanding of the principles underlying advanced manufacturing technologies and the advanced materials that they use and produce. And finally, because these new technologies and materials are too

Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×

complex for any one person to have a complete understanding, an engineer must be willing and able to collaborate with others, such as the technicians who operate the equipment and know its capabilities intimately. As long as U.S. universities fail to produce engineers with these capabilities, it will be impossible to fully realize the potential of advanced manufacturing.

INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

Vital and modern U.S. manufacturing is a national security objective of the U.S. government and especially of the Department of Defense (DoD), which has a long history of monitoring and supporting the defense industrial base (DIB). The struggles of U.S. manufacturing, especially with the offshoring of innovative and critical technologies, have prompted study and compensating government investment for more than a decade (see Box 1-2). Although “education and workforce development” are only one aspect of the problem, they have been the target of large investments (e.g., as part of the mission of the Manufacturing USA institutes).17 While manufacturing workforce concern is usually focused on skilled technicians, the challenge of developing, adopting, and optimizing new technologies such as advanced manufacturing also requires engineers with new skills to capture the innovations’ benefits. For this reason, the study committee was charged with recommending ways that undergraduate engineering education could better serve the DIB, its supply chain vendors, and U.S. manufacturing as a whole.18

At the initiation of the committee’s study, John L. Anderson, president of the National Academy of Engineering, said, “This is an opportunity for industry, academia, and government to come together for the purpose of generating and integrating ideas about advanced manufacturing and formulating methods to effectively introduce these ideas into engineering curricula in both the undergraduate and the graduate level.”

Adele Ratcliff of DoD’s Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment Program observed that the study was formulated to address a particular question: “Which is the enabler to innovation? Is it the manufacturing process, or is it the precursor of what people call the technology itself?” She went on to argue that today the enabler is likely manufacturing processes and that U.S. engineering programs have not kept pace with them. That was a key question

___________________

17 Manufacturing USA, “Homepage,” https://www.manufacturingusa.com, accessed September 25, 2022.

18 The study’s statement of task and work plan are reprinted in Appendix A.

Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×

being asked of the workshop attendees, she said: Have engineering programs kept pace with the growing importance of manufacturing processes, and, if not, what should those programs look like? “The gap between an idea for a product and the successful production of that product—that is, the manufacturing step—is often referred to as the ‘valley of death,’” she said, because good ideas often fail to be transformed into viable products. However, she continued, “I do not view that as the valley of death. I view that as a valley of opportunity. That is where we convert our ideas to reality—through that manufacturing process. But what will it take to restore the manufacturing capabilities and leadership that the United States has lost in recent decades, and how can U.S. engineering programs contribute to that restoration? Those are the questions that the workshop should address.”

Because of the nature of defense manufacturing, much of the engineering and manufacturing technology in the DIB Tier 1 original equipment

Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×

manufacturers (OEMs) such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon has remained strong. Lockheed Martin developed and applied a plethora of advanced manufacturing technologies for the F-35 production line, including advanced robotics, noncontact metrology, optical projection, augmented reality, and additive manufacturing.19

Much of the strength in the DIB is due to the classified nature of DIB products, the DoD requirements for “Made in America” content, lobbying by states for defense dollars, and generous funding levels for the defense industry for research and development as well as the production of defense articles. However, this engineering development focus is somewhat diluted by the drive for manufacturing cost savings to retain profitability and affordability, which is in turn driven by Congress and the taxpayers. The history of the F-16 program is a good study in this transition. In the early 1980s, when the F-16 program was building 25 aircraft per month, manufacturing was vertically integrated and General Dynamics internally produced most of the airframe components (machined parts, tubes, wiring, composites) and designed and assembled most of the fuel, hydraulic, environmental control system, and so on in conjunction with suppliers. In addition, foreign allies such as Israel, Greece, Korea, and Belgium produced components such as wings and center and aft fuselages. Foreign offsets are normal for the defense business, where countries expect to receive manufacturing jobs to incentivize purchases of American defense products. However, during declining F-16 production rates in the 1990s, in an effort to maintain profitability and affordability with the decreasing production rates, most detail and subassembly manufacturing was offloaded to suppliers with lower labor and overhead rates, while General Dynamics focused on assembly, test, and delivery. In some cases, items were offloaded to low-labor-rate countries such as Mexico in a never-ending drive for cost savings to maintain profitability and keep the cost of the aircraft attractive. This trend, prevalent in the DIB as well as commercial manufacturing, reflects the differing motivations between American industry and that of other Western countries, which typically focus on jobs as part of their social democratic philosophies while U.S. industry focuses on shareholder value.

In spite of the manufacturing offshoring, the capability for the DIB to engineer advanced products has remained strong. Lockheed Martin, for example, employs nearly 60,000 scientists and engineers, a small percentage

___________________

19 D.A. Kinard, 2019, “F-35 Digital Thread and Advanced Manufacturing,” pp. 161–182 in The F-35 Lightning II: From Concept to Cockpit, J.W. Hamstra, ed., vol. 257, Reston, VA: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×

of whom are involved with manufacturing of advanced products. Large DIB contractors such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman and other large OEM contractors hire sufficient numbers of engineers (thousands each, annually) from many disciplines and, because of their extensive manufacturing facilities, can also hire or train engineers to support manufacturing operations.

However, lower-tier DIB contractors that supply to the large OEM and Tier 1 suppliers and hire only a few engineers per year may be affected by those engineers’ lack of manufacturing knowledge as well as the lack of resources or expertise to train them internally. In addition to being suppliers of parts and components, these lower-tier suppliers are the proving ground for the development of advanced manufacturing technologies used by the Tier 1 companies. Likewise, they are a key focus of the DIB Tier 1s for cost savings because the supply chain constitutes the majority of the cost for the OEMs in their defense products. The lower-tier suppliers are constantly squeezed for cost reductions, leading to offshoring, while their investments are also constricted by short-term profitability considerations.

Large DIB OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers also have specialized advanced manufacturing technology organizations that seek out and develop manufacturing technologies for implementation in current and future products. These organizations serve to develop new technologies and train new engineers for advanced manufacturing careers. But advanced manufacturing technologies such as robotics, automation, additive manufacturing, metrology, and advanced machining equipment, in addition to sophisticated integrated circuits and many other electronic components, are typically sourced from foreign suppliers.

This study issued a request for information from DIB and supply chain companies to sketch the manufacturing problems they face and their expectations for graduates of undergraduate engineering programs (see Appendix C).

ENVISIONING THE FUTURE

What would a future in which the potential of advanced manufacturing could be broadly realized look like? What would engineers be able to do, and what would their roles be? A clear picture of that future can help direct today’s efforts to prepare the U.S. engineering workforce.

Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×

First, the engineers of the ideal future will be familiar with the various technologies used in advanced manufacturing so that they can design for them, improve them, deploy them in factories, integrate them in factory automation systems, and so forth. New manufacturing technologies are being developed at an unprecedented rate, but it does a company little good to have access to them if it does not have engineers capable of designing for it. Again, this may not be a problem for larger manufacturing companies, which have the resources to train their engineers about new capabilities, but it can make it impossible for small and medium-sized companies to take advantage of the potential of advanced manufacturing. Thus, in the ideal future, engineering graduates will enter the workforce having at least a basic familiarity with the most important advanced manufacturing technologies and know how to keep up to date with new developments.

This familiarity is part of a larger competence that is often overlooked in today’s undergraduate engineering education: knowledge about what happens in a manufacturing plant and how that affects engineering decisions. Thus, future engineers should be versed in manufacturing in general and familiar with the basic principles underlying design for manufacturing.

Second, future engineers will be comfortable communicating and collaborating with technicians and others in the manufacturing arena. Advanced manufacturing technologies are too complex and changing too rapidly for any one person to be conversant with every aspect of them, so engineers will have to work with not only other engineers but also with the technicians and others who are responsible for operating the technologies. Traditionally much of engineering education has focused on well-developed technologies with widely accepted best practices where there are clear “right answers” to design problems and a competent engineer can come up with a workable design on his or her own. That will not work with advanced manufacturing technologies, whose complexity and rapid evolution make it essential for engineers to work as part of teams of people who bring different knowledge sets and capabilities to the table.

Finally, the engineers of the ideal future will be explorers and boundary pushers who have the temperament, the knowledge, and the skillsets to expand what is possible to do with advanced manufacturing technologies. Because those technologies are new, powerful, and evolving, they offer boundless possibilities for creating items that are not possible to make with existing technologies or for making existing items in new and more efficient ways. Taking advantage of this potential will make very different demands on engineers than the more traditional tasks of developing designs for cre-

Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×

ation by well-understood manufacturing methods. To push the boundaries of advanced manufacturing by finding new techniques and approaches, engineers will need an understanding of fundamental engineering principles (including the science behind the technologies), knowledge of modern software tools, familiarity with advanced manufacturing technologies, and willingness to try new things—and sometimes fail—in order to advance the state of the art.

Having a sufficient supply of engineers with these capabilities in the future will go far in ensuring that the country can realize the potential of advanced manufacturing both in the defense industrial base and in the manufacturing sector in general.

The remainder of the report sketches out actions that will need to be taken by academia, industry, and government to ensure that the country’s undergraduate engineers programs produce such engineers in the coming years.

Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×
Page 7
Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×
Page 8
Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×
Page 9
Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×
Page 10
Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×
Page 11
Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×
Page 12
Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×
Page 13
Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×
Page 14
Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×
Page 15
Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×
Page 16
Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×
Page 17
Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×
Page 18
Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×
Page 19
Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×
Page 20
Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×
Page 21
Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×
Page 22
Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×
Page 23
Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×
Page 24
Suggested Citation:"1 Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26773.
×
Page 25
Next: 2 Revising the Undergraduate Engineering Program »
Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education Get This Book
×
Buy Paperback | $23.00 Buy Ebook | $18.99
MyNAP members save 10% online.
Login or Register to save!
Download Free PDF

Cutting-edge technologies are reshaping manufacturing in the United States and around the world, with applications from medicine to defense. If the United States wants to further build upon these new innovations, the next generation of engineers must be trained to work in advanced manufacturing from the undergraduate level and beyond.

Infusing Advanced Manufacturing into Undergraduate Engineering Education examines advanced manufacturing techniques for the defense industry and explores how undergraduate engineering programs can better develop advanced manufacturing capabilities in the workforce. This report discusses how industry can contribute to engineering programs and the role that government can play by including undergraduate engineering students in their manufacturing initiatives. The report gives specific guidance on ways to incorporate experiential learning emphasizing advanced manufacturing and strengthen ties between academia, industry, and government through mentoring and internship programs.

  1. ×

    Welcome to OpenBook!

    You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website.

    Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features?

    No Thanks Take a Tour »
  2. ×

    Show this book's table of contents, where you can jump to any chapter by name.

    « Back Next »
  3. ×

    ...or use these buttons to go back to the previous chapter or skip to the next one.

    « Back Next »
  4. ×

    Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book.

    « Back Next »
  5. ×

    Switch between the Original Pages, where you can read the report as it appeared in print, and Text Pages for the web version, where you can highlight and search the text.

    « Back Next »
  6. ×

    To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter.

    « Back Next »
  7. ×

    Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email.

    « Back Next »
  8. ×

    View our suggested citation for this chapter.

    « Back Next »
  9. ×

    Ready to take your reading offline? Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available.

    « Back Next »
Stay Connected!