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Facilities Shaping the Future of Manufacturing
December 16, 2020 | Categories: Industry News
The future of advanced manufacturing in the U.S. is being built at innovative facilities that enable experimentation in process and product development. The people and organizations at these next-generation facilities are part of a collaborative effort to remove barriers of entry and create an ecosystem to build supply chains and provide a path for the commercialization of emerging technologies.
These next-generation facilities are working on initiatives that include:
- Using advanced fiber technology to make programmable backpacks that have no wires or batteries but connect to the digital world.
- Using light instead of electronics to power cloud-based data centers, increasing the speed of transfer tenfold while drastically reducing energy use and cost.
- Extending the range of electric vehicles by reducing weight and mitigating energy loss during transfers.
This would not be possible without Manufacturing USA, a network of 16 manufacturing innovation institutes and their sponsoring federal agencies — the Departments of Commerce, Defense and Energy. Manufacturing USA was created in 2014 to secure U.S. global leadership in advanced manufacturing by connecting people, ideas, and technology.
Here’s a look at a handful of next-generation facilities supported by the institutes that are shaping the future of U.S. advanced manufacturing.