|
|  |
|
|
To Get in the Swing, Cooperation is the Thing
reprinted from the Manufacturing & Technology News
by Richard McCormack
Manufacturers in the United States have to find ways to work together on common problems and opportunities or they won't be able to compete with overseas rivals that are applying the benefits of collaboration, says Richard Pearson, president of the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences. "While we're spending time sorting out government/industry/university relationships, we're losing our advantage," says Pearson. "We don't have the [German] Fraunhofer Institute here. We don't have the mindset of Japan to bring things together. We need to begin thinking differently."
The 20-year-old, Ann Arbor, Mich.-based NCMS has struggled over the years to foster collaboration between companies, but it has survived and is now growing. Its membership has increased by 50 percent since Pearson came out of retirement from Ford and assumed the presidency of NCMS. "We're approaching a critical mass situation and now we're pretty comfortable," he said.
But there is a lot to do. The overall health of manufacturing sciences in the country "is not quite on life support yet, but it's ill," says Pearson. "It's ill because people have written it off. That's a dangerous thing. The 'Four-Ds' are becoming the 'Five-Ds': Manufacturing is dirty, dark, dangerous, dull and now disappearing," he says. "If people have that mindset, they're not investing their intellectual capital in it."
The United States probably isn't going to recover the manufacturing that it has lost, so it is imperative for the country to commercialize emerging technologies in nano, biomedical and hydrogen. These areas have the potential to spur a generation of innovation and industry, "so shame on us if we allow them to go someplace else," says Pearson. "The whole thing for me is uncapping the reserve of intellectual capital in this country that we are not using and that other countries are using to their advantage and to our disadvantage. The national labs, universities and manufacturing research labs are all isolated. They're all working on their own important subjects, but as a nation we're going down the tubes and other nations have found ways to bring all of these together."
Many of these new areas of potential industrial growth require a convergence of the two types of manufacturing: discrete, (the making of parts or such things as automobiles or planes), and processing (the production of chemicals, fluids or gasoline), and are therefore ripe for collaboration.
The fuel cell industry is a good example of this convergence. "Nobody is bringing them together right now," says Pearson. "How do we begin to bring people from these two industries into the convergence society? Engineers will come to the fuel cell industry from every discipline, but who will be the engineer who knows all the disciplines?"
Every company pursuing fuel cells is facing similar technical challenges, for instance in the areas of leak testing, seals and membrane testing. Yet, most of these companies hesitate before they collaborate, thinking they're going to expose their secrets to competitors. "We have to collaborate in the areas that everybody has problems with so that down the road the whole industry will benefit," says the NCMS boss. "Down the road, they're going to get used to some elements of collaboration and they will find that maybe some of their intellectual property is not as unique as they think it is and it will lend to more areas of collaboration. Our philosophy is you can always find reasons not to collaborate; anybody can do that, but let's find the areas where you can collaborate so that seed can germinate to other opportunities. What worries me with the fuel cell industry is that it's entirely possible the United States won't be leading it. That's scary and it doesn't make any sense."
NCMS believes its successful eight-year program with the Defense Department - called Commercial Technologies for Maintenance Activities (CTMA) - can be a model for projects in other industries. "We are a neutral third party and don't have a technology agenda," Pearson explains. "Our role is to take a technology need, find the best people and the best technology and put the best team together to satisfy that need. The real homerun is when we bring people in from other industries."
When companies from different industries begin working together and form alliances, they become committed advocates for this type of research activity, Pearson explains.
Environmental issues provide another opportunity for NCMS. It has started working with the Environmental Protection Agency on developing industry solutions to 'take-back' laws. Its Sustainable Product Initiative is assessing foreign regulations and industry response. These laws are changing how companies select materials and manufacture their products. "We wanted to get ahead of that so that we could get industry involved and excited about this rather than having a battle with regulators," says Pearson. "We need to come together without having to go through that war. We're just getting started on this and we're starting to see some good energy. This is a good role for NCMS as a neutral facilitator. The EPA likes the philosophy of this. Every industry could be affected by sustainability - appliances, automotive, aerospace, electronic, construction - you just go on and on and on. These regulations are happening throughout the world and if we don't think about it now, it's just going to be another reason for manufacturing to go someplace else. We have to think ahead of the wave so that we're not slapped by everybody else's tsunami of requirements."
The biggest problem NCMS faces is getting seed funding, because it is often viewed as being "corporate welfare." What those who label it as such are missing, says Pearson, "is that no one company wants to solve all of society's problems. They're willing to put a little bit in, but it will take an awful lot up front for one company to begin to solve all of these problems and if they fix them then everybody else benefits, yet they haven't put anything in from the beginning. So that's where the seed money should go: to areas where the broadest application of those technologies can be used. Society at large will benefit and then society will buy into this solution rather than calling it something it may not be."
[PRINTER FRIENDLY VERSION]
|
|
|
