Emerging Materials Technology: Front Page
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TMS Convenes Summit on Materials and Manufacturing Innovation
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By Lynne Robinson
Posted on:
4/20/2012 12:00:00 AM...
Nearly 50 invited senior-level thought leaders representing the spectrum of materials science, engineering, and manufacturing convened in Orlando on March 14 and 15 for the 2012 TMS Materials/Manufacturing Leaders Summit. (To download the keynote presentations from this event, go to this link. on the Materials Innovation @ TMS website.)
The topic of the Summit was “The Materials Innovation Process: Transformational Opportunities and Guiding Principles,” developed in response to the June 2011 announcement of the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership—and specifically the Materials Genome Initiative (MGI)—by President Barack Obama. The White House Office of Science
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A key Summit outcome was the initial development of a set of core principles to guide collaborative efforts. (Click on images to enlarge.)
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Cyrus Wadia, assistant director, Clean Energy and Materials Research and Development, OSTP, makes a point during his keynote.
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Tom Kalil, deputy director for Policy, OSTP, offered remarks via pre-recorded video.
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Michael Idelchik, vice president, Advanced Technologies, GE Global Research, discussed a “new model of innovation”.
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and Technology Policy (OSTP) had encouraged TMS to use the Summit as a means of bringing together the materials and manufacturing communities to identify strategies for creating the innovation infrastructure necessary to support this transformative approach to materials discovery, development, and deployment. To ensure solid representation of industry leaders, TMS organized the Summit in cooperation with the U.S. Council on Competitiveness.
“Industry leadership in this effort is essential,” said Warren Hunt, TMS executive director. “The innovation tools emerging from the MGI and related initiatives will only deliver the economic benefits that they promise if industry effectively uses those tools.”
This perspective was echoed by Jack McDougle, senior vice president, Council on Competitiveness, in his remarks during the March 14 dinner that kicked off the Summit. “The image of manufacturing as dumb, dirty, dangerous, and disappearing is wrong.” he said. “Today, manufacturing is smart, safe, sustainable and surging. And, manufacturing at scale is a critical piece of the full life cycle innovation process.”
Also speaking at the dinner was Jim Phillips, chief executive officer of Nanomech and Council on Competitiveness board member. Phillips discussed his experiences in fostering innovation in various high technology industries. Wolfgang Schneider, 2012 TMS President, opened the evening, welcoming and thanking the attendees for their participation.
In his keynote presentation the next morning, Cyrus Wadia, assistant director, Clean Energy and Materials Research and Development, OSTP, provided an update on the U.S. Materials Genome Initiative. Joining him via a pre-recorded video message was Tom Kalil, deputy director for Policy, OSTP.
The second keynote, offered by Michael Idelchik, vice president, Advanced Technologies, GE Global Research, discussed a “new model of innovation” that GE began developing less than ten years ago. Illustrating his points with specific technology examples, Idelchik noted that GE’s approach to innovation combines groundbreaking materials and manufacturing processes to “open a whole new design window.”
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Panel discussions also helped provide a framework for facilitated breakout sessions in the afternoon.
(Click on images to enlarge.)
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The Summit program was designed to encourage an open sharing of experiences, ideas, and opinions.
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Informal networking opportunities were another valuable aspect of the Summit.
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Panel discussions sharing a variety of perspectives on accelerating materials and manufacturing innovation followed the keynotes.
Dennis Dimiduk, Air Force Research Laboratory, moderated the panel on innovation in the aerospace, defense, and automotive industries. Joining the discussion were: Gerould Young, Boeing; Julie Christodoulou, Office of Naval Research; John Allison, University of Michigan; Charles Kuehmann, QuesTeck Innovations; William Cassada, Alcoa; and Michael Bloor, ESI North America. General topics explored by the panel included the integration of quantitative tools, overlapping physical experiments and simulations, the development of shared databases and repositories, and the need to broaden the integrated computational materials engineering (ICME) community.
The second panel discussion, moderated by Kevin Hemker, Johns Hopkins University, examined
innovation in the energy, electronics, and consumer products industries. Participating in this group were: Dipu Pramanik, Intermolecular, Inc.; Theresa Kotanchek, Dow Chemical; Larry A. Wendling, 3M Research and Development; Ajay Malshe, NanoMech; and Enrique Lavernia, University of California, Davis. Themes covered by the group included how to achieve successful innovation, opportunities for collaboration, developing the future workforce needed to sustain innovation; and issues related to model validation.
The ideas and information presented in the morning served as the framework for an afternoon of facilitated breakout sessions focused on identifying key opportunities for accelerating the materials/manufacturing innovation process, as well as strategies for realizing those opportunities. These discussions informed the initial development of a set of shared principles to guide collaborative efforts. The outputs of these sessions are currently being compiled and will be shared broadly with all materials and manufacturing disciplines and communities in the coming months.
“Bringing together such diverse perspectives from across the manufacturing economy yielded important insights for developing a more dynamic approach to innovation,” said Hunt.
Hunt also noted that the Orlando Summit is the start of an ongoing process, coordinated by TMS, of shared learning and collaboration among the materials and manufacturing communities. Given the positive reception and outcomes of the 2012 Leaders Summit, TMS is making plans to evolve that event into a series of subsequent summits. The overarching goal of this effort is to establish a forum where diverse industry groups can identify common, pre-competitive opportunities and shared priorities in materials/manufacturing innovation, while also laying the groundwork for collaborative action that can accelerate realization of these opportunities.
Related projects, news, and announcements will be shared on the Materials Innovation @ TMS website.
Lynne Robinson is a news and feature writer with TMS.
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