Leveraging Universities to Advance Manufacturing Innovation Through the MEP National Network

APLU and the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership (NIST MEP) are exploring how universities can develop and scale partnerships with small and medium sized manufacturers (SMMs).

One goal is to help SMMs adopt Industry 4.0 standards, which include a suite of technologies that are disrupting the manufacturing value chain.

This report provides findings from a pilot project that paired three universities with three MEP Centers. The project aimed to enhance the competitiveness of SMMs and the effectiveness of the MEP National Network in the United States by:

• Identifying and describing innovative and successful examples of collaboration between MEPs and universities with the goal of new technology adoption, particularly of Industry 4.0 technologies, by SMMs.
  
• Assessing and articulating the factors that contribute to the success of these examples.
  
• Applying the knowledge of those success factors to build tools and reference materials that can help to scale the successful examples for use by more university-SMM-MEP
  partnerships.

Findings

Partnerships between universities and MEP Centers can effectively accelerate the adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies by SMMs, provided the partnerships are designed and implemented with a focus on the needs and goals of the SMMs. While attending to those needs, keep in mind the following:

1. Establish principles of partnership. Partners must acknowledge and accommodate the divergent goals, incentives, and environments of universities, MEPs, and SMMs.
   
2. Recognize and attend to the drivers and barriers to successful partnership. The principles of partnership should address issues such as how staff will be trained, how workflow will be managed, and what communication channels will be used.
   
3. Recognize that other partners may have assets to offer the partnership. Universities are not the only institutions of higher education that can offer SMMs the opportunity to learn about, adapt, and adopt Industry 4.0 technologies.
   
4. Keep in mind the broader goal of a manufacturing sector that is efficiently employing Industry 4.0 technologies. Partnership work should focus not only on the benefits to the SMM, but also more generally on the opportunity to advance the adoption of appropriate Industry 4.0 tools across the manufacturing industry.

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