Featured Image: The Manufacturing USA Innovation Institute Network (Image Source: The White House)
Earlier this week, the first White House Leadership Summit of the Manufacturing USA Innovation Institute Network was held at the White House – along with a major policy speech earlier this month by the National Economic Council (NEC) Director Brian Deese on “Executing a Modern American Industrial Strategy” and the release by the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Manufacturing USA Highlights Report 2022.
In our Opportunities for Advantage: Reshoring Manufacturing and Shortening Supply Chains analysis, we offered promising metrics garnered from recent successful manufacturing reshoring efforts in the United States. Unfortunately, the political and business press narrative (more often than not) includes the faulty conceit that reshoring manufacturing equals vast job creation. At OODA Loop, manufacturing returning to the U.S. is synonymous with the strategic growth of exponential disruptions like 3-D printing technology (additive manufacturing) and advanced manufacturing.
Stoically, pragmatically – as is our way here at OODA Loop – we operate on the realistic assessment that a new plant in the US will always include disruptive automation – with nowhere near the job creation that factories used to create as the apex of the U.S. manufacturing base and unionism began its descent (in the late 1970s) into a decades-long nadir in the U.S. On a plant-by-plant basis, additive and advanced manufacturing will create many high-skilled, high-wage jobs, but it is not a cure-all for the decades of job losses induced by decades of offshoring and outsourcing of the U.S. manufacturing and industrial base.
This is only one of many research and analysis questions we have been exploring in 2022 – questions that were top of mind when evaluating the tactical specifics and strategic vision of the White House Manufacturing USA Innovation Institute Network Summit and Director Deese’s Industrial Strategy remarks, respectively – as well as the strategic implications of the NIST report.
We will be providing an analysis of the Summit, Deese’s remarks, and the NIST report in the weeks ahead. To start, the following are the ongoing OODA Loop research questions for your consideration on “The Future of 3D Printing Technology, Additive, and Advanced Manufacturing”:
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Daniel Pereira is research director at OODA. He is a foresight strategist, creative technologist, and an information communication technology (ICT) and digital media researcher with 20+ years of experience directing public/private partnerships and strategic innovation initiatives.
