IACMI and N.C. A&T State University Announce Key Partnership for DoD Regional Machine Tools Workforce Training Center

New ACE hub to help revitalize American manufacturing

GREENSBORO, N.C., April 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation^® (IACMI) and North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (N.C. A&T) announced today a new partnership aimed at revitalizing U.S. manufacturing with a focus on the machine tool industry. Machine tools are a foundational element of America's advanced manufacturing capabilities, which are essential to the country's national security and continued economic vitality.

The new partnership agreement, signed April 1, will advance America's Cutting Edge (ACE), a joint Department of Defense (DoD) and Department of Energy (DOE) initiative launched in 2020 to reestablish American leadership in the machine tool industry through transformative thinking, technology innovation, and workforce development. IACMI, through an agreement with DoD's Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment (IBAS) program, is leading an ACE industrial skills training program to scale workforce pipelines with a focus on machine tooling and advanced machining.

"We have a critical workforce skills gap in this country when it comes to machine tool resources," IACMI Workforce Director Ms. Joannie Harmon said. "The training component of ACE is intended to help our nation recover, advance, and sustain technical and manufacturing positions – all to enable a strong, resilient and responsive U.S. industrial base."

"Research proves that nations that design and manufacture products are far better at innovating," Ms. Adele Ratcliff, IBAS Program Director, said. "The decline in U.S. advanced manufacturing and machine tool technology and capacity has significantly impacted national and economic security. The United States must be able to conceive, design, build, and use advanced machine tools in order to produce many of the products that are used in modern society and that our country so vitally needs to defend our nation," Ms. Adele Ratcliff, IBAS Program Director, said.

According to Gardner Intelligence's 2020 World Machine Tool Report, America's capacity to design, make and use advanced machine tools has been in steady decline since the 1980s due to the migration of advanced machining and manufacturing overseas. As a result, the U.S. has not been the global leader in machine tool production since 1982. An industrial skills gap and aging workforce have led to a lack of the reliable training resources needed to produce the highly skilled and diverse workforce required to manufacture tooling and parts that serve as the essential foundation of America's manufacturing capability.

Aiming to rapidly rebuild U.S. industrial capabilities for machine tools, DoD and DoE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), along with IACMI, created ACE, a public-private partnership designed to help close the skills gap and restore American dominance in machine tool technology and innovation. Through ACE, DoD has established a regional machine tools innovation and workforce hub in Knoxville, Tennessee, bringing together the scientific expertise of ORNL's Manufacturing Demonstration Facility (MDF) and the proven workforce development capabilities of IACMI.

N.C. A&T, the nation's largest Historically Black College and University (HBCU) will become the newest home to an ACE regional machine tools workforce training and development center. The center will be housed in the Department of Applied Engineering Technology at N.C. A&T. The university will collaborate with local industry and community college partners in and around the Greensboro, North Carolina, area to implement a proven machine tool training model developed at the University of Tennessee (UT) and currently in use at UT-Knoxville and at Pellissippi State Community College. Additional ACE machine tool training centers are being planned across the U.S. as ACE partners scale up this workforce initiative.

"Industry demand for machine tool operators, engineers, designers, and entrepreneurs far outpaces our manufacturing workforce supply in the U.S.," said Dr. Aixi Zhou, Chair and Professor in the Department of Applied Engineering Technology at N.C. A&T. Dr. Zhou will serve as director of the new hub. "At North Carolina A&T, we are leveraging this opportunity with America's Cutting Edge to better serve our students and community. We stand ready to address the overall manufacturing skills gap in this country and directly bolster our nation's machine tool workforce to help DoD meet its supply chain needs. This partnership with DoD is a great opportunity for many high school and college students in the region to receive hands-on education and strengthen North America's national competitiveness in manufacturing."

The engineering technology programs at N.C. A&T provide an applied approach for engineering education with an emphasis on learning through hands-on activities, including CNC machining in its Applied Engineering Technology curriculum.

"The Piedmont Triad region plays an important role in some niche manufacturing industries, such as aerospace, automotive, bio-manufacturing and furniture," added Dr. Zhou. "As the country's largest historically black university and leading producer of African American engineers, North Carolina A&T is uniquely positioned to increase diversity in manufacturing, particularly machining."

Using advanced computing, robotics, and material design capabilities, ACE is rapidly developing innovative machine tool technologies that dramatically improve precision, efficiency and productivity, all key to restoring America's global competitiveness in the machine tool sector and, by extension, in advanced manufacturing. The ACE approach puts manufacturers at the center of its strategy.  ACE focuses on training new experts, improving cost effectiveness especially for small and medium manufacturers and machine shops, researching and developing productivity innovations, and developing partnerships to commercialize advancements.

ACE uses free online and in-person, hands-on training to connect top national experts with students and incumbent industrial workers from all backgrounds, levels of education, and work experience to catalyze awareness and interest in all facets of machining, including software development, metrology, design, operation, and entrepreneurship. To date, ACE has created and delivered free courses and bootcamp style training in the automated control of machine tools to more than 2,100 students from 49 states.

ACE is already transferring resulting technologies to U.S. machine tool manufacturers. One ACE-developed tool has saved small and medium U.S. machine tool shops more than 55,000 machine hours and $5 million in costs—with potential savings for the broader U.S. industry reaching into the billions across the roughly 30,000 machine shops in the U.S.

"To effectively produce tomorrow's machining and manufacturing professionals, we must increase awareness and instill a passion for creativity in manufacturing," added Ms. Ratcliff. "I look forward to following the progress of our newest ACE machine tool training hub at North Carolina A&T. I applaud the university for supporting the training necessary to bring machine tool prominence back to the U.S."

About North Carolina A&T State University

North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University is the nation's largest Historically Black University, as well as its top ranked (Money magazine, Best Colleges). It is a land-grant, doctoral university, classified as "high research" by the Carnegie Foundation and a constituent member of the University of North Carolina System. A&T is known for its leadership in producing graduates in engineering, agriculture, and other STEM fields. The university was founded in 1891 and is in Greensboro, North Carolina. 

About IACMI – The Composites Institute

IACMI – The Composites Institute is a 130-plus member community of industry, universities, national laboratories, and federal, state, and local government agencies working together to accelerate advanced composites design, manufacturing, technical innovation, and workforce solutions to enable a cleaner and more sustainable, more secure, and more competitive U.S. economy. IACMI is managed by the Collaborative Composite Solutions Corporation (CCS), a not-for-profit organization established by The University of Tennessee Research Foundation. A Manufacturing USA institute, IACMI is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Manufacturing Office, as well as key state and industry partners.

SOURCE IACMI - The Composites Institute