Toyota Motor Corporation recently announced a five-year, $1 billion investment in robotics and artificial intelligence R&D in the U.S. Under the plan, a headquarters for the effort will be located near Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA with a second location near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA. Dr. Gill Pratt, former program director at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will lead the effort.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced a recompetition of Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) centers in 12 states and Puerto Rico including: Alabama, Arkansas, California, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Utah, and Vermont.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) is conducting three regional forums on the proposed recompetition of MEP Centers in 11 states and Puerto Rico. The regional forums are intended to provide interested entities more information about the MEP program, the federal funding opportunity and answers to any questions regarding the funding announcement prior to its targeted release of January 2016.

Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy recently announced the launch of a manufacturing apprenticeship program that will provide wage subsidies and tuition reimbursement to participating students. The effort will begin as a two-year, $7.8 million initiative, focused on advanced manufacturing industries, including aerospace, medical devices, composite materials, digital manufacturing and others. Funding will derive from the state’s Manufacturing Innovation Fund.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the next steps of his administration’s Nano Utica initiative, an effort to revitalize the Mohawk Valley regional economy through nanotechnology innovation.

Six states received A's for the health of their manufacturing sector in a new study from Ball State University (BSU) – Conexus Indiana 2015 Manufacturing and Logistics National Report.

The Department of Energy (DOE) announced it will commit up to $70 million in funding for the Manufacturing Innovation Institute for Smart Manufacturing to support R&D efforts to develop, demonstrate, and transition to industry advanced sensing, instrumentation, monitoring, control, and process optimization as well as modeling and simulation technologies for industrial automation. The Innovation Institute on Smart Manufacturing will be the third DOE-funded facility as part of President Obama’s National Network for Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI) institutes.

While speaking in Detroit last week, Vice President Joe Biden announced the creation of an Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation (IAMCI)  location in Detroit, aimed at creating better composite materials for wind turbines, compressed gas storage, and in particular, the automotive industry. Funded by the U.S.

Economic conditions across the country continue to improve, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ (BEA) latest release of gross state product (GSP) data. GSP is derived as the sum of the gross domestic product originating in all the industries in a state. The period between 2008 and 2009, where the U.S. GDP decreased by 2 percent, marked a transition for many states, where their gross state product either decreased from the year before or where their growth rate was subdued.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released a new Federal Funding Announcement (FFA) to award its first national manufacturing innovation institute (NMII). Proposers may solicit a new NMII on any advanced manufacturing technology focus area not already addressed by another institute or competition.

While the Department of Commerce’s (DOC) Economic Development Administration (EDA) continues to take steps to implement the Federal Loan Guarantees for Innovative Technologies in Manufacturing (ITM) program, additional steps remain before they can issue loan guarantees according to a new report from the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $60 million in funding for its largest-ever cohort of university-based Industrial Assessment Centers (IACs) to assist small- and medium-sized manufacturers in reducing their carbon emissions and lowering energy costs.

The White House has released reviews from the Departments of Commerce, Energy, Defense, and Health and Human Services in response to the president’s Executive Order on “America’s Supply Chains.” Vulnerabilities in supply chains were assessed in four key product areas: semiconductor manufacturing and advanced packaging; large capacity batteries; critical mineral and materials; and, pharmaceuticals and advanced pharm

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has announced a new competition for awards to support industry-driven consortia in developing technology roadmaps that will address high-priority research challenges to grow the advanced manufacturing sector in the U.S. and is inviting applications to its Manufacturing USA Technology Roadmap (MfgTech) grants program.

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) awarded $3.7 million total in federal funding across nine grant recipients to establish MBDA Advanced Manufacturing Centers, Export Centers, and a Federal Procurement Center.

The U.S. Department of Energy announced a request for information (RFI) to help inform the creation of a new Clean Energy Manufacturing Institute focused on industrial decarbonization.

The Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation revealed the awardees from its second round of the Defense Manufacturing Community Support Program this week. The office awarded $5 million to each of five organizations to lead partnerships that will strengthen defense manufacturing and related supply chains. The five awards are listed below and available on the office’s website:

More than 40 percent of Indiana’s manufacturing companies successfully implemented Industry 4.0 technologies in 2021, more than doubling the number that had reported that a year earlier, according to a recent Conexus Indiana report. The advanced manufacturing and logistics (AML) industries are considered the backbone of Indiana’s economy. Indiana manufacturers account for more than $100 billion of the state’s economy and employ 17 percent of the state’s workforce.

The NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP), a national public-private partnership initiative within the US.

An MOU between the Korean Institute for Advancement of Technology, the Korean Battery Industry Association, the Korean Electronics Technology Institute, and the NAATBatt Association, aims to bring Korean battery manufacturers to the U.S.

Last fall, the United States International Trade Commission (USITC) issued its report on the distributional effects of trade and trade policy on under-represented and under-served communities. The report, which had been requested in 2021 by the U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Katherine Tai, found a disparity in wage and employment among manufacturing workers by race and gender resulting from changes in trade policy.

A recent project from the National Bureau of Economic Research used data from the Annual Survey of Manufactures to study the characteristics and geography of investments in robots across U.S. manufacturing establishments and find whether it revealed any impact on the economy. The team found that robotics adoption and intensity is more closely related to the size of the establishment than it is to its age. The study presents results on the distribution of robots in U.S.

The Department of Energy (DOE) announced today that they are seeking proposals for a new Clean Energy Manufacturing Institute, a part of the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI). The $70 million Modular Chemical Process Intensification Institute will focus on developing breakthrough technologies that increase the energy efficiency of manufacturing processes used across an array of U.S. industries.

The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) released a notice of intent to establish and sustain a Clean Energy
Manufacturing Innovation Institute for Reducing Embodied-Energy and Decreasing Emissions (REMADE) in materials manufacturing. The $70 million funding opportunity
will be released in June to enable the development and widespread deployment of key industrial platform technologies that will dramatically reduce life-cycle

Last week, the Department of Defense announced the launch of the eighth institute in the National Network of Manufacturing and Innovation (NNMI) in Cambridge, MA. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology will spearhead the consortium of 89 manufacturers, universities and nonprofits to develop new technologies around fiber and textiles manufacturing. Alongside the launch, the White House released a new report highlighting the administration’s advanced manufacturing priorities and how federal funding is being used to support strategic technologies.