The Power of Public-Private Partnerships in Revitalizing U.S. Manufacturing

Healthcare, the climate, geopolitical factors, and global supply chain impacts have recently brought domestic manufacturing back to the forefront of national interest. The US government is investing in manufacturing at levels not seen since the Cold War. Today we’re going to talk about industrial policy, manufacturing innovation, and one public-private partnership that is helping US manufacturers forge a better path to the future. Stay tuned.

Hey everybody, this is Chris Brandt here, welcome to another FUTR podcast.

With multibillion dollar packages like the Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act, the United States is poised to really advance our manufacturing capabilities.

Today we have with us Daniel Reed, who is the Manager of Technical Programs at MxD, which is an Innovation Institute based in Chicago. So we are going to talk with him about Public/Private Partnerships and how you might be able to take advantage of their expertise, financing and resources to advance your capabilities.

Welcome Daniel

MxD: https://www.mxdusa.org/

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Transcript

Chris Brandt: 0:00

Healthcare, the climate, geopolitical factors, and global supply chain impacts have recently brought domestic manufacturing back to the forefront of national interest. The U. S. government is investing in manufacturing at levels not seen since the Cold War. So today we're going to talk about industrial policy, manufacturing innovation, and one public private partnership that is helping U. S. manufacturers forge a better path to the future. So stay tuned. Hey everybody, this is Chris Brandt here with another future podcast. With multi billion dollar packages like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the Chips and Science Act, the United States is poised to really advance our manufacturing capabilities. So today we have with us Daniel Reed, who is the manager of technical programs at MXD, which is an innovation institute. So we are going to talk with him about public private partnerships and how you might be able to take advantage of their expertise, financing and resources to advance your capabilities. Welcome, Daniel.

Daniel Reed: 1:06

Hey, Chris. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here and talk to you about this. Some of the stuff that's happening in manufacturing research.

Chris Brandt: 1:13

Yeah, I'm excited to talk to you, too, because I think you guys have a lot of really interesting programs going, and so I'm eager to talk to you about that, and I can see that you're on the big manufacturing floor where you do a lot of your work, so I also want to get into that as well. But before we go there, can you just give me a little bit of an overview on how MXD came about?

Daniel Reed: 1:38

Yeah, absolutely. So, um, this is, you know, a little bit before my time, but MXD, we just had our 10 year anniversary this year. Uh, and essentially we, you know, came out of a bipartisan group of Congress people and, uh, folks in the, in the military and elsewhere in government who realized that manufacturing is both critical for our competitiveness and our national interest. And so, Um, a couple acts were passed. As you mentioned, I'm I'm not an expert in the legalities. But what happened was the creation of this manufacturing USA network. And it's a network of it was 16. It's 17. I think now the number keeps changing. They're funding new ones of these innovation institutes for manufacturing or M. I. Is as they're called all over the country. We all have our own focuses our own technology areas, um, but we all follow some similar models, which is that we're all public private partnerships. We exist to kind of help bridge the gap between technology that gets developed and then what actually gets commercialized and. Help people adopt that technology.

Chris Brandt: 2:51

So what is the specific mission? What you guys are kind of mandated to do a certain type of thing here. What is that?

Daniel Reed: 2:58

We would say that our mission is to strengthen the competitiveness of the U. S. manufacturing industry. Period. Specifically, MXD stands for Manufacturing Times Digital. So, our institute focus is around digital manufacturing. You might be able to guess from the name. Uh, and, and it comes along with that. We're also the National Center for Cyber Security and Manufacturing, as designated by the DoD. Because to do digital, you need to be cyber secure. Um, and so, you know, we do that by help by convening our members, um, helping them advance their technology and then empowering both existing workers and future workers to use it.

Chris Brandt: 3:41

We hear all the time about manufacturing, manufacturing, got to bring jobs, manufacturing jobs back. We got to do this, got to do that. Um, you know, so I mean, obviously this is sort of at the bleeding edge of trying to, you know, bring those jobs back to the U. S. Can you speak a little bit to why that matters so much?

Daniel Reed: 4:01

Yeah, I can. Um, so you, you, you highlighted it kind of in your bumper there, right? There's the CHIPS Act. There's the SCIENCE Act. There's a ton of federal funding that's coming out right now, um, focused on bringing manufacturing and especially advanced manufacturing jobs back to America. And there's a couple reasons for that. Um, I would say the biggest and most important one is that manufacturing is a huge contributor to GDP. It's about a fifth of the GDP even now for the country and what doesn't show up in that number, though, when you dig a little deeper into it, is that the dollars that are added to the economy by manufacturing, but which don't occur in a manufacturing company. So, right, the supply chain company, the trucking company, manufacturing is a huge contributor to GDP. The warehouse that holds their goods. All of that is also economic activity that is generated by the restaurants around

Chris Brandt: 4:57

the factory, right? Just everybody goes for lunch.

Daniel Reed: 4:59

And so when you actually, if you actually look at it and crunch the numbers. For every dollar you invest in manufacturing, you, you actually get about another 4 of economic activity in a different adjacent industry. It's a great four for one, right? And the same is true that roughly the same numbers are true for jobs. For about one, every one job created in manufacturing, there's about three and a half. Jobs created in supporting industries. So I think that's the simplest answer to that question. Why manufacturing is because it creates real physical goods that solve real problems. World problems and they have a life cycle. That means that they create all this economic activity

Chris Brandt: 5:42

Well, and I would say too in in today's political economy, I think we're seeing that you know Losing access to certain, you know segments of the manufacturing economy can have a significant impact on on our country Right, so I mean a lot of that domestically he's got to help alleviate some of those challenges

Daniel Reed: 6:01

Yeah, there's some global forces right now that have been kind of a wake up call, I think, to a lot of folks. Um, the first was COVID, of course. We, you know, we suddenly, uh, discovered that a lot of our supply chains for very critical goods traced back to just a handful of suppliers that were overseas. The biggest example is the blow molded raw material fabric for masks. Right. We discovered, Oh, that's all made in China. We thought we had a diverse supply base because we had all these companies in America, but actually they're all buying raw material from the same place. Uh, and guess what? Once COVID starts happening, they're not really exporting that anymore, right? They're going to kind of keep it for their own population, understandably. And so that's where you folks kind of had a bit of a wake up call of, Oh, we need to be able to support our own interest. With our own homegrown production. Uh, and then the second global impact is the conflict in Ukraine, right? There's a supplying that kind of traditional ground combat. has strained the current supply chain for the military, which was based around, you know, very different kinds of conflicts in the last 10, 20 years. Um, right. And so that's kind of woken up a lot of people too, to say, Oh, we need to have this production capability in order to deter our adversaries potentially.

Chris Brandt: 7:30

Yeah. Well, and I think another one that goes in there is chip manufacturing too. Yeah. It's encouraging to see a lot of chip manufacturing coming back to the United States, which is interesting. You're exactly right. I mentioned public private funding. Can you talk about what that is and how that plays into this? I sure

Daniel Reed: 7:49

can. Uh, and, uh, you know, I'll give you the lawyer's answer to start, which is that it depends. It's always, it's always different. But, um, In MxD's case, we basically get an amount of money, um, from the government every year to do projects in collaboration with industry. Um, and we co invest in those projects and how we do that is we say for every dollar of federal funding, you get, um, To do this project, you will contribute a dollar of in kind contribution in terms of your technical experts, their time, right? You're paying their salary. You're going to give us half that time for free, contribute half of it to the project, rather, um, or your software. And so we pick up half the tab and the companies who are doing the work pick up half the tab. We, you can think of it as de risking. Investment in new technologies, you can think of it as co investment, you know, something that maybe didn't have a clear path to profitability. We can step in and say, we think this is worth doing, we can help bridge that gap, but what we call the valley of death, uh, the innovation valley of death between like somebody has a good idea and it actually being, you know, take catching on in the market

Chris Brandt: 9:05

where, where does all that IP tech land? I mean, is, is it like, does that become public, you know, IP then, or is it, how does that work? Yeah,

Daniel Reed: 9:13

another great question. And, and even more of a lawyer's answer is needed there. Uh, so I have to give you even more broad strokes, which is that, right, we exist to solve common problems in the pursuit of common benefit in general, anything that people bring to the project that they developed themselves, they continue to own, right? So their background IP, we don't, we have no stake in that, right? Anything that we fund, we negotiate, but the default position is that it's shared with the membership. And then the closer it is to proprietary. The more we have to maybe find a way, for example, if somebody, you knows a company that makes software, we're helping them enhance their software, they're gonna create an open source version of that module that gets shared with everyone, the membership, but then they also have the private version that they can continue to to sell. So it, we really are, you know, our interest is in making things better for everybody. So. And secure and secure, right? So we're very flexible in our negotiations. As long as you know, we can say, yes, this is going to transition. Yes, this is going to have an impact. You know, yes, it's going to do what we need.

Chris Brandt: 10:26

Well, and I think, you know, like I do want to mention that secure piece because I think that, you know, one of the challenges we've been seeing because this has been a particularly interesting year from the cyber security front. Um, and, and I think manufacturing has long lagged behind. Many other industries in, in securing their platforms thinking that, well, you know, who would want to touch these machines on the floor? Who would want to touch this, you know, you know, machine to that's, you know, completely, you know, sitting apart from everything else. Um, but that's not the case. And, and, and they are. A big focus of attacks

Daniel Reed: 11:04

is very much not the case. You would not believe it. You might not believe it if I tell you, but it's true that manufacturing is actually the number one industry sector targeted by cyber attacks. Yeah, almost 40 percent or something like that. I would imagine there's a lot

Chris Brandt: 11:19

of IP theft to going on and all that too.

Daniel Reed: 11:23

Yeah, that's exactly it. It's IP theft. It's locking people out of their systems. You may remember Stuxnet, right? From back in the day. That's going

Chris Brandt: 11:30

way back. That's going

Daniel Reed: 11:32

way back. That's right. Nation state actors creating. Code that would destroy physical factory equipment by overriding its control systems. Yeah, so yeah, it's, it is something that we, we really have to educate manufacturers on both that this is a real need that you have, you have to secure not just your computers, but your PLCs. Yes, the PLC can be hacked. You know, we have demonstrations on our floor that show people. The difference between secured PLC with a firewall. This is an unsecured PLC. Define, define

Chris Brandt: 12:07

for everybody quickly PLC.

Daniel Reed: 12:09

Oh yeah, for sure. So PLC is, uh, it stands for programmable logic controller. Um, and it is, it is what, generally speaking, it's the brain of a machine in manufacturing. It's what's telling the motor, okay, motor one, start. Valve two, open. You know, motor four, stop. It's the, it's like a computer. Um, but much less fully functioned, uh, and much more robust, right? Like, VLCs don't crash like your Windows PC does.

Chris Brandt: 12:41

But you also don't upgrade them very often, too, which is the other problem.

Daniel Reed: 12:45

Exactly, right? It's that stability. Um, one of the things I like to, this is a personal philosophy of mine, is that in manufacturing, there's kind of a tension between optimization and innovation. And you kind of want to set something up, never change it, just make money, uh, in manufacturing, but in digital and software, it's the opposite, right? Changing all the time, agile, dynamic, continuous integration, continuous deployment. And so bridging those two different philosophies is, is inherently challenging, but also so rewarding for manufacturers who can figure out how to, How to kind of get the best of both worlds.

Chris Brandt: 13:26

I got to mention there's a pretty big cultural challenge there as well, because, you know, manufacturing tends not to be, um, so quick to jump.

Daniel Reed: 13:35

Yeah, no, you're, you're completely right. Yeah. Manufacturers prefer to, uh, you know, not change it if it's not broken. Um, there's a, in, in manufacturing, there's what, what is called the IT OT split. So information technology, operational technology, operational technology is. The stuff that's on your floor and bridging that gap, right? Bridging the gap between the I. T. teams who are kind of more in the, um, modern computational networking kind of vein versus the O. T. folks who are much more like just will air gap. It will disconnect it from the Internet completely. Right? We're just gonna we're gonna do it the way we've always done it. Um, but then you're leaving a lot of value on the table if you're not, uh, taking advantage of all that data that you could be producing or could be using toe to learn something about your process.

Chris Brandt: 14:29

And that's an interesting point, because I think that, you know, a lot of companies may see, um, updating and making, you know, changes. You know, this move to integrate more features and functionality into their, their environment to be very challenging, but you kind of present them with a path with some of the, you know, already pre baked tools to do that. And, you know, you have a facility to test and demo this stuff. Um, so can you talk a little bit about like, what your programs look like in action and, and, and like, you know, maybe some companies that, you know, like you've helped that how, how that all plays out?

Daniel Reed: 15:03

Yeah, I've got a great example that kind of matches exactly what we're talking about, right, of helping people take those first steps towards. digitizing their operations and teaching them, Hey, you don't need to buy all new equipment. You don't need to overhaul your whole everything. You can just start, you know, you don't

Chris Brandt: 15:20

have to shut your line down for no,

Daniel Reed: 15:22

no, you don't. Um, so we are working, uh, through a pilot program this year where we are installing, um, a hundred, what we call the MXD small and midsize manufacturing sensor kits. And it's a very small, um, kind of About this big, um, HMI with a built in computer and it doesn't like let's let's sorry. You're right. Yeah. I know. I'm I'm bad with the acronyms human machine interface. It's got a touch screen, uh, and a computer inside of it and you can program it without noting without knowing how to code. So you just are pressing buttons and within we can in an afternoon bring this thing to the manufacturer. Figure out a problem they're having like, Oh, this motor is overheating, or I run out of raw material in this machine, but I can't see inside the machine, so I don't know when I'm going to run out. Right? Um, and we are able to install these sensor kit that has some very easy open source communication protocols, right? They're not actually communicating with the Internet, even though it has the capability to, so there's no cyber security considerations. And they can get just that quick value, right? You solved a problem that I have, and that starts people on the path of, okay, well, now what can I do with it? You solve this problem. What about that problem? And through our federal funding, we're able to do that at no cost to the manufacturer, right? The equipment is free right now. Uh, the equipment is free. The setup is free. Uh, and yeah, that's that's one example of the kind of program that we do, um, to help manufacturers directly. That's kind of all, you know, close to the close to the ground, you know, hands on. Uh, but and then we do, you know, on the very other end of the spectrum. The development of early stage, you know, technology that maybe is not going to be used right away, but is that going to be foundational to other things?

Chris Brandt: 17:22

One of the barriers for for companies to, you know, develop some of these systems is the huge cost. I mean, that's why one of the reasons why government's always been really good at building the big programs, like, you know, going to the moon and things like that, although now that seems to be changing and that's becoming a more privatized enterprise, I suppose. But, um. But, you know, could you speak to that a little bit about, like, you know, projects that may be on a longer trajectory than a business could sustain and how you might help that?

Daniel Reed: 17:54

Yeah, that's a great point. So I'll say here's a good example is this, um, Ross Institute program that we're doing with two of the other manufacturing innovation institutes, America makes, which focuses on additive manufacturing. And lift, which focuses on lightweight materials engineering. And so in additive manufacturing, the big barrier to adoption for critical components of things like in an aircraft.

Chris Brandt: 18:24

To frame this, when you say additive manufacturing, you're talking about things like 3D printing and that sort of thing?

Daniel Reed: 18:29

Absolutely. Yeah. 3D printing is a subset of additive manufacturing. Um, there's other, there's plastic, metal, there's metal additive, right? Sure. Is mostly what I'm talking about here. Um, and we can build the part in a week or two, and then it takes us a year and a half to qualify it. Literally print it in hours, and it takes months to test it, to qualify it, and then literally if you move the machine from the left side of your factory to the right side of your factory, you start over. Not joking. A million and a half dollars. Eighteen months. Because you got a new powder supplier. Right. Or your your software update on your machine happened. So we are working in this very collaborative way that we're able to with these other institutes. Working with the software companies, with the manufacturers, with the big defense primes, with the government itself, the government agency, to say, okay, how do we kind of take some rational bites of this elephant that we all know, we all have this intuition that the opportunity is there. But we've got to get the consensus forward that what's holding us back is the expert consensus of, yeah, we trust these things and what do we, what do we need to know in order to trust them, you know, and so that's an example of where we can provide this unique forum of kind of collaboration, meaning patients, right, we're, we're able to be patient and not favor any one solution over another, I think, in a way that a lot of commercial companies wouldn't be able to. Um, right. And we have to serve everyone. We're not looking to create proprietary solutions.

Chris Brandt: 20:17

And so that begs the question. Are you is one of the things that you do? Do you help companies create standards and help, you know, propagate those standards?

Daniel Reed: 20:26

Yeah. So we're not a standards development organization, but we do contribute to the process for sure. So, uh, one. So, like, when, you know, projects that we have funded have. have created standards that were then submitted to those standards organizations and submitted one good example is Um project that we did called standards for metrology aided robotic technology And it was basically creating standards. So smart the acronym is smart. You got to have an acronym in this town or you're nobody And Uh, so it was focused on how do you use a robot to you know? A 200, 000 robot to do what you need today what you need a day You know, two or 3, 000, 000 custom machining system to do and the increased precision of the robot, they pointed a laser cracker at the end of it and then created these algorithms and standards and compensating protocols so that the robot can use that updated information to correct its position. And then that became a standard, right? Because every now every robotic company can use that or can conform to that standard and say. All right, if you want to add an M. A. R. system, Metrology Aided Robotics system, to our machine, you can do so via this standard, which you dig all the way back into it. We, we put that team together and we funded them.

Chris Brandt: 21:53

It's very cool because you guys do a lot of different things. And, and I, I think, you know, like what, like I mentioned in the, in the intro, Um, you have, you know, it's not just the funding. You have expertise. You have resources. Um, you know, like you have, and you can support them in a lot, support companies in a lot of different ways. It's not just, you know, like here, we're going to be a lab for this, this one thing. We've got a lot of other things, right?

Daniel Reed: 22:18

Absolutely. And so I would say it is, it is, we do a lot of different things, but it all, they all come down to one of three kind of fundamental. Things that the institute does convening the first one we put people in the room who any other day of the week might be competitors might be their regulator and the person who they are regulating right and we create this framework for them to collaborate in a way that they can't otherwise right we have a membership agreement it allows them to talk to each other and protects that communication so that's the first thing right and we're putting people in the room together who wouldn't be able to be in the room otherwise. The second one is advancing. So that's the technology stuff, right? We either advance the development of technology, or we advance the adoption of technology, um, by helping people pick it up and use it. And then that kind of feeds into the last one, empowering. Right. We empower, we train, we create training content, we deliver content, we host workshops, right? We write thought leadership pieces, trying to empower the worker of the future and the current manufacturing workforce and those who maybe have never considered manufacturing, but. Should, uh, the kind of consider it as a career.

Chris Brandt: 23:39

That's interesting because like, I know that, um, and I would imagine too, if you're going to be developing these new systems, new manufacturing processes, new procedures, things like that, it would need, you would need to train the workforce too. And so you have those capabilities as well.

Daniel Reed: 23:55

It's

Chris Brandt: 23:55

really,

Daniel Reed: 23:55

it's, uh, frequently cited by, by manufacturing CEOs is the biggest gap right now. The biggest challenge they have is. Is getting the right workforce, the right skills, understanding who has them, helping people, you know, where do they go if they want to upskill somebody? Right. So that's, yeah, that's a, really, that's what's going to make it happen, right? MXD, we can't do it ourselves. Right. We're just one, one small organization. We hope to have an impact by touching all these other folks and, and empowering them to do what they do.

Chris Brandt: 24:29

You talked about, uh, you know, the smart, you talked about, uh, your sensor kit. Um, yeah, I know that you, you, you dabble into with the cares act. There was some healthcare stuff that came out to talk about that a little bit.

Daniel Reed: 24:43

Yeah, sure. We actually had three different proj programs under the cares act. We had, uh, the supply chain risk alert. Framework that used AI to basically try to synthesize different data coming in about the supply chain and recommend actions. We also had a project around capacity and mobilization of the pharmaceutical industry, but I want to highlight 1 that a project we did with demons that we call lungs in the loop. So, you may remember that at the start of cove ed, we, there was a shortage of ventilators and there were more patients that needed ventilators than there were. Ventilators in operation. And you can't just, you know, crank out a million ventilators. So, what happened was Medtronic open sourced their ventilator design. Our team kind of basically picked that up and took a look at it and tried to use digital technology to answer the question, alright, when you have to do what surgeons had to do, which was put two people on one ventilator, but didn't know whether it was going to be safe, or when it would be safe, Right. How could you use digital technology and digital twins to answer those questions? So you could think of it almost as like, uh, GitHub for manufacturing design, right? Or continuous integration, continuous deployment. Uh, the Siemens team was able to create a design fork of the ventilator, uh, that basically only the components that needed to be re evaluated for two patients were. And then they have this system that is called what we call a digital twin or or a live twin because it is a model of the system in operation running alongside the model in near real time, taking data from the system as it operates and give you an example. Um, So a ventilator system is basically a series of pipes, right? And, and, and mass can't disappear from pipes unless there's something wrong with the pipes. Um, and so the digital twin, if you introduce a leak into the system, the digital twin is able to say, Hey, look at some errors escaping somewhere because I know where all the air could be based on my simulation. And I'm measuring where it actually is. And if those are different enough, I go, there's a problem. The ventilator itself also has that kind of a safety system. It'll throw an alarm if it thinks there's a leak. But what the digital twin can do is because it is a model of the system and it's been changed to look like it's running on two patients, it can also catch other problems. So one of the things that, that, um, doctors learned was that if you're going to have two people on the same ventilator, Breathing at the same rhythm, the same volume of air is split. They have to have the same lung compliance, the medical term. And so if one person starts to get sicker or one person starts to get better, uh, they, it might go to a place where now they're not compatible anymore, but the ventilator has no way of knowing that. And one person's not getting enough air, um, but the digital twin does know that the digital twin has had an updated model of operation put into it that's comparing and going, Hey, you're telling me that it should, you know, I should be getting this much air in both places, but something has changed. And now this person doesn't seem like they're getting enough air anymore. They may have gotten sicker. You need to look at this right and throw an alarm. When the ventilator would just sit there all day, no alarms because it wasn't designed to work that way.

Chris Brandt: 28:29

Wow, that's a, that's a very, uh, scary, uh, noisy neighbor type of problem, right? Absolutely, yeah. It's like you don't get, you don't get enough air.

Daniel Reed: 28:39

Right, and that's the pro, that's I think the example of what digital brings to the manufacturing space, right? The ability to do that kind of experimentation. Yeah. And that testing and add that agility. Absolutely. Into what is normally kind of, like you said, a very disciplined and stepwise process.

Chris Brandt: 28:56

I don't know where you get all your talent from because you're talking about things from like digital twinning to, you know, like hard manufacturing, physical, you know, components, electronics design, software design, artificial intelligence. I mean, you guys, you guys have a little bit of everything there.

Daniel Reed: 29:14

Yeah, so I would say we've got, I mean, we have an amazing team here, right? And we have a lot of folks who are dabblers or who are like me, who've, you know, been kind of technologists through their careers. Um, but it's worth remembering our MXD does not, we do nothing alone. Nothing that we do is alone. We are the public private partnership, right? And our, our private members, Bring much of the technical heft. Right? We may be set up for many of the things we do. We set, we define the vision, we define the success criteria, right? We manage the program, but there might be 2 or 3 or 4 member companies that are participating that are, you know, contributing. The majority of the actual technical effort once it gets to that point, right? They propose to it. They win. They contribute the technical effort and we oversee it. So yeah, it's a force multiplier question. It's something we're we always struggle with here is there's the mission is so much bigger. than we are. How do we collaborate? How do we partner? How do we, how do we connect with those other organizations that can help us have that larger impact?

Chris Brandt: 30:24

What would be your ideal like private partnership here? I mean, like what, what kind of companies are you looking for? What kind of projects? It's everything. So, um, you

Daniel Reed: 30:33

know, everything from if, first of all, if you're a manufacturer, we want to hear from you because it is our mission and our job to help you. Okay. We don't, we don't, we don't want much from you. We want to help. We want to give you. Well, that's, that's always nice. I just, I want to get free stuff. Yeah, there you go. Right. Uh, so if you're a manufacturer, we want to hear from you. Uh, pretty much. But, um, in general, right, we've got a, we have monthly info sessions that you can come to. There is a, uh, online factory floor tour that you can fly through and kind of take a look at our facility. Um, if you are, you know, a company that has an idea, right, that is, you think is going to be impactful to the industry, but maybe is not immediately profitable, if you are looking to find a way to, you know, Collaborate on pressing industry problems and you want to come, you know, attend our workshops. If any of our open project calls speak to you, um, you know, all of those are folks that we're interested in talking to in general. We, we, um. Collaborate with all kinds of folks. So reach out to our business development team or, or to me or anybody. So

Chris Brandt: 31:40

like how, how do, how do they get, uh, info on like, you know, these different programs, these different things that are going on, it looks like you're getting, giving a tour in the background there right now.

Daniel Reed: 31:50

Someone is anyway. Yeah. So, um, mxdusa. org is our website. Um, that's all of our events are there. The. The monthly info sessions are posted there. That's also where you can go and take the virtual tour, which has a ton of really good content and videos and explanations and everything. Um, there's also, you can access from our website, you can get to, uh, our relatively new member exchange, which is kind of like a more like a customer relationship, customer engagement platform. So, um, our little version of, you know. Facebook, except it's MXD book or whatever. Um, so that has a lot of interaction. There's a lot of information. That's where you can go to download like the project calls. You do not need to be, despite the name, you do not need to be a member to access the member exchange. Though some of it is gated, but for things like our project calls and our funding opportunities, that's always open. And so what, what's involved in

Chris Brandt: 32:50

becoming a member?

Daniel Reed: 32:50

It's a tiered structure, right? So the smaller your organization is, the less, the less it costs, um, down to, I think, either like it's either 500 or maybe even free now for a small manufacturer to join. Um, and there's a membership agreement that you sign, and then you're a member. That's really it. I mean, uh, the membership agreement is what creates that foundation for collaboration where we can all say we're We're in it together. Um, and you can talk to, like I said, you can, there's contact forms on our website and talk to our business development teams or engagement teams.

Chris Brandt: 33:25

Where do you go from here? What's next for you guys? I mean, obviously you want to reach out and get contacts at every manufacturer in the, in the country or even globally, I would assume, but mostly in the country. So

Daniel Reed: 33:36

yeah, what's next for us. So we, uh, like I mentioned, we just had our 10 year anniversary. And so, um, Yes, it is. We're, we're ready for 10 more. The mission has never been more relevant and there's never been more. I think attention than there has been the last couple of years, you know, we did, I mentioned that 100 SMM, you know, pilot kit program this year, we are partnering, we're actually the first, um, the first ever partnership between a manufacturing innovation institute and NIST, that's the National Institute for Standards and Technology, but we now have a partnership with them and NIST. Their MEP centers, which stands for Manufacturing Extension Partnership. I know. Right. Welcome to government. Get used to acronyms. Um, and so the MEPs, they are basically are like boots on the ground. There's a, there's a manufacturing extension ship partnership, at least one in every state. Um, and so they can be kind of like channel partners for us, right? To help us take these, these impactful ideas like the sensor kits and really get them into the hands of those, you know, 10, 000 manufacturers, maybe, right? We have goals over the next four years to impact a million workers, you know, to train and upskill a million workers. So, um, there's a, there's a lot in the future for us, I think. Um, and it's just getting started.

Chris Brandt: 35:03

Well, it's very exciting. So just before we go here, what, what am I looking at behind you? It looks like, uh, Oh, yeah. So, um, what

Daniel Reed: 35:11

you are seeing

Chris Brandt: 35:11

is actually

Daniel Reed: 35:11

our 5G test bed. So we have, uh, two actually different 5G networks in this facility, private and public. Uh, and public and so five G is actually one of the protocols that has some application and manufacturing. It's very fast. It's low loss, right? Um, so there's a we have a test bed here where folks can try out their their equipment or their application on every wireless protocol. 4G, 5G, Wi Fi, different, different Wi Fis, right? Bluetooth, um, and see which is gonna help with their, with their, um, factory application. You're also seeing, I don't know what else is in frame, but there's a software, there's a, there's some robots back there, um, I think we've got our assembly, our assembly demonstration is in my, on my back right, which is, Basically augmented reality for factory workers, right? To help them, help them do their job, right? To kind of feed the instructions right to where it's happening. It's really helpful. When there's high mix, low volume, for example, right to always know you're building the right thing and the system is watching and going, Oh, no, you grabbed the wrong piece for that. Right. Or and then you can do time studies, figure out what pieces are working well. Um, uh, so, yeah, there's just kinds of all all different kinds of stuff on our floor and it's changing all the time. Constantly get new members and new stuff.

Chris Brandt: 36:36

Well, you had me at robots, so I mean, you know, that's cool stuff.

Daniel Reed: 36:39

Well, we're getting some AGVs in, so we're going to have some, some, maybe next time we do this, there'll be a little robot driving around the floor behind me.

Chris Brandt: 36:47

Nice. I like it. I like it. Just not the scary robots. Like, you know, they're starting to come out of Boston Dynamics now. They're getting a little

Daniel Reed: 36:54

creepy. It's a little uncanny valley for me, too.

Chris Brandt: 36:59

Well, their latest Atlas robot that, you know, it's like, Purely battery powered, you know, electrified, not, you know, as hydraulic as used to be, that's a trip. That's pretty wild. It is. Yeah, it's a

Daniel Reed: 37:09

little, it looks like normal until you watch

Chris Brandt: 37:11

it bend its joints backwards or something and lift itself up and then turn itself all the way around. I don't, I don't like right out of the Terminator. It was right out of the

Daniel Reed: 37:19

Terminator. Pretty sure I saw a horror movie that ended that way. Yeah.

Chris Brandt: 37:24

Really cool. Um, if you're a manufacturer, get on it right now. There's just no reason not to. Um, and I, I really want to thank you for, for being on and, and, and tell us about this because I think this is a really cool concept and you know, there's not many, uh, free, free lunches in this world as they say. So no, no, no. Take advantage of this one while you can.

Daniel Reed: 37:45

Absolutely right. The U. S. Government has has paid us to do this, and all we ask is that you let us. Right. Let us

Chris Brandt: 37:52

help you. Yes. I think that sounds amazing. Well, thanks again for being on and I really appreciate it and good luck to everything you're doing. Absolutely. Thanks, Chris. Good talking to you. Thanks for watching. I'd love to hear from you in the comments. And if you could give us a like, think about subscribing, share this content with somebody you think might be interested in it. And if you get a chance to Take a look at futr. tv, future TV, where you can find all things future TV related, and I will see you in the next one.