Research thrust areas: (a) Integration – develop new methods and tools to integrate engineering design with materials, manufacturing, supply chain, and sustainment; (b) Infrastructure – develop new computing and communication infrastructures to simplify, normalize, and accelerate product realizations used throughout the product life cycle and supply chains; (c) Innovation – develop new engineering design processes focusing on socio-technical design methodologies, crowdsourcing for collective innovation, and new paradigms for hybrid (additive-subtractive) manufacturing; (d) Intelligence – develop intelligent and data-driven systems for better and faster technical and business decisions.
Economic relevance: Aligned with government initiatives to invigorate U.S. manufacturing, the Penn State site will provide technical and systemic breadth with results applicable to nearly every manufacturing sector and size; across a broad range of manufacturing enterprises; and throughout the product realization process and other life-cycle considerations. Penn State has a long history of contributing to the technically trained workforce of researchers, engineers, and skilled operators, and a new generation of engineers not only trained in, but who are developers of state-of-the-art innovation tools and technologies for the manufacturing sector. The adoption of such tools and technologies will increase productivity through rapid innovation of highly complex and value-added products at significantly reduced costs and in reduced product cycle times. Our strategy includes strong partnerships with National Network of Manufacturing Institutes (NNMIs) such as the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute (DMDII), providing the pipeline that is critical to fundamental research and the transition of research to practice.