For Advanced Manufacturing, Success Demands Innovation, Education and Public-Private Partnership

MICHAEL D. WHEELER, MANAGING EDITOR, Michael.wheeler@photonics.com

Global manufacturing has undergone enormous changes in the past decade as many developing countries have joined the club of tier-one manufacturing nations, a recession stalled demand, and employment fell precipitously in leading economies. Yet manufacturing remains critical to the future of both developing and advanced worlds, driving innovation, productivity and competitiveness, and offering a pathway out of poverty.

Recent attention has focused on “advanced manufacturing,” which replaces traditional labor-intensive processes with ones based on the newest technologies. It encompasses a family of activities that depends on information, computation, software, sensing and networking, while making use of cutting-edge materials and emerging capabilities such as nanotechnology.

Advanced manufacturing is an especially potent propellant of future economic growth, distinguished by continual process improvement and rapid new product introduction. These critical features will lead to the building of lighter, more fuel-efficient automobiles, the creation of “needleless” tests for medical conditions like diabetes, and the fabrication of semiconductors with 10 times the current processing power.

Zeeshan Ahmed, of the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST), positions an optical fiber above a small photonic sensor inside an optical probe station. Photonic sensors like this are used in aerospace manufacturing. Photo courtesy of Earl Zubkoff.

To build the cars, medical equipment and silicon wafers of tomorrow, engineers will make even greater use of photonics technologies including laser sintering, advanced optics, machine vision and optical lithography.

Photonics Spectra (PS) spoke with several industry luminaries to share their thoughts on how these technologies will help form the future of advanced manufacturing, redefine the role of the federal government in spurring innovation, and specify the skills required of tomorrow’s workforce.

• Eugene G. Arthurs, chief executive officer, SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics.

• William Burgess, vice president of sales and engineering at Power Technology Inc.

• Ken Kaufmann, vice president of marketing at Hamamatsu Corp.

• Alan Willner, president of the Optical Society of America (OSA) and chair of the National Photonics Initiative (NPI) Steering Committee.

Photonics Spectra: The National Strategic Plan for Advanced Manufacturing from the executive office of the President noted that the acceleration of innovation for advanced manufacturing required “bridging a number of gaps,” particularly between R&D activities in the deployment of technological innovations in the domestic production of goods. Has the U.S. made progress in the years since the report was published?

Arthurs: The picture is mixed. One of the biggest advances in domestic production has been due to the rapid deployment of innovation in fracking, where photonic technology plays a minor but crucial role in sensing. Of course, that whole area is in something of a retreat with the collapse in oil prices. When asked about the domestic manufacture of goods, the first reaction is to fall back on the commonly held view that nothing is made in the U.S. anymore. In fact, with more than $2 trillion in manufacturing output, the U.S. is now the No. 2 manufacturer in the world, and holding position. Computer and electronic products, motor vehicles, fabricated metal parts and machinery constitute around $800 billion of U.S. output. In the first of these industries, advanced manufacturing has always been crucial to competitiveness. In the other areas, advanced manufacturing is slowly making in roads.

A view inside a clean room at the SUNY Poly Nanotech Complex in Albany, N.Y. There, 300-mm wafer tools provide unprecedented manufacturing quality. Photo courtesy of SUNY Polytechnic Institute.

The recovery from 2010 has made capital available to adopt new approaches, but so far we have seen only those who value innovation move forward. Corning is an example of a large company that has continually invested in advanced manufacturing, even before the term was in vogue. In a sense, innovation can be the worst nightmare of a manufacturing executive who strives for sameness as [he or she] tries to meet targets of quality and cost. It will take time and talent for our huge manufacturing infrastructure to transition.

Burgess: Between innovation and technology development stands entrepreneurship. Since the National Science and Technology Council published its National Strategic Plan for Advanced Manufacturing, I have witnessed an increased emphasis on entrepreneurship. At least locally, we are growing the skills entrepreneurs need to turn innovation into creative business.

Willner: The U.S. has definitely made progress. What the government has done has set a great path forward and put in place mechanisms that can bridge the gap. And the future does look bright — there’s never been a more exciting time than now in terms of looking forward, in terms of closing the gap in our industry.

PS: How are other regions in the world, notably Europe and Asia, progressing in bridging the innovation gap?

Willner: Europe understands this issue very well. Germany is leading the way, for example, with the Fraunhofer Institutes. They’ve been at this for a while, with public-private institutes that encourage and facilitate moving innovation into manufacturing. They get it.

In Asia, China has gotten the message to take innovations, manufacture them and monetize them. It used to be in China that you’d see these huge plant floors and people were manufacturing things by hand. That’s not the direction they want to take things, and China has a lot of horse power to accomplish what they put their minds to do. This is where AIM (the American Institute for Manufacturing) Photonics could really play a key role in helping the U.S. leapfrog what everyone else is doing in the rest of the world.

Power Technology Inc.’s Ken Gaines experiments with optical laser alignment methods to improve manufacturing processes. Photo courtesy of Power Technology Inc.

Burgess: Europe has had a good track record of transitioning university innovation to corporate development; for example, Germany’s Ferdinand-Braun-Institut is widely successful. I pray that the Integrated Photonics Manufacturing Innovation Hub in New York can be as successful as the Ferdinand-Braun-Institut. As far as Asia goes, they are making great progress. They are becoming more innovative and relying less on other companies; [but] they are still behind the U.S. and Europe when it comes to cutting-edge innovation.

Arthurs: The latecomers have the advantage of starting fresh and not having the drag of massive investment in less advanced manufacturing. However, I see Asia as having the important advantage in that the brightest and best make manufacturing their career. They actively seek the new technologies and move them quickly into factories. For companies like TSMC in Taiwan, their plants are like one huge robot for producing the most advanced chips.

PS: In which industry (or industries) is advanced manufacturing having the most transformative impact?

Arthurs: The semiconductor industry and computer industries are pretty much all advanced manufacturing, and the equipment for these has been in an accelerated mode for decades. Digital automation technologies using today’s affordable powerful data processing (some of this called robotics), 3D manufacturing, laser additive and reductive processes, and integrated optical metrology will transform much of the manufacturing landscape. The “internet of machines” will bring more customization, more cost-effective short- and medium-run manufacturing. We need more young people to get excited about this.

Willner: Photonics in manufacturing is going to continue to play a huge role. For example, the Nobel Prize-winning work in microscopy below the diffraction resolution limit of an optical beam showed that we really can innovate around many things we thought couldn’t be done. My prediction is that significant innovations will continue, even in optical lithography.

Second, optics plays important roles in medicine and biology. With technical advances, costs will come down, sizes will shrink and devices will become portable. When you go to a doctor’s office, you see so many things enabled by optics, yet they are still very expensive and large.

UC Santa Barbara’s John Bowers (left) and postdoctoral researcher Tin Komljenovic with a wafer of integrated photonic circuitry to be manufactured by AIM Photonics. Photo courtesy of Sonia Fernandez/UCSB.

The third part of this is how systems designers think about photonics. Right now, people don’t design photonics into their systems unless they have to. There will come a point in a few years where they won’t think twice, it’ll just be another widget and it will bring value. Whether it’s a requirement for high frequency, low loss, high accuracy — you name it — integrated photonics will help enable numerous markets.

Burgess: Everyone is going to say that 3D printing will have the most transformative impact on advance manufacturing. I agree that it will have a major impact in specific areas of manufacturing; however, many more generations are needed for it to become a truly universal solution.

PS: One of the most talked about trends in advanced manufacturing is 3D printing. From laser sintering, stereolithography and electron beam melting applications, photonics plays a role in the rapid prototyping and manufacture of parts in many industries. What are the most exciting photonics technology-related developments that you’ve seen in this space in the last year or so?

Arthurs: Gartner sees enterprise 3D manufacturing as now on the plateau of productivity. Some of NASA’s work manufacturing parts by this technique can be seen on the International Space Station. GE’s manufacturing of jet engine parts is offering glimpses of the potential.

The coupling of 3D imaging and laser additive manufacturing to customize medical implants is compelling. We are only just starting to see efficiency in material usage and in the green advantages of building something up instead of “hogging” it out from a solid block. The further we go, the quicker we will be liberated from the limitations of a legacy of material removal tools.

At our 2015 Prism Awards for Photonics Innovation — [sponsored by] SPIE and Photonics Media — one of the winners was a company moving quickly in 3D manufacturing of optics. Building up may provide a more flexible path for freeform optics, and we are already seeing some of the freedom in optical system design with liberation from the world where only spherical and flat optics were practical and cost-effective.

Burgess: The possibility of printing high-quality lenses with unique or tailored prescriptions holds a lot of promise. Many optical designs are compromised by cost. Engineers use common off-the-shelf (COTS) components when they really need an optic with an exact prescription.

Kaufmann: 3D printing … will completely change the competitive environment. Being close to the customer will become more important than labor costs. However, the advantages will not materialize unless we can provide more well-trained workers to operate 3D printing machinery and the associated design software.

Willner: That brings to mind the 3D-printed Stradivarius that was on the cover of The Economist a few years ago. We’ll see orders-of-magnitude advances in the future, especially in feature resolution. What we’ve seen in the last year is the steady progress of existing technology, and we haven’t reached the limits yet where we must innovate completely new paradigms. New innovations will keep progress going for 3D printing into the foreseeable future.

I recall when the first IBM PC came out, and people were speculating that they would use it to balance their checkbooks. We had no idea of the power of the PC. That’s what it feels like now. We see the potential and ways 3D printing could really have an impact, but the ideas we have about its potential are more or less like what we thought of when the first IBM PC came out.

It calls to mind something my mentor, Ivan Kaminow, once said when he was asked what he was going to do with the first gigabit/s optical network. And he said, “When they first invented paper they thought they were only going to print the Bible and now they wrap fish with it.”

PS: Advanced manufacturing promises to transform manufacturing by making it leaner and smarter. With robotics and sensing technologies replacing lower-skilled manufacturing jobs, what is required of the workforce of tomorrow?

Kaufmann: The skills required to design and maintain complex robotics will require a strong familiarity with mathematics, as will the ability to visualize the interaction of objects in three dimensions. Such knowledge is also needed for creating the software that operates the robots.

Burgess: When it comes to the area of robotics and sensing, the missing skill set is programing. If I were entering college, I would embrace the programming side of robotics. We have plenty of robot companies, but not enough talent that can take advantage of existing robots.

Arthurs: We have a large number of very smart people working in photonics. Few, if any, of these people think about the greater manufacturing enterprise. We need people to get excited and challenged by what is a real opportunity: innovating new manufacturing. Understanding the world of manufacturing with its complexities, costs, supply chains, yields, quality and so on, and keeping up with the evolving equipment and techniques offer plenty of intellectual challenges. Combining this understanding with creativity and the necessary disciplines for excellent manufacturing is the key to success.

Willner: Educators should convey the importance and value of the skill set needed to become the shop floor “expert.” That expert could be anything from a technician to other roles in the manufacturing process. There has to be this idea that this is an important job, there’s an exciting career here and one can make a huge impact. For that to happen there has to be a partnership with educators and industry. One has to give today’s students the excitement and the other has to promote, recognize and pay to incentivize. You have to change the culture.

You have to have both the push from educators and the pull from industry. And I think Germany gets it right; there is the concept there that manufacturing technicians can be … highly valued expert[s].

More on this subject at photonics.com

January Start Eyed for National Integrated Photonics Institute
Integrated photonics devices, particularly those based on silicon, are expected to be crucial to communications and other technologies in the very near future. Until now, photonic integrated circuits (PICs) have been developed by several groups working separately, meaning there is no standard for assembly or packaging. www.photonics.com/a57780

UK Creates £13M Photonics Manufacturing Hub
More than 40 U.K. companies will take part in a photonics manufacturing research center to be led by the University of Southampton. www.photonics.com/a57991

Photopolymerization Approach Speeds 3D Printing (with video)
Continuous liquid interface production (CLIP) works by projecting UV light through an oxygen-permeable window into a liquid resin. Light and oxygen control solidification of the resin, producing objects tens of centimeters in size and with feature resolution <100 μm. www.photonics.com/a57295

German Partnership Brings OCT, Laser Transfer Printing to Hearing Aid Manufacturing
Seven businesses and a nonprofit research institute have partnered to improve the functionality and comfort of hearing aids through light-based imaging and manufacturing technologies. www.photonics.com/a57803

Will Federal Funding Make Photonics Limp or Leap?

There’s been no shortage of public-private partnerships announced in recent years, targeting the role of photonics in manufacturing, and all part of a broader effort to breathe new life into a declining manufacturing base.

Last year, the Consortium for Integrated Photonic Systems Manufacturing, a project of the International Electronics Manufacturing Initiative (iNEMI), received a $540,000 grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to address challenges and gaps that limit advancements for use in integrated photonic system manufacturing. The grant was one of 19 university and nonprofit research projects to receive awards totaling about $9 million through the Advanced Manufacturing Technology Consortia (AMTech) program.

This July, the Obama administration announced a $610 million public-private partnership to strengthen high-tech U.S.-based manufacturing. Headquartered in New York state and led by the State University of New York Polytechnic Institute (SUNY Poly), the American Institute for Manufacturing Integrated Photonics (AIM Photonics) will bring government, industry and academia together to advance domestic capabilities in integrated photonic technology.

The SUNY Poly Albany Nanotech Complex features a 1.3 million-sq-ft facility that includes space for wet labs, metrology and 3D packaging. Photo courtesy of SUNY Polytechnic Institute.

Federal funding of $110 million will be combined with some $500 million from AIM Photonics’ consortium of state and local governments, manufacturing firms, universities, community colleges and nonprofit organizations throughout the U.S.

The Manufacturing Innovation Institute for Integrated Photonics is the sixth of nine such public-private partnerships launched to boost advanced manufacturing and foster innovation.

AIM Photonics marks a new direction from the government compared with past efforts, according to Alan Willner, president of the Optical Society of America (OSA) and chair of the steering committee for the National Photonics Initiative, which is affiliated with AIM Photonics. Past programs initiated by the government didn’t succeed in making integrated photonics a commercial success, he said.

“There needed to be a new and larger effort in integrated photonics so that photonics can be made cost-effectively and used wherever it brings value in applications,” Willner said. “That’s why AIM Photonics is such a huge initiative; it’s a different approach and, when it scales, it could really upend this decades-old vision. The same way we put integrated circuits in your watch today, we’ll put integrated photonic circuits wherever they bring value.”

Eugene Arthurs, president of SPIE, also sees AIM as “a welcomed step forward.” While too early to deem the investment a success, the effort holds promise, he said. However, he pointed to other efforts — many involving photonics — within President Obama’s proposed budget for NIST as under-resourced.

“The gulf between the President’s proposed budget for NIST, which would have gone some way to remedy this, and what NIST now looks like it is getting, will mean we will only limp along.”

Another obstacle could come in the form of reduced spending in military research and space exploration, according to Walter Burgess, vice president of sales and engineering at Power Technology Inc.

“Innovation comes when you pursue big goals with no immediate payoff,” he said. “The U.S. isn’t doing enough research to solve big technology challenges. Corporations are also falling behind by managing their quarterly financials and not investing for long-term payoffs.”