These questions were tackled last week at a Massachusetts Institute of Technology forum, part of MIT president Susan Hockfield’s initiative to help reinvent the nation’s manufacturing industry. The initiative was launched about a year ago following a deep recession that brought into focus the imbalance in a US economy that consumed far more than it produced.
Last year, for example, the nation’s trade deficit - meaning it imported more than it exported - hit $500 billion, according to the Commerce Department. The US trade deficit with China was nearly $275 billion.
In recent years, many companies have followed the model in which research and development are conducted in the United States, but commercial scale manufacturing occurs in lower cost countries, such as China, said Suzanne Berger, a political science professor and cochairwoman of MIT’s new Production in the Innovative Economy Committee. But, she noted, there has been little research on the relationship between R&D and manufacturing - and whether the loss of production capabilities undermines the ability to innovate.
Yet-Ming Chiang, an MIT professor of materials-science engineering and cofounder of Waltham-based A123 Systems Inc., indicated at the forum that he didn’t need research studies to tell him there’s a link between manufacturing and innovation.
After Chiang and his colleagues developed the technology for advanced lithium ion batteries for automobiles, Chiang said his team wanted to move right into production - but couldn’t find an operating battery manufacturing plant in the United States. So much of the initial battery production “know-how’’ had to be obtained in China and Korea, he said.
A123 Systems has since opened plants in Michigan, where the company’s scientists can better tinker with manufacturing procedures and product designs, developing new ideas and improving the quality of batteries in the process, he said.
“Do I think there’s a connection between manufacturing and innovation?’’ Chiang said after the forum. “Absolutely, I think there’s a connection. I believe it because we’ve practiced it.’’
