$70M Manufacturing Center Announced for YBI
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – The Obama Administration this morning announced a new public-private institute for manufacturing innovation to be based at the Youngstown Business Incubator's new annex, a 12,000-square-foot building at 236 Boardman St..
The new partnership, the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute, (NAMII) was selected through a competitive process led by the U.S. Department of Defense to award an initial $30 million in federal funding matched by $40 million from the winning consortium, which includes manufacturing firms, universities, community colleges and nonprofit organizations from the Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia Tech Belt.
YBI was selected, through competitive bidding, as the site for the center. NAMII is part of the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation, a federal initiative to make the industry more globally competitive and increase exports. Additive manufacturing, also known as rapid prototyping or 3D printing, uses software to produce extremely complex parts by adding materials.
One of requirements of the federal funding is to commercialize new technologies and support start-up firms in this growing field. In addition to the physical amenities that YBI offers to its tenants, the incubator will work with NAMII’s leadership to develop new programs to promote entrepreneurialism within the field, ensuring that new products get to market and that new businesses are creating jobs.
“We know how to make things in Ohio. From Lordstown to Brook Park to Avon Lake, cities across Northeast Ohio's techbelt make up a critical part of our state’s manufacturing backbone,” said U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown. “With this award to establish the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute, northeast Ohio will be able to further solidify its status as a hub for manufacturing innovation, helping to spur economic development both here and across our state.”
The Youngstown-based institute will be the first pilot of the National Network for Manufacturing Institutes. Brown led a Congressional letter of support for the Cleveland-Youngstown-Pittsburgh TechBelt to receive the competitively-awarded grant, and last month in Cleveland, he delivered the keynote address at a workshop on building the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation. In that speech, Brown cited his support for Ohio-based institutions to carry out the Defense Department’s proposal to establish an Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute. The $30 million award from the DoD will be matched by $40 million in private funds from the award recipients.
“We gratefully acknowledge all of the funders for this project. Their support was absolutely crucial to allowing this project to happen here," said Barb Ewing, COO of the incubator. “Because NAMII aligns so closely with our existing expertise, it provides us with an ideal platform to broaden our scope, while still being able to provide high level entrepreneurial support in business-to-business software,” Ewing stated.
Two YBI portfolio companies, M-7 Technologies, where the announcement was made, and Applied Systems and Technology Transfer, or AST2, are partners in the consortium. AST2 has committed $200,000 cost shared to the grant to support the workforce component to the program. M-7, which has experience in advanced materials, has committed $250,000 to cost share the program.
AST2’s INVENTORCloud is a problem-based curriculum for high school students that uses additive manufacturing to teach innovation, creativity and design. “So much of what is used in additive manufacturing is design software and applications that support product improvement and innovation; YBI is a natural choice for this site," said Julie Michael Smith, executive vice president of AST2.
The CEO of M-7 Technologies, Mike Garvey, is also a member of the YBI board of directors. Garvey noted that in addition to YBI’s experience in software commercialization, Youngstown State University – another NAMII partner – has expertise in advanced materials. According to Garvey, that means that the region is at the intersection of the next generation of manufacturing technology.
Published by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.