About IN-MaC

IN-MaC is Purdue University’s response, in partnership with Ivy Tech Community College and Vincennes University, to the economic challenge facing the United States over the next decade: How do we create growth and sustain the American Dream for generations to come? Many US based companies face a shortage of trained workers capable of filling open positions. Technology is advancing rapidly, and must be transferred to industry quickly in order for companies to remain competitive relative their peers. Investment in knowledge creation today will ensure future competitiveness for US industry. IN-MaC addresses these needs with an integrated partnership among industry, academia, and government to help prepare our industry, workforce and talent pipeline to be more competitive and resilient.

IN-MaC Update

Investing in the Future: Competitiveness and sustainability of the manufacturing sector are essential to ensure job growth and economic prosperity. There is renewed national interest in manufacturing research and education and the time is now to revitalize  local manufacturing. The Indiana Manufacturing Competitiveness Center (IN-MaC) is a bold effort led by Purdue University to transform manufacturing in the State of Indiana.

• IN-MaC Introductory Slides
• IN-MaC Introductory Flyer

Preparing for Industry 4.0

Industry 4.0 is the common name for the fusion of technologies that meld automation with the seamless exchange of digital information across all facets of the business enterprise to unleash the next level of competitiveness and profitability. Industry 4.0 is commonly referred to as the 4th industrial revolution and includes the integration of cyber-physical systems, the internet of things, cloud computing and artificial intelligence to reshape the way that workers interact with technology – and that technology empowers the workforce to make more rapid and informed decisions across the shop floor and throughout the organization.

The way that goods are produced has evolved over the past 230 years through the application of new technologies in ingenious ways. The first industrial revolution, which began towards the end of the 18th century, saw the use of mechanization powered by water and steam transform manufacturing in ways that dramatically increased output and the standard of living. About 100 years later mechanization began to evolve into mass production, powered by the use of electricity and innovative assembly lines. Industry 3.0 emerged around 1970 with the growing application of computing power and automation on the factory floor.

Today, the pace of innovation is accelerating and the next Industrial revolution has begun. It is incumbent upon companies to learn how to adopt to these evolutions and position their companies to be as resilient as possible. IN-MaC, strives to prepare the workforce today to unleash the potential of todays best technologies. We work with educators and students to develop the pipeline of tomorrows manufacturing workforce and industrial leaders. We support research that develops knowledge foundational to smarter, more integrated and rapidly adoptable companies, and demonstrate the know-how through our manufacturing testbed and workforce development programs. We help manufacturers identify and adopt technical solutions that enhance their productivity and welcome opportunities to learn more about your company’s needs and interests.

Common topics within Industry 4.0 include:

1. Digital Twin Companies need more efficient and predictable methods to virtually design, test, build, and support their products, while minimizing costs for those activities. The digital manufacturing enterprise forms the digital mirror to the physical product, including its geometric, behavioral, and contextual definitions. It leverages a model-based product definition to support the production, supply chain, and sustainment environments in a model-based enterprise. The digital manufacturing enterprise also includes the software, hardware, and network architectures necessary to deliver product information across the lifecycle, as well as the methodologies to enable data authors and consumers inside and outside the enterprise.
2. Personalization Advances in the connectivity and availability of computational resources have the potential to fundamentally change manufacturing and delivery of products and services, by allowing personalized products and services with the efficiency of mass production. The ability to sense-and-respond in real- time to the various product lifecycle stages can allow manufacturing enterprises to personalize products to meet individual customer needs. Personalized manufacturing will focus on the new tools and processes for capturing multiple inputs to design, production and sourcing of products; the massive data analysis and storage mechanisms necessary to handle the amounts of data generated in creating products this way; and the social and economic impacts that result from developing products in this manner.
3. Market Viable Manufacturing Processes Current and future manufactured products are more than just discrete parts combined into higher-level assemblies to form a finished good. They often incorporate newly invented materials and complex, electro-mechanical systems with embedded software to give them contextual intelligence and a personalized connection to the consumer. These types of products can be developed in research labs, but it is necessary to translate laboratory scales and techniques for manufacturing to commercially viable manufacturing approaches that meet market volume and pricing needs. To do this, it will be necessary to combine the variability of personalization with techniques to model and simulate product performance, supply networks, and sustainment resources, while considering product complexity (precision and volume) and production capacity.