Utah Manufacturing Extension Partnership wants half of the state's 4,300 manufacturers to be classified as 'advanced' by 2035

Brice Wallace

More than 40 percent of Utah’s manufacturers are involved in advanced manufacturing. A group of industry leaders wants to boost that number and has a plan to reach its goal.

Members of the Utah Manufacturing Extension Partnership (Utah-MEP), a team of experts commissioned to help Utah’s 4,300 manufacturers improve, made their pitch to the Unified Economic Opportunity Commission during a discussion about the state’s strategic plans for several targeted industries. Final plans for each of the six industries are expected by November.

The term “advanced manufacturing,” or AM, refers to manufacturing using new technologies such as automation, robotics, digital twinning (creating a virtual replica of a physical object, system or process), 3D printing and new materials. Among the more than 40 percent of Utah manufacturers using AM technology, most of them are outside the medical, aerospace and semiconductor industries.

In addition to developing resilient supply chains for manufacturers and keeping Utah in the top 10 among states for a technology and science workforce, supporters said they want more than 50 percent of Utah’s manufacturers to be classified as advanced manufacturers by the year 2035.

Many Utah manufacturers are gathering data “by the bucketload,” but they — especially small companies — lack the money to develop data-backed automation that could improve their processes, according to Todd Bingham, president and CEO of the Utah Manufacturers Association.

“We’re excited about where AI is going and where it goes for smaller companies,” he told the commission.

Utah already is in the top five among states for AM concentration, but the proliferation of AM companies in Utah varies widely, from a high of 40 percent of manufacturers in Salt Lake County, to 20 percent in both Logan and between Salt Lake County and Nephi, to 12 percent in St. George and about 8 percent throughout the rest of the state.

Utah-MEP is asking for $2 million from the state Legislature to equip 24 manufacturers over the next five years with IoT and small sensors that would be applied to applications or machines, with their improved results serving as an example of how advanced manufacturing can improve companies’ operations. Those 24 companies — including ones in the aerospace and life science industries, and manufacturers across both urban and rural Utah — would be required to provide tours to build local AM confidence.

“That would allow them to serve as a local place where we can bring other manufacturers to in their local area and they can testify, if you will, and say, ‘This is what this has done for me. This is how it’s helped me,’” Steve Black, director of Utah-MEP, told the commission. “It takes this initiative down to a very local level and one that I believe will help accelerate the adoption of advanced manufacturing throughout the state.”

“AI (artificial intelligence) is something you’ve heard an awful lot about, but in your world, you probably tend to think of it much more from a software type of a perspective,” Bingham said. “When you’re thinking about that in manufacturing, we often think that it is tied to a couple of the more prominent industries, but if we think about it and dive down, advanced manufacturing and AI is in almost every manufacturing company out there.”

For example, the technology can be in the form of tracking a piece of a product, like in the food industry where food production, sales and distribution information can be used during recalls.

Smaller companies, Bingham said, tend to use the technology to determine where waste exists in their production processes. In searching for a solution that would eliminate that waste, engineers will analyze data “and in many cases, they’ve kind of thrown Jell-O against the wall” — essentially incorrectly guessing.

“It’s all driven by data,” Bingham said. “Today, through AI, we are gathering data in manufacturing facilities by the bucketload, and now the biggest challenge is taking all that data, breaking it down, giving it to the engineering teams and having them determine what is the highest area of focus to tweak, to change. So, rather than throwing that Jell-O at the wall now, we’re looking at it and saying, ‘If we change this or tweak that, we’ll be able to output 25 percent more product than we do right now.’”

Win Jeanfreau, executive director of iMpact Utah, said the steps toward advanced manufacturing can be use of a mobile lab to measure what automation could look like at a particular company; partial automation, or “cobotics,” that uses robots to help workers increase productivity; partial automation of a production line; full-stream automation; and full-factory automation.

Jeanfreau stressed that making that transition will require training of the workforce. Bingham said job losses are always a concern when improving processes, but “that doesn’t happen in manufacturing.”

Bingham cited an example of a cake maker having a worker slide a bag into a box. Automation can do that operation many times faster, allowing for more cakes to be produced and boxed. That affected employee then can be reassigned to a different area in the facility where he or she can run equipment, along the way making a higher wage and having a more advanced skill set.

“In manufacturing, we upscale and we increase the wage and the skill set where we’re going from doing a manual piece to now running a piece of automation, a piece of robotics, a piece of 3D printing — that type of thing,” he said.

Ben Hart, a commission member and executive director of the Utah Inland Port Authority, noted how Utah needs advanced manufacturing in order to keep up with other states’ efforts.

“Here’s the reality in the global manufacturing world … It’s no longer about us being status quo. It’s not about us just doing ‘good enough’ in manufacturing. This isn’t our peers; this is our competition. And I want to make sure that the commission understands that,” he said.

“We are in a global battle right now for the best and brightest manufacturers and making sure that the most sophisticated, automated procedures and platforms are being implemented into Utah businesses. This is not the 1990s manufacturing. The world has changed significantly, and if we don’t put a lot of effort into trying to capitalize, help build our businesses … then we’re going to lose ground.”

Some states are “hugely aggressive” about advanced manufacturing, and Utah could lose out to them “if we don’t stay focused on helping to build these production and manufacturing companies in our own back yard,” he said.

“If we lose this fight, it will be another generation before we get a chance to compete again,” Hart said. “So, in this global supply chain re-correction … I think we have to make sure that we win.”

Brice Wallace is the associate editor and a senior writer for the Business Journal.