MIT’s Initiative for New Manufacturing, revealed today by President Sally A. Kornbluth, represents the latest chapter in a longstanding legacy: Since its inception, MIT has consistently endeavored to bolster U.S. manufacturing, generating employment and economic advancement.
In fact, a key thread throughout MIT’s history is its dedication to U.S. manufacturing, a pursuit that the Institute has undertaken in both prosperous and challenging times, during conflict and periods of peace, and across numerous sectors. Established in 1861, MIT was partly created to enhance U.S. industrial productivity, and has since developed special initiatives to strengthen it — including various efforts in recent decades aimed at rejuvenating U.S. manufacturing.
“We aspire to intentionally create high-quality, human-centered manufacturing positions that inject new vitality into communities nationwide,” Kornbluth communicated in a letter to the Institute community this morning when announcing the Initiative for New Manufacturing. She further expressed: “I firmly believe that there is no more crucial task we can undertake to address current challenges and support our nation.”
“Rooted in MIT’s fundamental ethos”
On one level, manufacturing resides within MIT’s intrinsic identity. The Institute’s research and education have propelled advancements in sectors such as construction and transportation, along with defense, electronics, biosciences, chemical engineering, and beyond. MIT’s contributions to management and logistics have also enabled manufacturing companies to prosper.
As Kornbluth mentioned in today’s letter, “Honestly, it’s not an exaggeration to claim that the Institute was established in 1861 to enhance manufacturing.”
The historical record corroborates this notion, too. “There is no segment of practical industry, whether concerning construction, manufacturing, or agriculture, that cannot be better practiced, and even improved in its processes,” stated MIT’s inaugural president, William Barton Rogers, in a proposal for a new technical university, prior to MIT’s establishment.
“Manufacturing is ingrained in MIT’s fundamental ethos,” asserts Christopher Love, a professor of chemical engineering and a lead for the Initiative for New Manufacturing.
Apart from its daily activities, MIT has launched many specialized projects to support manufacturing. In 1919, under the guidance of the Institute’s third president, Richard Maclaurin, MIT initiated the “Tech Plan,” involving more than 200 corporate sponsors, such as AT&T and General Electric, to enhance their operations; vintage photographs depict MIT students inspecting a General Electric factory. (Similarly, today’s Initiative for New Manufacturing features a “Factory Observatory” among its various components, allowing Institute students to tour manufacturing sites.)
“Produced in America”
For several decades following World War II, the U.S. enjoyed a notably significant global advantage in manufacturing. The sector also represented about a quarter of U.S. GDP during much of the 1950s, in contrast to approximately 12 percent in recent times. It’s worth noting that other U.S. sectors naturally expanded; additionally, global manufacturing surged. However, the U.S. still boasted around 20 million manufacturing jobs in 1979, compared to about 12.8 million today. The 1980s witnessed significant job reductions in manufacturing, leading many to believe that the U.S. was losing its competitive edge in pivotal industries, including automotive and consumer electronics.
In reaction, MIT established a task force on the issue, the MIT Commission on Industrial Productivity — which produced a bestselling publication.
“Made in America: Regaining the Productive Edge,” co-authored by Michael Dertouzos, Richard Lester, and Robert Solow, sold over 300,000 copies upon its release in 1989. The book thoroughly analyzed U.S. manufacturing practices across eight essential industries and identified excessively short growth projections for companies, suboptimal technology transfer, inadequate focus on human resources, and more.
Solow was an apt co-author: The MIT economist produced groundbreaking research in the 1950s and 1960s, drawing on U.S. economic data, demonstrating that various types of technical advancements accounted for the majority of economic growth — far more than factors like population growth or capital expansion. “Total factor productivity,” as Solow termed it, encompassed technological innovation, education, and skill-related developments.
Solow’s contributions earned him a Nobel Prize in 1987 and clarified the significance of technology and education in economic growth: Advancement is not merely about increasing output of existing goods but creating entirely new products.
The 21st Century: PIE, The Engine, and INM
This century has seen manufacturing experience periods of expansion, but also significant job reductions in the early 2000s. This led to a surge of new MIT manufacturing initiatives and research.
One notable effort, an Institute task force on Production in the Innovation Economy (PIE), culminating in two years of empirical investigation, uncovered substantial potential for U.S. advanced manufacturing but indicated that the nation required improvements in converting innovations into market-ready products. These findings were articulated in the book “Making in America,” authored by Institute Professor Suzanne Berger, a political scientist with a long-standing focus on the industrial economy.
MIT also engaged in a government initiative, the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership, to foster high-tech economic hubs in regions of the U.S. affected by de-industrialization, a project that included developing novel educational programs for industrial workforce.
Moreover, in 2016, MIT first unveiled a creative endeavor to stimulate manufacturing directly, known as The Engine, a startup accelerator, innovation hub, and venture fund located near campus in Cambridge. The Engine aims to support promising “tough tech” startups that require time to build momentum, and has invested in numerous innovative companies.
Additionally, MIT’s Work of the Future task force, a multi-year initiative that released its final report in 2020, unveiled insights regarding manufacturing while not exclusively concentrating on them. The task force discovered that automation will not eliminate vast numbers of jobs — but emphasized that a crucial future challenge is how technology can aid workers in enhancing productivity without displacing them.
MIT continues to maintain various long-term programs and centers dedicated to manufacturing. The Initiative for New Manufacturing is a natural progression from the Manufacturing@MIT working group; MIT’s Leaders for Global Operations (LGO) program provides a combined Engineering-MBA degree with a distinct concentration on manufacturing; the Department of Mechanical Engineering offers an advanced manufacturing specialization; and the Industrial Liaison Program fosters corporate collaborations with MIT.
All in all, as Kornbluth remarked in today’s correspondence, “Manufacturing has been a consistent thread in MIT’s research and education … and it’s been a critical aspect of our service to the nation.”