Digital Manufacturing Revolution Launch Event

October 9, 2013. . Attendees from across the country converged on GE’s Advanced Manufacturing and Software Technology Center to be part of Digital Manufacturing Revolution. The two-day event marked the official opening of the first Grid Cell™ Innovation Center, kicking off the national effort to bring 21st Century Digital Manufacturing tools to American industry.

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Michigan Manufacturing to Get a Boost- Update with Jon Riley

January 22, 2013. Last fall the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (NCMS) announced that it had partnered with the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) to establish the first innovation center in what will become a national grid. The centers help will small- and mid-sized manufacturers (SMMs) be more competitive globally by providing them with a virtualized approach to product design and manufacturing that combines high performance modeling, simulation, and analysis (MS&A), data mining tools, and the digitization of processes to optimize speed, reliability, and efficiency.

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James Bond Does 3D Printing

November 21, 2012. Any James Bond movie is sure to feature an iconic auto subjected to high speed chases and often explosions. The newest installment, Skyfall, featuring a classic 1960’s Aston Martin DB5 that is involved in a series of stunts and huge explosions including one scene which saw the priceless vehicle explode in flames is certainly no different. Being a rather expensive car, the producers didn’t have the luxury of using an actual vehicle for every scene. The priceless Aston Martin DB5, which was already used in the first James Bond film exactly 50 years ago, needed to remain unscathed.

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Wake Up, Manufacturing, You’re Late

June 21, 2012. A recent University of Michigan study notes that factories produce about 75 percent of what we consume. The warning that follows, though, indicates that as much as 40 percent of that could go overseas (or at least out of the United States) if we make the wrong policy decisions.

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Manufacturing is Changing, and Change is Good

May 18, 2012. The Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, recently released a report on geographic trends in American manufacturing. The group’s follow-up commentary notes that manufacturing is spreading out well beyond the “traditional” presumed locations in the United States, and that we are seeing a lot of manufacturers gravitating towards one another geographically.

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