The radical ideas powering up American manufacturing

The Blue Sky Competition, now approaching its 10th anniversary, has helped ignite some of the most revolutionary concepts for how we make things.

By Brett Conner, Chief Manufacturing Officer, SME

We now commonly produce things that allow us to live, work, and prosper that previous generations could only have dreamed of. And how we produce them would astonish even the pioneers of the Industrial Revolution.

Radical, even outrageous, ideas have revolutionized American manufacturing over the decades, from the beginnings of mechanized production, the advent of the assembly line and the “just in time” factory, to the arrival of the “Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT),” 3D printing, and artificial intelligence.

SME, formerly the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, has been accelerating the adoption of new manufacturing technologies since our founding nearly a century ago by 33 tool engineers. To cultivate the human talent that we need to fully unleash their potential, our national nonprofit has also partnered with companies, government agencies, and educational institutions at all levels across dozens of states.

For the past decade, SME’s Blue Sky Competition has been a signature initiative to identify and promote game-changing, cutting-edge innovations in manufacturing. Submissions to the contest are judged by experts from industry, academia, and government, including federal program officers, who assess their scope, interdisciplinary nature, and potential to transform U.S. manufacturing research and education.

The contest culminates in the SME David Dornfeld Manufacturing Vision Award, honoring the global leader in sustainable and smart manufacturing, which this year will be awarded at SME’s 50th annual North American Manufacturing Research Conference, or NAMRC, to be held in June at Pennsylvania State University. 

With crucial support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the annual contest has cultivated some of the boldest ideas for taking manufacturing to the next level.

Many of the technologies and concepts selected by our judges have subsequently attracted public and private investment, been scaled up, or landed on the factory floor, here on Earth and even in space.

Now more than ever, America must embrace unconventional approaches to manufacturing if we are to retain, let alone expand, our global leadership in technology that will enrich our lives, strengthen our economic competitiveness, and defend the nation.

The United States has made historic investments in recent years to revitalize our manufacturing sector in response to global competition and tensions. There have been signs of real growth. But there are also mounting indications that the revival we need faces significant headwinds.

Therefore, revitalizing and reshoring American manufacturing requires thinking far outside the box. Incremental advances and methodical progress are simply not enough. These times demand forward-looking approaches that revamp, and even upend, the competitive landscape. 

The Blue Sky Competition offers a uniquely impactful way for SME to help identify innovators and their ideas with the greatest potential to sharpen our manufacturing edge and boost our output for years to come. 

‘A crazy, audacious idea’

Our message to the best and brightest engineers, scientists, and other inventive minds is that the sky is the limit for your outrageously visionary ideas.

For example, when the notion of building things in Earth’s orbit was still a nascent concept, a submission selected by the Blue Sky Competition in 2018 outlined an early vision for in-space manufacturing.

Traditionally critical tasks such as logistics, supply chain management, and service delivery have been performed in factories, warehouses, and distribution centers. “The space frontier demands a new paradigm,” the multidisciplinary government and academic research team asserted.

The concept boldly envisioned the establishment of automated factories in space as an integral part of the supply chain for extracting, reusing, and processing raw materials, manufacturing parts, and assembling them into a variety of products for use in space and on Earth.   

Pioneers of the idea, dubbed the concept “factories-in-space,” autonomous factories that will produce products for communication, energy, medical, and many other industrial sectors. They also teamed up with experts from NASA, academic institutions, and corporations to publish and further the idea as a technical report.

The team has since advanced the approach through public-private partnerships with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the U.S. Space Force, NASA, major aerospace companies and incubators such as Northrop Grumman, Voyager, and academic institutions such as Purdue University and Texas A&M.

“Blue Sky selected what at the time was a crazy, audacious idea,” said researcher Harsha Malshe, who last year co-founded a startup with Ajay called Arkwright to bring the vision to market.

“Arkwright is the natural next step in the journey we’ve been on, to build autonomous factories that can detect, diagnose, and repair critical hardware at the point of need,” he added. “We want to get to space and stay there, and in-space manufacturing is a critical piece of that equation. And here we are, starting to commercialize this.”

Feeding the future

Back here on Earth, the Blue Sky Competition in 2022 embraced a concept from Purdue University to improve the quality of cultured proteins for human consumption through new technologies such as 3D bioprinting and AI and integrating them with traditional animal agriculture to achieve economies of scale. 

“We are looking at a situation where we have more mouths to feed and we are not growing more land,” said Michael Sealy, an associate professor of mechanical engineering who specializes in food bioprinting. 

Sealy developed the concept, called "Feeding the Future through Convergent Manufacturing," to create a manufacturing infrastructure for cultured meat that integrates multiple – and traditionally separate – production technologies and processes. 

“Food insecurity in America is real, and alternative proteins have a place at the table to complement the existing protein supply chain,” he says. “We have to get more efficient at our production methods.”

In addition to recognition by Blue Sky, Sealy’s research has been supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and he is the primary investigator for a roadmap being developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology at the Department of Commerce intended to lay out a framework to scale such an approach over the next ten years.

“You are seeing a critical mass of activity taking place in this area,” Sealy said. “Blue Sky helped to raise awareness. But the reality is that the United States is falling behind. Other countries are dedicating more funding to this type of food production.”

Unlimited possibilities 

Among the top-ranking submissions in recent years has also been lifesaving techniques developed by the Mayo Clinic to 3D bioprint human tissue during surgery. The so-called “regenerative operating room of the future” is set to debut this year.

More recently, Blue Sky spotlighted a research team at the University of Georgia reimagining the interface between AI and humans to detect worker stress and fatigue, thereby improving safety and collaboration.

As the Blue Sky Competition approaches its 10th anniversary, SME is proud of its record of nurturing some of the most radical ideas to advance American manufacturing and helping to transition and scale them. 

SME remains committed to propelling American manufacturing forward, from the lab to the factory floor and well beyond, including by identifying and elevating the most daring ideas that will literally build our future.

Will one of them be yours?