Digital manufacturing service provider Protolabs has awarded a grant to support research fellows at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Industrial Performance Center (IPC) as they study how leading US manufacturers scale advanced technologies into domestic production.
The research will examine why breakthrough technologies developed in the US do not always end up manufactured domestically, and what strategies, capabilities, and conditions help companies close that gap. The findings are intended to inform ways of strengthening the US economy, industrial base, and national security.
What the research will cover
Part of the funding will go toward building what the partners call a “first-of-its-kind” manufacturing innovation index. The index is meant to work as an ongoing tracking tool, following new manufacturing companies as they emerge, the products they bring to market, and the specific technologies and production methods behind them.
Support from Protolabs will also advance the Initiative for New Manufacturing‘s (INM) research program on high-growth manufacturing companies, enabling research fellows to study factories operating at the frontier of the aerospace, defense, and medical device industries. The goal is to identify practices that can be applied more broadly across American manufacturing.
Ben Armstrong, executive director of MIT’s IPC, said inventors who build companies in the US typically move production abroad as they grow, and that demand for a domestic path to scale up new technologies is growing without a clear route to get there. “With this support from Protolabs, we’re focusing on today’s manufacturing pioneers that are finding ways to scale in the U.S.,” he said, adding that the research aims to identify operating models, financial strategies, and public policies that can strengthen America’s industrial base long-term.
Suresh Krishna, president and CEO of Protolabs, tied the grant to the company’s work in aerospace and medical device manufacturing and its use of technology-enabled software for rapid product development. He said Protolabs “needs to focus now, more than ever, on developing and deploying physical AI to scale up the American manufacturing and supply chain ecosystem.”
Industry funding academic research on scaling
The grant fits Protolabs’ broader position in the sectors the MIT fellows will study. Rather than funding product development directly, the company is backing research into the structural conditions, financing, and policy that determine whether a technology developed in the US actually gets manufactured there, framing the question as one of industrial base strength and national security tied to its own customer base in aerospace and medical devices.
The national security angle behind the MIT research also mirrors funding decisions abroad. The Additive Manufacturing Cooperative Research Centre‘s (AMCRC) approval of $11 million in CORE projects in Australia was framed around strengthening manufacturing competitiveness and sovereign production capacity, with projects spanning aerospace, defense, and medtech, the same industries the MIT fellows will examine for lessons on scaling in the US.
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Featured image shows The Protolabs logo. Image via Protolabs.
