Research in Manufacturing

Picture source: www.sheffield.ac.uk
INDUSTRIAL ENGINEER – VOLUME 43: NUMBER 05

Universities, businesses collaborate for new teaching facility
Three Virginia universities have joined with some of the world’s biggest manufacturers to break ground on the 50,000-square-foot Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufacturing in Prince George County.

Under its roof, best-in-class manufacturers will collaborate with accomplished faculty and students from Virginia’s top research and teaching institutions to perform advanced manufacturing research in two priority areas, surface engineering and manufacturing systems.

When complete next year, the center will operate computational and large-scale production labs. It also will open production space for heavy equipment and surface coating processes, including a thermal spraying machine, a directed vapor deposition machine, integrated data acquisition systems and a thermal conductivity measurements system. The goal is to accelerate the transfer of laboratory innovations to manufacturing production lines to improve efficiencies, products and profits.

David Lohr, the center’s president and executive director said “(the center) is a game changer for manufacturing operations in this country and around the world. Its collaborative model joins academic research with manufacturing’s drive for competitive advantage, and it promises new, valuable innovations faster than ever before.”