Commercialization of New Materials for a Global Economy (1993)

Discussion of the various issues detailed in the previous chapters led to a series of findings on the barriers to commercialization. Strategies on how to overcome such barriers are suggested following each of the findings. These strategies fall into three main categories: (1) those that relate to the government's role and actions it can take to facilitate the commercialization process; (2) those that pertain to industry in its pursuit of competitive new materials; and (3) those that relate to the role of educational institutions in producing a new generation of materials scientists, engineers, and technicians.

It should be pointed out that most of the strategies require a degree of cooperation among all three sectors, so grouping them under any one sector implies a lead responsibility only. Two particular strategies for which a lead responsibility is difficult to assign are designated as being for all three sectors.

Finding: The most difficult and critical step in the commercialization of a material is scaling-up from laboratory quantities to precommercial and eventually commercial quantities. The federal government has supported such development on occasion, especially through programs initiated by DOD including the Title III

of the Defense Production Act and Manufacturing Technology programs. Other programs, such as the Advanced Research Projects Agency's Technology Insertion Programs and DOD's Manufacturing Technology Program, helped to create a demand for advanced materials and processes by reducing the front-end risk to industry. In view of the new mission expressed in the fiscal year 1993 presidential initiative on advanced materials and processing, which includes among its strategic objectives the bridging of the gap between innovation and application of advanced materials technologies, government should organize itself to support this objective. A necessary condition is the timely, wide dissemination of materials R&D information.

The federal agencies involved most likely would be those having major materials programs as outlined in the Advanced Materials and Processing Program Plan report (FCCSET, 1992). The strategy suggested is that:

• The federal government could establish a clearinghouse activity to serve as a single source of readily available information containing relevant aspects of all federally funded materials programs that spanned the range of basic research through pilot production. The information would describe the materials being developed and commercialized under federal sponsorship, the funding levels, milestones, and so on. Such a data base would allow better coordination among all federally funded materials efforts, resulting in reinforcing comprehensive efforts; for example, facilitating the identification of program gaps and overlap areas. Industry and academia would have access to the “big picture” and thus be able to anticipate when materials of interest would be available for use. In addition, industry could be asked to assess the commercialization potential of specific development

efforts, taken as a whole; appropriate changes could then be made early enough to ensure that commercialization would not be delayed due to an oversight.

Finding: Materials development supported by government agencies has often been confined to narrow mission-related objectives. Future commercial applications of advanced materials will almost always include potential markets beyond initial government applications, however. Ignoring potential commercial requirements can severely limit the market for new materials and increase production costs. The NMAB suggests the following strategy for dealing with this issue:

• To provide as broad an application window as possible, government materials R&D programs could incorporate along with the known government requirements, or otherwise address, the key material needs for leading commercial applications. Appropriate mechanisms to discover and assess these needs would have to be established as well.

Finding: The end of the Cold War and government policies designed to promote exports are leading to a reexamination of export control regulations. These regulations can limit the use of advanced materials technology, often without apparent meaningful purpose. The current regulations can also unnecessarily interfere with the interactions between U.S. firms and their foreign partners. This restricts the broadening of the U.S. technical base and limits U.S. firms' access to overseas markets. The NMAB suggests the following:

• A study by the Committee on Science, Engineering and Public Policy recommended that the basis of technology transfer restrictions be changed from that of a policy of general denial of dual-use

items to a policy of presumed approval for export, based on verified end-use of the product (COSEPUP, 1991). This recommendation could be used as a framework to address the necessary changes to the export control regulations.

Finding: A number of barriers to commercialization of new materials were identified that relate to economic and regulatory factors. Such factors affect commercialization of many products and processes and are not confined to materials. Moreover, many of these factors are part of the dynamic debate within all three branches of the federal government, and undergo continual change. For instance, tax incentives, government procurement policies, and intellectual property protection clauses are the subject of numerous legislative actions and judicial decisions within the course of a year. The NMAB suggests the following strategy:

• Economic and legal barriers to commercialization, as well as financial incentives, could be examined in detail by appropriate experts to determine what changes could prudently be made to assist in accelerating the commercialization process.

Finding: Consortia and other focused mechanisms for precompetitive development can do a great deal to help industrial companies share risks and costs while speeding technical advances through exploration of parallel paths. Such consortia can be useful if organized horizontally (e.g., several companies that are essentially in the same business) or vertically (e.g., several companies that include materials suppliers, manufacturers, and end users). Cooperative efforts can include precompetitive R &D, development of design data

and test requirements, development of technical commercial requirements, collection of life-cycle data, and sharing of high capital cost facilities. The NMAB suggests the following strategies to deal with these issues:

• Focused, cooperative, cost-shared efforts can speed the commercialization of materials through such activities as precompetitive R&D, demonstration of process reproducibility, application development, development of design data bases, and joint-use capital facilities. Industry could establish consortia that include materials suppliers, part fabricators, and end users. As appropriate, the expertise and unique facilities of the federal laboratories can be integrated into such consortia.

Finding: Material suppliers typically provide their products to makers of semi-finished products, such as forging and casting houses. This tends to decouple material companies from their ultimate customers: the end users. Direct links between the material suppliers and the end users would provide the materials industry with first-hand knowledge of user needs and the users with first-hand appreciation of capabilities within the materials industry. Such a strategy is suggested:

• An informal interactive forum, implemented on an individual basis or an industry-wide basis, could allow the necessary interchange of information and improve market pull and product focus for material producers. Existing mechanisms already in place at various trade associations can facilitate these interactions. Use of video conferencing electronic communications would further reduce the cost of maintaining the forum.

Finding: Inflexible product design approaches and manufacturing processes often significantly impede the introduction of new materials. For companies to take advantage of newly developed materials, products and their associated manufacturing systems should be considered concurrently and with as much versatility as the particular application allows. Revolutionary new materials generally can fulfill their complete potential only if new design methods are applied to new products. The consequence is that advanced materials often wait “on the shelf ” until new markets develop. However, the insertion of improved materials to incrementally improve existing products can be an attractive way to use an existing market to build demand for an advanced material, even though it may not exploit the material to its fullest capability. System developers should incorporate into their design and manufacturing scheme the potential to quickly insert new materials technology at any point in the lifetime of the product, not just during the initial design. The NMAB suggests the following strategy to deal with this issue:

• A product improvement strategy for making use of advanced materials should be considered. Such a strategy requires concurrent updating of product design approaches to reflect the unique aspects of the new material. Consideration must also be given to any environmental and use changes that the product might experience as a result of added capability.

Finding: There is a need for engineers who are proficient in designing and processing new materials and in designing and manufacturing products that successfully incorporate these materials. Unless design and manufacturing engineers are available who can capitalize on the novel properties of new materials, the promise of

these materials will not be realized. To improve the supply of such engineers, the emphasis on materials processing, design, and manufacturing in university engineering education must be increased. A valuable adjunct to new academic programs would be some form of “practice school.” In this model, a student works on actual professional assignments in the field, with real responsibility, for several months at a time. The NMAB suggests the following strategy:

• A university-led partnership could be used to develop realistic ways to encourage and support revised, or entirely new, design approaches and methods that would allow full exploitation of advanced materials properties, avoidance of failure modes, and so on. For example, the “practice school” model could be extended to include materials processing and manufacturing education.

Finding: Advanced materials technology often eclipses the experience and knowledge of practicing design engineers and manufacturing engineers. University-led continuing education programs for experienced design engineers and manufacturing engineers can bring this community up-to-date with new materials whose properties do not necessarily parallel their experience base with metals. It would usually be far more cost-effective to bring these professionals back to the university environment to gain additional knowledge than to learn by trial-and-error in their normal work environment.

• Continuing education programs for experienced practitioners could be an effective mechanism for bringing them up-to-date, providing a necessary knowledge base and expert tutelage. As a result, experienced professionals would be able to

resynthesize their conventional designs in line with useful new paradigms.

Finding: Non-degreed technical personnel perform many crucial tasks throughout engineering and manufacturing. Their experience base is derived largely from learning successful procedures. Extending their experience is necessary to fully exploit materials that are on the verge of being commercialized. Traditionally, technical societies have filled this need, and they have the capabilities to develop such training courses. The NMAB suggests the following strategies for dealing with these issues:

• The experience-base of professionals without degrees could be extended by practice-oriented training programs that address key areas of advanced materials technology. This approach could significantly minimize the number and severity of problems associated with the introduction of new materials. Such a strategy might take advantage of programs offered by various technical societies.

Finding: Commercialization of materials would be facilitated by greater standardization of design data bases and development of international standards. Within the federal government, the National Institute of Standards and Technology is the agency most heavily involved in such endeavors. The institute's activities and workshops have emphasized the need for closer interactions between government and industry. It is clear that universities as well as professional societies have a contribution to make in the standardization of data bases, including the development of national and international standards. Since science, engineering, and technology emanate from

many sources in the United States, it should not be surprising that the development of design data bases as well as standards is a pluralistic endeavor. Nevertheless, the competitiveness of the United States is suffering because of the uncoordinated nature of many of these efforts. The NMAB suggests the following strategies for dealing with these issues:

• Development of materials standards, including international standards, is an essential aspect of building the infrastructure needed to support the commercialization of advanced materials. A federal agency, such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology, could establish a forum to develop the standards through timely, active participation by industry and other interested parties.

• Greater standardization of design-related materials property data bases is necessary to facilitate the widespread application of new materials and thus increase the size and number of potential markets. The materials industry could lead this effort, with wide participation by government, universities, and professional societies.