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I’ve seen plenty of people say more or less this same thing over the last few years: what’s standing in the way of AM’s scale-up in the U.S. defense industrial base isn’t technology — or even funding, at this point — but policy. One of the few institutions that exists primarily to address that problem is Ohio’s America Makes, the original Manufacturing Innovation Institute (MII).
As virtually everyone in the U.S. additive manufacturing industry is aware, America Makes is the MII focused on all things 3D printing. Every year, America Makes hosts the Members Meeting and Exchange (MMX) event near its headquarters in Youngstown, a somewhat small gathering that has a disproportionately large impact on setting the agenda for advanced manufacturing activity across the Western world.
This was the first year I attended, so I don’t have any other versions of MMX to which I can compare my experience. All the same, I think it is still safe enough to say that MMX felt particularly relevant in 2025, if only due to the dizzying macro backdrop that America Makes’ concerns are situated right at the center of.
The main reason for that, perhaps, is because, after years of gradual movement towards the spotlight, reshoring has finally broken through to the center stage of U.S. public discourse.
The way that this has happened hasn’t necessarily helped the true believers in reshoring to make their case. Throughout the first decade or so of its history (if we can mark the establishment of America Makes in 2012 as more or less the origin of U.S. reshoring efforts), the process was characterized by a highly deliberate, baby-step-by-baby-step pace towards full-scale implementation at some undefined date in the far-off future.
However, since the beginning of 2025, the White House’s trade war policy — which is an unsettling mixture of clunky and rapid-fire — has abruptly ripped the band-aid off U.S. manufacturing, exposing all the partially healed wounds to the surface for general scrutiny. We’ve all been alerted in real time that we’ve entered the aforementioned undefined future. So far, we’ve mainly learned how unprepared we were.
The thing is, that’s essentially what organizations like America Makes have been cautioning for years. This was a main theme of MMX 2025: nothing is easy when it comes to manufacturing, and everything involved becomes all the more difficult when you’re trying to integrate a long-term technological buildup with public industrial policy.
In the current historical moment, that difficulty is heightened even further by the fact that, for about a generation leading up to the present era, the U.S. government had largely allowed its industrial policy to lapse.
There are reasons why that happened, but they no longer really make sense. In fact, the reasons never really made sense to begin with, but they at least sounded like they did: the government shouldn’t be permitted to interfere with a free marketplace, etc. Not long ago, this was something that U.S. policymakers could plausibly claim to believe, even if no one else believed it.
Nowadays, disavowals of government interference in a market economy can only register as utterly preposterous. What was formerly the premier free market party in U.S. politics has embraced the most stringent tariffs regime in nearly a century, and the same White House that routinely hurls accusations of communism at anyone with politics to the left of Ronald Reagan’s has gotten the U.S. government to take a stake in U.S. Steel, and is seeking to do the same with chipmaker Intel and other beneficiaries of the CHIPS Act.
Whatever anyone’s feelings are on this general course of action, it would be impossible to deny that industrial policy has returned to the forefront of U.S. government, to an extent that hasn’t been seen, perhaps, since the world wars. Tariffs and the strong-arming of U.S. corporations by the executive branch are part of the top-down manifestation of that reality. The bottom-up side of the equation is represented by institutions like America Makes.
In that vein, I thought one of the most enlightening details from MMX was the revelation by John Wilczynski, Executive Director of America Makes, of the scope expansion involved in the America Makes 2030 Plan. Mainly, this involves the formalization of the concept of adaptive manufacturing, specifically in terms of its overlapping with AM, at the top of the America Makes agenda.
One reasonable reaction to that scope expansion might be something like, “Oh, come on! More terminology!?” Indeed, part of me reacted that way when Wilczynski invoked the term.
But another part of me reacted like a contrarian to my initial reaction — along the lines of, “Hey, wait a minute, maybe this is the term that all the other, similar terms have been evolving towards.” Because it is quite natural for terminology to constantly evolve, especially in rapidly evolving technological fields.
John Wilczynski, Executive Director of America Makes
Judge for yourself: according to America Makes, “Adaptive manufacturing is an advanced production strategy that leverages data, automation, and intelligent systems to enable a factory to adjust its processes in real time.”
Again, I think it’s understandable if you’re all terminologied out. What matters more than the term itself, though, is the fact that America Makes has honed in on the precise role that the organization will be encouraging the AM industry to play in the overall U.S. manufacturing landscape. The clarity for the industry that this provides shouldn’t be underestimated.
While he didn’t use the term adaptive manufacturing, Keith DeVries, the Director of Manufacturing Technology under the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering ((OUSD) R&E), confirmed in his address to the room that the DoD views AM’s proper role in general industry in the same exact context:
“Rebuilding our military by matching threats to capabilities means investing in advanced technologies that can counter emerging threats and maintain our technological advantage. The DoD MIIs are at the forefront of this effort,” DeVries explained.
“We need the ability to rapidly prototype and produce advanced weapons systems. Sensors, communications technologies, AM, advanced robotics, and digital manufacturing are key enablers. And these are areas where the MIIs are making significant progress.
“Rebuilding our military requires secure and resilient supply chains. We need to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities in those supply chains, and the DoD MIIs are playing a critical role in developing domestic sources for critical materials and components.
“The DoD MIIs are also crucial for accelerating R&D and technologies that can address emerging threats — technologies that are essential for keeping our warfighters safe and effective in a rapidly changing world.”
Keith DeVries, Director of Manufacturing Technology under the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering ((OUSD) R&E)
Implementing AM-enabled adaptive manufacturing strategies should be a priority for companies looking to support U.S. reshoring efforts, and, per DeVries, implementing those strategies is now outright indispensable for all such companies that are looking to work with the DoD:
“Overall, over half of our 2,200 MII member companies generate less than 10 percent of their revenue from DoD. That’s a good thing,” said DeVries.
“It’s a good thing for a couple of reasons: one, if you are dependent on the DoD dollar for your day-to-day operations and the U.S. gets involved in a conflict — what are you going to do to surge, to help us meet our new requirement for surge capacity? If you have zero spare capacity, because all of your operating capital comes from the DoD, you can only expand shifts or try to do capital investment, but that takes time.
“The other reason it’s a good thing is because, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the DoD isn’t a great customer. We tend to buy a lot of something today and then forget, and then we ghost you for about 10 years. And then we want the exact same thing 10 years from now, regardless of technology innovation benefits or any other factor that would impact your ability to deliver that exact prototype or article 10 years from now.
“So having only 10 percent of your business, or less, reliant on the DoD dollar means that you’re commercially viable. You’re meeting the needs of consumers through the commercial market, and that helps buffer some of the turbulence that comes from the DoD. And it helps set you up to provide surge capacity if necessary in the future.”
At a time when it feels like too many prospective private sector entries into the defense market are apt to view defense contracts as an easy money-grab, it was refreshing to hear someone from the DoD frame working with the U.S. military in these terms. DeVries is exactly right, too: it’s not only bad business for manufacturing enterprises to be overly reliant on the DoD for revenue, but it’s also bad for the DoD.
Director DeVries provided everyone in attendance with many other key observations throughout his remarks, and I want to highlight one more, specifically:
“The DoD MIIs aren’t just research centers. They’re collaborative ecosystems that bring together the best partners from industry, academia, and government to solve critical manufacturing tech challenges,” DeVries noted.
“They’re uniquely positioned to accelerate technology transition by bridging the gap between basic research and real world applications, cultivating a skilled workforce by training the next generation of manufacturing professionals, fostering innovation by creating a fertile ground for new ideas and breakthrough technologies, and strengthening our industrial base by bringing back American jobs and reducing our reliance on foreign supply chains.”
Building a proper AM ecosystem is, in my view, America Makes’ most impressive accomplishment thus far in its history, and it’s the main reason why I’ve previously referred to America Makes as “one of the most successful creations of 21st century U.S. industrial policy”.
While America Makes isn’t the only explanation behind the AM-heavy manufacturing boomlet going on in Ohio — if that wasn’t the sort of thing that Ohio was capable of sustaining, America Makes would’ve presumably been headquartered elsewhere — the Ohio AM cluster certainly sees unique benefits from being located in America Makes’ neck of the woods. Thriving AM companies like JuggerBot 3D and masterful AM users like Ursa Major serve as a living testament the U.S. AM industry that exists in no small part thanks to the efforts of America Makes.
America Makes’ partner, the Youngstown Business Incubator, deserves just as much credit, too, and so does Ohio’s state government, as well as academic institutions like Ohio State University. The AM ecosystem in Ohio, which also extends out to the Pittsburgh area in Pennsylvania, sets a standard for how federal, state, and local governments can synergize to move industrial policy goals forward.
For the AM industry to help the overall U.S. manufacturing sector become more adaptive throughout the rest of the decade and beyond, building ecosystems is exactly the sort of work that needs to be done. Unlike when America Makes first started, the proof that 21st century Americans are more than capable of doing that work now exists.
Policy is still standing in the way of the U.S. government’s attempts to bring AM to scale. But over the last decade or so, America Makes has helped build the sort of ecosystem that’s required in order to move the needle on policy.
Images courtesy of Sarah Saunders, 3DPrint.com
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