Ohio State Takes Lead Role to Improve State's Auto Industry
On the heels of Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland’s State of the State speech, in which he suggested that businesses and industry work with Ohio’s universities to solve economic challenges, The Ohio State University is playing a major role in making recommendations to grow the state’s auto industry.
At a meeting yesterday of Strickland’s Ohio Auto Industry Support Council, Giorgio Rizzoni, director of Ohio State’s Center for Automotive Research and professor of mechanical engineering, presented a set of five specific recommendations to protect and advance automotive manufacturing in the state.
The recommendations were developed by a council working group co-chaired by Rizzoni and Eric Burkland, president of the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association, and including members Glenn Daehn, director of the Ohio Manufacturing Institute and an Ohio State professor of materials science and engineering; Noah Sudow, associate director of economic advancement for the Ohio Board of Regents; and John Magill, chief strategic officer of the Ohio Department of Development.
The working group recommended that the state:
1) create a Distributed Manufacturing Innovation Network, which would use computer and networking resources as well as people to connect industry challenges with the resources most likely to create solutions;
2) make use of the University System of Ohio’s resources in expertise, equipment, research staff and students as a catalyst for long-term innovation ideas for the auto industry;
3) identify and train manufacturing advocates — manufacturing professionals who are generalists — who can assess company needs, act as full-service agents to link companies with resources, and manage projects in university or industry environments;
4) establish agreements between state-supported organizations, such as Edison Technology Centers (which foster the advancement of applied research and development to increase competitiveness of existing companies within Ohio’s key industry sectors) and Manufacturing Extension Partnership centers (statewide programs that provide products, services and assistance to Ohio manufacturers), and colleges and universities to foster the exchange of personnel; and
5) streamline project initiation by providing rapid state funding and approval for projects in which automotive companies agree to cost sharing.
The Ohio Auto Industry Support Council will begin forming a committee that will, within the next three to four months, identify ways and means to implement the recommendations.
“We’re working to reach a historic agreement between the University System of Ohio and consumer products powerhouse P&G that will turn the most innovative ideas developed in our universities into products and economic development,” Strickland said. “To further advance Ohio’s economic growth, I have also called on the Ohio Auto Industry Support Council to use this agreement as a model to advance similar partnerships between the university system and Ohio’s manufacturing sector. I appreciate the council’s quick action to begin working to help more Ohio businesses generate economic development and job creation.”
Through such agreements, Strickland said, companies would get the expertise of the innovative thinkers at universities; universities would benefit from unprecedented opportunities to collaborate with companies on new products or services; and Ohioans would gain the end result of new economic development.
News Editors: For more information, e-mail Giorgio Rizzoni at rizzoni.1@osu.edu or call him via the Center for Automotive Research, (614) 292-5990.
