MI2 Project Updates

[Image: MI2 Hitachi Visit]

MI2's core team, members, and partners have been hard at work on a series of projects and initiatives. Here are updates on a few of them:

Hitachi Vantara/Hitachi America R&D Visit to Kentucky

In March, MI2 hosted a team from Hitachi Vantara and Hitachi America R&D visiting from California and Calgary, Alberta, Canada, to meet with members of the MI2 core team and a wide variety of MI2 members, strategic partners, entrepreneurs, community leaders, and other metals companies to talk about MI2's work and the innovation ecosystem in Kentucky.

Joining from Hitachi for the tour were Vignesh Markandan, Head of the Manufacturing and Consumer Goods business for Hitachi Vantara; Shamik Mehta, Director of Industrial Solutions for Hitachi Vantara; Daniel Knoch, Strategic Executive Director for Industry 4.0/SMART Manufacturing for Hitachi Vantara; and Chandra Venkatraman, Principal Research Scientist for the Hitachi North America R&D Industrial AI Laboratory.

This Kentucky metals innovation tour started in Bowling Green, where the Western Kentucky University Innovation Campus hosted a series of meetings that included WKU leadership; MI2 members Logan Aluminum and Kobe Aluminum Automotive Products; Bowling Green-area metals companies Ball, Bilstein Cold Rolled Steel, and Constellium; leadership from the Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce; and multiple companies located at the Innovation Campus, including Kentucky Thermal Institute, Eyeconic/LobbyFox, and Mosaic Associates. The Hitachi team also toured Logan Aluminum's facility in Russellville and Ball's facility in Bowling Green.

In Louisville, Hitachi was hosted by the University of Louisville's Louisville Automation and Robotics Research Institute (LARRI), where UofL also shared the work of the Kentucky Manufacturing Extension Partnership and the Office of Research and Innovation. Hitachi's leaders also had the chance to meet with MI2 members North American Stainless, Nucor, Tri-Arrows Aluminum, and the Wieland Group, and to hear about the great work taking place at the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development/KY Innovation and Greater Louisville Inc.

Finally, in Lexington, Hitachi and MI2 were hosted at the University of Kentucky's Collaborative Research Building (CoRE), which included meetings with UK Innovation Connect, the UK Augmented Intelligence for Smart Manufacturing Lab, Commerce Lexington, and Secat. The trip concluded with a tour of the Hitachi Astemo Americas plant in Harrodsburg.

Elsewhere:

• • MI2 is planning for its featured presentation at the UK Innovate Kentucky Innovator Challenge at the University of Kentucky on Tuesday, April 11th. MI2 will be represented by board chair Matt Bedingfield (Wieland) and board member Mike Buckentin (Logan Aluminum).
  • The MI2/Kentucky Chamber of Commerce Bus to Business program will kick off on April 17th with member company Nucor hosting high school students from the Boone County Area Technology Center and Grant County High School. A tour is also being actively planned with Logan Aluminum in Russellville and area schools. Based on the learnings from these pilots, MI2 and the Kentucky Chamber look forward to additional opportunities to scale the program.
  • Many thanks to MI2 members, strategy partners, and several other MI2 newsletter subscribers for taking part in our project with Fox Management Consulting at Temple University--who spent the month of March interviewing people from a wide range of perspectives on the opportunities and challenges in the Kentucky talent pipeline for the metals industry. The MI2 team and the Talent and Workforce strategy group will be working further with the FMC team on the next phase of that project.
  • Plans are coming together for the Factory of the Future conference being planned for early September. If anyone reading the newsletter has thoughts on priority subjects, potential speakers, or other considerations for the conference, we welcome your thoughts and feedback.
  • MI2 is partnering with the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development to pursue the creation of a metals industry guide for Kentucky. We are currently building a template for gathering statistics about the industry from metals companies and strategic partners to fuel that guide.
  • Coming out of the in-person meeting of our Sustainability strategy group in February, the MI2 team has been hard at work designing some sustainability pilot projects. We look forward to sharing further details about that work in the months ahead.