My presentation will be fairly short. As Dr. Li has said, we will leverage the technology that will open, and the workforce that will open… to incubate new businesses and try to create a cluster of additive foundries and integrate the region.
So part of our business that will open is divided into three categories. One is exposure and recruitment. The other one is entrepreneurship certificates. And the third one is business creation, incubation and acceleration.
So, the plan is to expose in year one at least 200 entrepreneurs. We will focus mostly on our immediate region, the Rio Grande Valley region. And then every subsequent year will expand to our other regions within South Texas.
So, again, the plan is to expose 200 entrepreneurs in the first year. We will provide training and certificates to at least 20 entrepreneurs. We will incubate at least five businesses so our numbers are conservative here. There are five R&D projects that we will pitch to angel investors. So the overall outcome is to create new businesses in the region in additive casting and forging.
But, we will also try to recruit businesses into the region. And part of the process is also to transfer technologies that we are developing here.
So this (slide) gives you an idea about our timeline. So the first year we will start with a minimum of 200 entrepreneurs being exposed from our immediate region and we will ramp it up every year. So we'll go from 200 in the first year to 400 in the second year, to 600 in the following years. Out of that will provide 20 hours of training and certify 20 entrepreneurs. And ideally we would like to select five entrepreneurs from this cohort.
But, it's not restricted to just the 20 that are certified. It is open to other entrepreneurs, to launch five businesses, a minimum of five business, within the casting and forging cluster. So they will be incubated and that will include the Wendy Kennedy Ideation. This is the process we'll follow. We have resources to the iCore Program, and the Kauffman FastTrac. And we will have some other tools during the first year to assist these businesses and we will also provide technical support.
The same year, the cohort will increase to, I believe, 15 new businesses and so on. So, we will incubate and accelerate the development of these businesses. We will help them in developing the prototypes and we will prepare them to pitch to angel investors when they are ready.
So every year we will ramp up the number of businesses that we want to create. So, we start from five before the second year is 15 and so on. We will increase it by… in the fourth and fifth year, we should be incubating at least 40 businesses.
So one thing we want to do and I will assist with is, we will evaluate the impact of these businesses on the community. So this is our part of the economic development of the region, through business creation. So we're going to evaluate a number of businesses that we create. And we will also estimate the economic impact that they will have in terms of direct and indirect, and induced jobs.
So I'll just give you a quick explanation about the three types of jobs that we will evaluate. Direct are basically the jobs that will be created by the product itself. So here we're looking on this chart here. So we have the number of businesses and then the number of employees. So these are the cumulative numbers. But this is just for the direct (jobs). So the direct are just the people employed directly by the project.
But when you create your business or you started your business, that business will have some connection, some linkages to order industries within the region. So we'll have suppliers for forward and backward connections. And when you create additional economic activity you generate additional income. Both the direct employees and also the indirect. The indirect are the suppliers. And induced are not really connected to the project. It's just added income that's being generated within the community and it's being spent in all the other activities.
So we have tools that can help us identify all these things. So we can evaluate the outputs. Direct, indirect, and induced. We can also evaluate the number of employees, the number of jobs that will be created, the value added taxation, but we can also identify the type of skills that we will need for these type of jobs that will be created.
So, part of my work will be to evaluate the impact of what we're doing in terms of creating new jobs, but also recruiting businesses into our region to create this cluster and to consolidate it. This tool that we have can help us find the gaps that we need to focus on.
So I'll let Dr. Li conclude the presentation.
Editor’s Note: The above commentary was provided by Dr. Mostafa Malki, a professor at UT-Rio Grande Valley and principal consultant at Aaron Economic Consulting, at the kickoff of America’s Additive Foundry Consortium. The kickoff was held at UTRGV Manufacturing Center in Edinburg on Oct. 31.
Editor's Note: Here is some background on the America’s Additive Foundry Consortium:
By Luis Montoya
EDINBURG, Texas - UTRGV has been awarded $5 million from the U.S. Department of Defense's Local Defense Community Cooperation program, to help enhance the United States’ ability to produce strong, durable materials critical to national defense.
The grant was first announced last month by U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez. Gonzalez said the funding had been made possible through the Defense Manufacturing Community Support Program, whose mission is to increase national security through community investment efforts.
Gonzalez said the grant would fund the development of new manufacturing processes for tactical alloys used by all branches of the U.S. military. Gonzalez pointed out that the number of U.S. casting and forging facilities dropped from 22,000 to 2,000 since 1992 due to offshoring, downsizing, and consolidation. He said this has negatively impacted the military’s ability to produce equipment ranging from turbine blades to warships.
“This grant is a huge win for UTRGV and for our national defense,” Gonzalez said. “It will allow our nation’s defense manufacturing industries to increase the production of tactical alloys found throughout our military’s supply chains. Ensuring we have robust manufacturing is essential to keeping our armed forces readily equipped at large scales.”
Gonzalez said the funding will also support certificate and training programs and allow UTRGV to serve as a regional hub to demonstrate the latest tactical alloy manufacturing methods. He said it is part of a larger $30 million effort by the DOD divided across six different Defense Manufacturing Community Support Programs, each focused on a unique effort to support defense manufacturing.
The kickoff included representatives from the U.S. Department of Defense and other key partners to the consortium. The DOD representatives included Karen Bass-McFadden, a grants management specialist, and Mary Beth Greiner, a project manager.
Among the supporting team members present were Dr. Ala Qubbaj, dean of the college of engineering and computer science at UTRGV, and Ron Garza, senior associate vice president for workforce and economic development at UTRGV. David Ortiz, director of the UTRGV Manufacturing Center, participated via Zoom.
Among the consortium partners present were Dr. Daniel P. King, executive director for Region One Education Service Center, Kristopher McKinney, lead for partnership development at Region One Education Service Center, Keith Patridge, president and CEO of McAllen Economic Development Corporation, Mark Garcia, executive vice president of McAllen EDC, and Rafael Tapia, grant manager for the Council for South Texas Economic Progress.
At one point Dr. Qubbaj asked Patridge if he could ever have envisioned the Valley leading a national defense project like this. Patridge responded: “Yes, I thought we would. It was planned.”
Dr. Jianzhi (James) Li, an endowed professor at UTRGV, is the founding director of the UTRGV Manufacturing Center and the AAF Consortium. Li said the consortium’s objectives include job creation, tech-driven business development, establishment of a defense manufacturing hub, workforce development, and strengthening partnerships.
Li said maintaining strong Casting and Forging (C&F) operations is crucial for military equipment production.
Li pointed out that American C&F capabilities been in decline over the years, resulting in reduced casting facilities. He said this decline has had an impact on the country’s military production.
“Texas and the TX-SGCP region, which ranks at the top in the United States in fabricated metal product manufacturing, has a pressing need for a secure supply of tactical alloy and modern casting and forging manufacturing technologies to support both national and regional manufacturing needs,” Li said.
With the OLDCC funding, Li said, UTRGV aims to become the region's hub for advanced tactical alloy manufacturing. He emphasized the importance of a secure supply of tactical alloy and manufacturing technologies.
“At UTRGV, we will prepare a world-class manufacturing workforce who can design and operate Intelligent Robotic Casting and Forging for tactical alloys.”
This initiative will benefit the TX-SGCP region, which includes Brownsville-Harlingen, McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, Corpus Christi, Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, San Antonio-New Braunfels, and Greater Austin.
Key consortium partners include the UTRGV Center for Advanced Manufacturing Innovation and Cyber Systems, UT Austin, UT San Antonio, University of Houston, Georgia Tech, Texas Manufacturing Assistant Center, Army Research Laboratory, America Makes, Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing, and Tooling U-SME.
