Input Stories

As policymakers grapple with the benefits and changes that AI brings to the U.S. economy, the NAM is making sure that manufacturers’ perspectives are heard.

This week, NAM Managing Vice President of Policy Charles Crain testified at a roundtable hosted by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, where he put the matter plainly: “AI is increasingly integral to modern manufacturing.”

Safety and efficiency: AI “makes our workers safer, it makes our products more sophisticated, and it makes our shop floors more efficient,” Crain said.

• “AI can monitor the shop floor and alert workers to safety hazards. It can watch out for defective machinery and enable predictive maintenance on the shop floor. It can even go so far as to help workers understand how a certain repetitive motion might lead to back pain over time, and then to avoid or change that motion,” he explained.
• “As for efficiency, AI can optimize equipment maintenance, identifying problems before they manifest and avoiding downtime on the shop floor. It powers supply chain resiliency across the industry. It helps design efficient production processes. It improves quality control.”

Workforce: AI is also “augmenting workers’ capabilities. It’s maximizing their talents. It’s relieving them of mundane tasks and getting them better data so they can exercise human judgment to make more informed decisions,” Crain said.

• To ensure workers can get the full benefit of the AI transformation, Crain continued, the industry is investing heavily in training programs.
• According to a new survey from the Manufacturing Institute, the NAM’s workforce development and education affiliate, manufacturers invest $32 billion every year in workforce development—“an increasing share of which is focused on AI,” Crain added.

What policymakers should do: To support the growth of AI in manufacturing, the industry “need[s] federal workforce programs that are flexible and forward-leaning,” said Crain.

• “We need permitting reform. We need energy abundance. We need tax policy like H.R. 1 that drives growth and investment in our industry.”
• “And we need AI policies that recognize the promise of this transformative technology,” he continued.

Sensible AI policy: When it comes to AI-related policies in particular, legislators should ensure that existing rules are reviewed before any new ones are imposed, Crain added.

• “If there are new policies that are needed, they should be risk-based and context-specific.” Further, compliance costs “shouldn’t lock small manufacturers out of the promise of this technology,” he said.
• Last, “We need workable, national standards rather than a 50-state patchwork.”

The last word: “With these policy tools in place, our industry—and our workforce—are ready to drive even more AI innovation, and to leverage that AI to power a new era of manufacturing in the United States,” Crain concluded.