In 1989, the MIT Commission on Industrial Productivity produced the Made in America report. One of the recommendations of Made in America was to establish the Industrial Performance Center (IPC) to carry on the interdisciplinary investigations of industrial productivity, innovation, and competitiveness that the Commission had begun. Established in 1991, with the help of a major grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the IPC has brought together faculty and students from all five MIT Schools in research collaborations on industry. Since its inception, the faculty, students and affiliates of the IPC have produced numerous books, articles, papers and other publications that have advanced the understanding of strategic, technological, and organizational developments in a broad range of industries.
Report | September 30, 2024
Automation from the Worker’s Perspective: Executive Summary
Common narratives about automation often pit new technologies against workers. The introduction of advanced machine tools, industrial robots, and AI have all been met with concern that technological progress will mean fewer jobs. However, workers themselves offer a more optimistic, nuanced perspective. Drawing on a far-reaching 2024 survey of more than 9,000 workers across nine […]
Working Paper | September 30, 2024
Automation from the Worker’s Perspective
Common narratives about automation often pit new technologies against workers. The introduction of advanced machine tools, industrial robots, and AI have all been met with concern that technological progress will mean fewer jobs. However, workers themselves offer a more optimistic, nuanced perspective. Drawing on a far-reaching 2024 survey of more than 9,000 workers across nine […]
Article | August 8, 2024
Implementing Generative AI in U.S. Hospital Systems
There has been widespread optimism that artificial intelligence (AI) applications can transform medical care, improving patient treatment and reducing administrative burdens for hospitals and clinicians. For patients, a healthcare system augmented by AI could mean less wait time due to optimal scheduling and resource allocation and higher-quality diagnostic and treatment decisions due to AI-driven capabilities, […]
Report | August 8, 2024
Billion Dollar Factories: Foreign Direct Investment and U.S. Manufacturing Competitiveness
The 2021-2023 period marked a boom in U.S. manufacturing investment. In these three years alone, manufacturing construction grew by 174%, and more than 50 new factory investments over $1 billion were announced. Public reporting has attributed recent growth to federal subsidies for new investments in computer chip and electric vehicle manufacturing, as well as to […]
Report | March 13, 2024
Foreign Direct Investment in Billion Dollar Factories
Uncategorized | February 9, 2024
Work Organization and High-paying Jobs
High-paying factory jobs in the 1940s were an engine of egalitarian economic growth for a generation. Are there alternate forms of work organization that deliver similar benefits for frontline workers? Work organization varies by types of complexity and their degree of employer control. Technical and tacit knowledge tasks receive higher pay for signaling or developing […]
Project | October 16, 2023
MIT Automation Clinic
The Automation Clinic is an applied research and education program to understand how organizations make new technologies work in practice. MIT researchers and their partners work with organizations to learn the problems they aim to solve with new technologies, the challenges they face in deploying them, and the consequences for their workers, customers, and society. […]
Working Paper | October 9, 2023
The Transistor, an Emerging Invention: Bell Labs as a Systems Integrator Rather Than a ‘House of Magic’
The transistor is one of the most consequential human inventions with dissemination of the eventual MOS-FET design estimated to exceed one quintillion devices. However, the transistor’s genesis remains poorly understood. Many received accounts associate transistor invention closely with a small group of Bell Labs scientists during the 1947-1948 period. This paper argues that such a […]
Working Paper | October 9, 2023
Models for Building Regional Manufacturing Economies: From ‘Home Alone’ to Regional Ecosystems
At the national level, U.S. manufacturing has suffered from slow productivity, wage, and job growth for decades. At the regional level, industrial decline has hollowed out once-thriving industrial cities.
Article | October 9, 2023
The State of Industrial Robotics: Emerging Technologies, Challenges, and Key Research Directions
Robotics and related technologies are central to the ongoing digitization and advancement of manufacturing. In recent years, a variety of strategic initiatives around the world including “Industry 4.0”, introduced in Germany in 2011 have aimed to improve and connect manufacturing technologies in order to optimize production processes.
Article | October 9, 2023
How American Adults Obtain Work Skills: Results of a New National Survey
Employer-provided training is an important determinant of economic outcomes, yet our understanding of its extent and distribution is well out of date—with the most recent national survey being from 2008. This article updates our understanding of employer-provided training.
Article | September 24, 2023
A Smarter Strategy for Using Robots
Despite advances in automation technology, the promise of productive and flexible automation, with minimal involvement of human workers, is far from reality, for two main reasons. First, adoption of automation technology has been limited. Second, when firms do automate, what they gain in productivity they tend to lose in process flexibility, resulting in what the […]