The Cullen College of Engineering has established a new partnership with the Texas Manufacturing Assistance Center (TMAC) to launch a Gulf Coast Manufacturing Assistance Center Gulf Coast TMAC at UH) — which will focus on providing small and medium-sized businesses in the Gulf Coast region with access to the professional expertise of Cullen professors, students, and professional engineering staff.
The partnership became official on Sept. 1. The effort at Cullen is co-lead by Dmitri Litvinov, John and Rebecca Moores Professor and the Senior Associate Dean for Research and Facilities, and Gino Lim, Professor and the R. Larry and Gerlene (Gerri) R. Snider Endowed Chair of the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department.
TMAC is headquartered at UT Arlington and affiliated with the MEP National Network, which is overseen by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology. TMAC specializes in providing small and medium manufacturing companies with help in the process optimization, supply chain, cybersecurity and regulatory arenas.
Success stories include helping Advanced Paperworks to increase their compliance to open new markets, generating $250,000 in new sales; and instituting new review standards at V&G Dynamic Machine to reduce defects by 25 percent.
Initial funding for UH is $1.4 million for two years from the State of Texas, which will, among other things, enable recruitment of professional engineering staff to support Center operations. Lim noted that Houston had unique positioning as a place of industry and logistics, identifying its status as a vital port and transportation spoke.
“The greater Houston area is the largest manufacturing hub in the State of Texas, and UH can contribute significantly to the local economy with resources made available by TMAC.” Lim said. “It’s about time for us to play a really big role as the hub of the manufacturing industry at the University of Houston.”
Litvinov added that unlike many academic initiatives, which often have goals that can be hard to identify and track as having direct economic impact, TMAC is focused on specific deliverables and measurables tied to the success of companies TMAC at UH is to serve. Through technical service agreements and various training/educational events, TMAC will generate quantifying benefits to local businesses, while ensuring sustainable center operation.
“The focus of the Center is not necessarily papers and publications, but rather helping companies improve their bottom lines and global competitiveness,” he said.
With these industry partnerships and agreements, Lim said there will be an opportunity for students as well, in the form of capstone projects and internships. Litvinov and Lim also noted that this effort aligned with a national focus to bring more manufacturing back to the U.S.
“There are for-profit consulting companies that do this type of work, but they’re expensive and often out of reach to smaller businesses,” Litvinov said. “The University of Houston can provide the expertise for these companies to leverage.”
Lim added, “We’ve been talking about bringing manufacturing back to America, so this is really the right time for us to have this.”