If Detroit was the 20th century’s Arsenal of Democracy, its Corktown neighborhood may be the 21st century’s home of warfighter innovations.
Detroiters may be surprised to learn that some of America’s most critical warfighting technologies are being accelerated in an impressive — but hardly audacious — building that rises above Rosa Parks Boulevard at Labrosse Street in the city’s oldest neighborhood.
LIFT, short for Lightweight Innovations for Tomorrow, is a nonprofit organization established through a partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense, academia, and private industry. Its multifaceted mission includes training workers for high-tech manufacturing jobs, advancing defense-related technology, and preparing more companies to deal in the technology that would qualify them as defense contractors.
Inside the facility, machines are humming and workers are learning processes like electrical fabrications, materials engineering, and hydraulics. LIFT is about economic vitality and worker training, but the initial impetus was — and still is — advancing technology for national defense.
Operated by the American Lightweight Materials Manufacturing Innovation Institute (ALMMII), LIFT is part of a national network of 16 nonprofit organizations charged with “driving the U.S. mobility sector” to support technology development, workforce development, and, ultimately, a manufacturing sector that’s vibrant enough to support U.S. national security.
Professionals, specialists, and students looking for training come to LIFT through academic partners. By signing up to be partners with LIFT, companies gain access to workers and technology resources, not to mention possible opportunities for defense contracts if the needs of the Pentagon align with their enhanced capabilities.
Founded in 2014, the operation will keep going for the foreseeable future. In May, the Pentagon announced it had renewed the partnership through 2028, with the DoD providing LIFT with $49.4 million in funding throughout that period.
The new agreement with the Pentagon requires LIFT to focus on advanced materials, manufacturing processes, systems engineering, and the integration of materials characterization to benefit the Department of Defense and the national industrial manufacturing base.
The Pentagon looks for LIFT to act in numerous roles including adviser, technology accelerator, connector, convener, talent developer, and technology showcase and sandbox. The goal is to connect materials, processes, systems, and talent to demonstrate “the art of the possible.”
Tracy Frost, director of the office of the Secretary of Defense’s Manufacturing Technology Program in Alexandria, Va., says the partnership with LIFT “adds value to our Manufacturing Innovation Institute network to accelerate technologies, build advanced manufacturing ecosystems, and educate and train the needed workforce — fulfilling our mission to get critical technologies to the warfighter at speed and scale.”
When it all comes together, what does the Pentagon get? It gets a gigantic array of capable companies of all sizes that have access to trained workers.
“The Department of Defense has an $800-something billion budget and needs critical assets in the supply base,” says Nigel Francis, CEO of LIFT. “It’s a win for the supply base because they get a closer and more direct link with the big customer. This is a massive jigsaw (puzzle) across the nation, and we’re one small part of that jigsaw. But man, I mean, we’re a very important part of that jigsaw nationally.”
Francis, who took over as LIFT’s CEO in 2018, previously served as senior automotive adviser to then-Gov. Rick Snyder and senior vice president of the Michigan Economic Development Corp. A naturalized U.S. citizen who was born and raised in the United Kingdom, Francis decided to take the helm of LIFT, in part, because he saw an opportunity to make a major impact on a looming workforce imperative in manufacturing.
“Jobs in CNC robotics, industry maintenance, and welding will be empty in the U.S. manufacturing space by 2028,” Francis says. “We’ll have 2.5 million jobs to be filled by 2028, and we’ve already got an awful shortage.”
Francis described a “Grand Canyon of missing people” to empower existing manufacturing operations. At the same time, the nation is replete with small manufacturers that would like a shot at filling these needs, yet lack the resources to recruit workers and keep up with the necessary technology.
That’s where LIFT steps in, by taking on manufacturing companies as partners.
“We’re their chief technology officer,” says Joe Steele, vice president of communication and legislative affairs for LIFT.
“They’ve got an owner that’s pretty much leading the whole operation.”
As a partner with LIFT, such owners of smaller companies get access to information about where the Pentagon and other leaders in the industry think technology is going, and what the upcoming needs are likely to be.
They also have a chance to gain access to leading decision-makers in the defense industry, including the Pentagon itself — which could make all the difference for a small manufacturer.
Francis compares it to the pecking order in a country club.
“You don’t need to be a billionaire to belong to the golf club, but you probably need to be pretty wealthy to get the 9 a.m. tee time on a Saturday morning,” Francis says. “So depending on how engaged you can afford to be with us in terms of time — not so much money, but time — you get the opportunity to talk directly to the Department of Defense, or directly with a prime contractor. You can talk to top-level academics from all over the nation. We give you the opportunity to stand up in front of the complete ecosystem and tell them about what you do.”
Francis offers the example of a small northern Indiana company that reached out to help with technology development, only to have LIFT recognize the business could solve a problem for Boeing that would save hundreds of thousands of dollars on each Apache attack helicopter it would produce.
“To get Boeing to work with a small, non-defense contractor they had never heard of, we built an initial business case based around using this technology in the manufacture of the Apache attack helicopter,” Francis says. “And that’s before we look at every other helicopter and airplane, and every other military and civilian airplane that Boeing Corp. produces. One helicopter is $5 million to $6 million. We can’t even work out how many billions of dollars that’s going to save this nation.”
Another case involved Sterling Heights-based Ricardo Defense Systems, which was developing an electronic stability-control analog brake system for Humvees but ran out of funding before it could finish developing the system.
“Here we come with a little bit of money, and we retrofitted them onto 10 National Guard Humvees to help them optimize their program and show that it would work,” Francis says. “It took three years, but then they got a $90 million contract to put (the system) on 10,000 Humvees around the world.”
Making those connections is part of the human touch at LIFT, and developing the technologies brings the full power of the organization’s infrastructure into play.
From its roots in what was a former manufacturing facility for Mexican Industries, the massive complex receives constant attention and updates. The Corktown facility added a state-of-the-art high bay in 2017 and a learning lab in 2019.
It opened a Sterling Heights satellite office in 2021 to focus on its partnership with the U.S. Army, and plans to open a satellite office in Puerto Rico at some point in 2023.
LIFT’s facility, which spans 100,000 square feet, could be mistaken for any major production facility, with large machinery and a variety of processes humming away, but what’s unique is the presence of adjacent classrooms and learning centers populated by a constant flow of professionals and students, all working to advance their skill sets in STEM.
Even as LIFT is propelling technology and positioning companies to take hold of high-level opportunities, it maintains a focus on its other mission. In 2018, LIFT established a curriculum for high school students called IGNITE: Mastering Manufacturing. It’s a three-year, competency-based curriculum designed to prepare students as multiskilled technicians for the manufacturing workplace. The program emphasizes advanced manufacturing materials, processes, and systems.
Math and science are cornerstones of the larger materials science modules that make up a significant part of the curriculum. That was followed a year later by the establishment of a learning lab that sits high above LIFT’s heavy machinery.
The facility also offers a training program specifically geared to active-duty soldiers in the final six months of their service. Operation Next, as it’s known, trains soldiers preparing to re-enter private life for possible work in the manufacturing sector using online simulations and multimedia to develop skills centered around manufacturing equipment.
And while the Department of Defense is a major funder and promoter of LIFT, it does not insist that workers who come through the training programs be directed into jobs with defense contractors.
“If enough people come through this successfully, they don’t need to seek guarantees,” Steele says. “It’s so critical to the national economy, and the national economy is so critical to national security. If you connect those dots by directing people and inserting them into the manufacturing base, we are, in a sense, securing the national security. Even if they’re not going to work for defense contractors, they’re helping to keep the economy more productive overall.”
A walk through the LIFT factory floor demonstrates the breadth of what is produced and learned. For example, a small, Plexiglas-enclosed digital model factory was provided by the global manufacturing consulting firm Kearney. Next to that, the Novi-based 3-D printing company EOS North America has provided a laser-beam, powder bed fusion machine that models and simulates materials.
“We will virtually model and simulate the materials,” Steele says. “We’ll bring it back here and test it to make sure our predictions are correct.”
A ways down in the facility, LIFT is assisting the U.S. Army by studying what happens to a particular metal when it’s manipulated in certain ways. There’s also work with electrical fabrications, materials engineering, hydraulics, and even a process that appears to be spray-painting but is actually a powder made of tiny metal particles that are applied so fast they adhere to each other and whatever they land on.
“This is what we do,” Steele says, looking down at the factory floor from the learning lab. “We teach all different aspects of manufacturing. We teach robotics, as well. What we saw down there will give students some connection to what’s going on, because this isn’t just in the classroom. It’s not just in the school or at my neighborhood community college. It’s at a national manufacturing facility, and you get to be part of it.”
One of the ways LIFT attracts partners in academia is through its ability to bring both funding and industry players into projects. That combination has worked on multiple levels for Houghton-based Michigan Technological University.
Paul Sanders, a professor of materials science and engineering at Michigan Tech, says partnering with LIFT has given the school and its students an opportunity to work within the manufacturing industry on a number of interesting projects. The first involved the development of a cast-iron drive train component for Southfield-based Grede Foundry.
The project cost an estimated $1.3 million, of which the federal government picked up nearly half of the funding. “LIFT has sizeable funding from the government, and they had industry partners who were the source of the projects,” Sanders says. “Those were the people we were assisting with the technology development.”
In addition, working with LIFT saved Michigan Tech the trouble of going out and looking for manufacturers to work with on such projects. “LIFT brought the money, the industrial partners, and the academic partners all together,” Sanders says. “They were the matchmaker. I don’t know how the matchmaking worked; they didn’t ask me if I wanted to date Grede Foundry. They just said, ‘You guys are on the team.’ ”
The partnership has continued to be a positive one for Michigan Tech because it gives the university and its students a chance to work on technologies that aren’t just theoretical.
“It’s a source of funding and new product ideas,” Sanders says. “We like to work on new things and, in particular, I like to work on things that have an impact on the world — not just writing a paper and having someone read it, but I’d like our technology to be used, and LIFT helps with that.”
Currently, Sanders and his team at MTU are working on the mechanical property characterizations on a project LIFT brought to them involving hypersonics and additive manufacturing. Soon to follow will be testing on custom powders LIFT is working on.
Michigan Tech also finds it appealing that LIFT is so close to the kinds of students the university wants to attract to its degree programs but doesn’t always have easy access to in the Upper Peninsula.
“We want to partner with LIFT because LIFT is located in the population center of Michigan, and in a place where we can recruit more underrepresented groups,” Sanders says. “We like the location of LIFT, we like the finances that LIFT has, and we like their emphasis on talent and training.”
According to Cassy Tefft de Munoz, Michigan Tech’s executive director of enrollment initiatives, the university has brought thousands of students through LIFT’s facility — some in the sixth and seventh grades — to help get them interested in STEM.
It fits well with what de Munoz calls a “traveling road show” Michigan Tech undertakes to encourage communities across the state to focus on a strong, STEM-educated workforce.
In turn, the LIFT partnership will make it possible for Michigan Tech to bring a summer camp program, held in Houghton since the early 1970s, to Detroit. The camp focuses on providing opportunities for middle school and high school students to be introduced to technology-focused education.
“What’s really unique about working with LIFT is that, up to now, a lot of what we’ve been doing has been focused on Detroit, but these are models that can be replicated nationally,” de Munoz says. “Those replications are in the works because LIFT is on a huge growth track.”
