The Smart Factory Innovation and Technology (SMART-FIT) Lab is now up and running following a ribbon cutting ceremony attended by Miami University community members on May 2.

The lab, which aims to provide a hands-on smart manufacturing curriculum to students in the College of  Engineering and Computing, was conceptualized by Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering faculty Fazeel Khan, Ph.D., Giancarlo Corti, Ph.D., Kumar Singh, Ph.D., Clayton Cooper, Ph.D., and Karl Reiff, M.Ed. in collaboration with Miami alumnus Scott Summerville '79, president and CEO of Mitsubishi Electric Automation, Inc., and his team of MEAU engineers.

Miami University President Gregory Crawford was excited to unveil the SMART-FIT Lab to the university community as part of an initiative to secure career pathways for students and create a talent pipeline linking directly to local and national industry.

“There are three things that people keep telling us from the industry that they need, and that's talent, talent, and talent,” President Crawford said. “That's what we're going to be doing here, and really training the workforce for this great state and for this wonderful country.”

The SMART-FIT Lab is modular, consisting of molding, assembly, and packaging elements. While students observe and learn on each segment of the lab, they can also learn how to arrange, change, and enhance the modules. The lab, as it stands now, is intentionally suboptimal to industry standards to serve as “an opportunity to optimize the equipment and the processes,” according to Summerville.

Beena Sukumaran, Ph.D., the Dinesh and ILA Paliwal Dean of the College of Engineering and Computing, emphasized the college’s goal of providing students with "an industry-relevant education in state-of-the-art facilities,” and cited strong collaborations as key to achieving this. “These facilities will also host upskilling workshops for working professionals and serve as a hub for research and industry partnerships, ultimately enhancing workforce training,” Sukumaran said. “We extend our sincere thanks to the State of Ohio for its RAPIDS funding, along with Miami University and MEAU, for making this lab a reality."

The ribbon cutting was also attended by Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio’s 8th congressional district, who showed his support and praise for Miami’s move to enhance the smart manufacturing industry.

“When you look at creating the future, I love what (Miami is) doing here,” Davidson said. “Increasingly, you see that the machines make the machines, but not without people, and that skills are necessary to be able to keep up with it.”

Those skills will be taught in an updated curriculum in the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering and through the coursework for the Smart Manufacturing degree. The lab supports the integration of the new curriculum, but it has so many more applications for the Miami community, according to Kumar Singh, chair of the Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering department.

“It offers a hands-on learning environment for students, a research hub for faculty, a testing ground for industry exploring automation and process innovation, and a resource for professionals looking to upskill and stay ahead in today’s rapidly evolving manufacturing landscape,” Singh said.

The lab was paid for in part by grant funding from the Ohio Department of Higher Education’s Regionally Aligned Priorities in Delivering Skills (RAPIDS) and Super RAPIDS, which supports collegiate initiatives to strengthen the workforce pipeline.

Sarah Freeman, a senior double major in Mechanical Engineering and Manufacturing Engineering, said she is excited to see the future of the manufacturing program at Miami and the students who graduate into the workforce benefiting from the SMART-FIT Lab.

“In addition to the technical skills that working with industry-grade equipment provides, a lab like this teaches you really critical problem-solving skills for the workforce,” Freeman said. “Fundamental engineering classes are great for laying a technical foundation, but real-world problems do not have an answer key in the back of a book.”

“This lab is one-of-a-kind, which will result in one-of-a-kind opportunities to solve exciting and challenging problems,” Freeman added.

President Crawford hopes to see the lab used in part as a maker space, bringing together students from across campus to create and learn.

“This will be a hub here with smart manufacturing to pool all those disciplines together,” President Crawford said.

Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering Chair and Professor Kumar Singh also remarked on how the SMART FIT Lab brings together a wide range of disciplines.

“It brings together students and faculty from engineering, computer science, supply chain, and entrepreneurship,” he said. “Electrical and robotics engineers can work on control systems and vision technology, while chemical and biomedical engineers explore process automation and devices.” Not only that, he added,“Entrepreneurship and Emerging Technology in Business and Design students can prototype and test tech-enabled products using the lab’s smart equipment.”

Another opportunity for collaboration is with cybersecurity education. James Walden, director of Miami's Center for Cybersecurity, said the combination of information technology and operational technology (OT) – the hardware and software of the lab’s machinery – populate new cybersecurity threats. OT systems are being targeted by ransomware more as manufacturing moves into a more online environment.

“The SMART-FIT lab offers an opportunity for our faculty to research and our students to learn about OT threats and vulnerabilities in a real world environment,” Walden said.

With so many applications for learning and creating with students and faculty alike, Singh said the lab will truly be a “gateway to the future of advanced manufacturing.”