Lessons Learned from the Inaugural AMTech Competition Data Collection

OMB Control No. 0693-0033 Expiration Date: 03/31/2016

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AMTech Consortium Interview Questions

The following questions will be asked of all 19 projects that received 2014 AMTech grants.

1. Status Check

   1. What are your responsibilities for the consortium as (job title)? As we are talking, please let me know if there are others I should also interview.

   2. What’s happening with your consortium now?

   3. How is your consortium organized?

   4. How have you used the AMTech grant to this point?

   5. Who is currently participating in your consortium (i.e., manufacturers, trade associations, universities, etc.)?

   6. The AMTech program seeks participation by the full value chain. What is your value chain? How do you achieve full participation?

   7. Has your experience to date varied from your plans? How?

   8. Have the goals for the consortium, as described in your grant application, changed? If so, why and how?

   9. What progress are you making on your consortium goals?

   10. How do your goals and the work you’ve been doing support your industry?

   11. What evidence do you have that you are making progress on your goals?

   12. What milestones and other successes have you achieved so far?

   13. The grants were made to address major shared barriers and technical problems that inhibit the growth of advanced manufacturing in your industrial sector. How has your knowledge of those barriers and problems changed over the past year?

   14. What are the most significant challenges or obstacles related to advanced manufacturing that your consortium has faced or is facing? How are you addressing them?

2. Leadership

1. What have you learned about leading a consortium?

2. How do you lead and focus competitive companies?

3. How do you reconcile different organizational goals for the consortium, i.e., industry vs. academia, different areas of focus for different manufacturers, etc.?

4. How do you get participants to “commit to engaging in common research-related activities”?

5. How do you get participants to “pool resources to achieve common research goals”?

3. Building a Consortium

1. Does your AMTech grant support an existing consortium or a new one?

2. If existing, how did the grant apply? What adjustments have you made? What challenges did this pose and how are you handling them?

3. If you are forming a new consortium, how did you do it? What was the process? What challenges have you faced?

4. How has consortium membership/involvement changed? How does it need to change to achieve your goals? What challenges has this posed?

5. How do you gain consensus for planning and action?

6. How do you communicate with consortium members and other interested stakeholders?

7. How do you collect, analyze, and communicate data and information to make it useful to your members?

4. Technology Roadmaps

1. Have you identified manufacturing processes and technologies with potential transformational impact? If so, how? What role, if any, will your consortium play in supporting those innovations? How will your consortium facilitate the deployment of transformational innovations to support advanced manufacturing?

2. Have you identified and prioritized research projects that reduce barriers to the growth of advanced manufacturing in your sector? If so, how?

3. Have you created a technology roadmap? If not, why not?

4. If so, what process did you use or are you using to create it?

5. Did you use or are you using outside assistance to develop it? How is that working?

5. Outcomes

1. What capabilities does your consortium need to achieve its goals?

2. How are you building those capabilities?

3. How are you addressing resource availability and qualifications?

4. Is your consortium addressing the challenge of building robust domestic supply chains? If so, how?

5. Is our consortium establishing skillset requirements for an advanced manufacturing workforce? If so, how?

6. Future

1. Are American subsidiaries of foreign companies involved in your consortium? If so, how is that working? How do you “capture domestic competitive advantage in advanced manufacturing” with foreign participation?

2. How does your consortium identify, analyze, and act on factors that may disrupt the industry and the work the consortium is doing?

3. How far into the future do your plans consider?

4. How will you sustain the work of your consortium?