HP Innovation Journal Issue 14: Spring 2020 | Page 18
The replica of the 1955 Nanyang Arch in NTU’s historic Yunnan
Garden. The arches symbolize three elements of traditional Chinese
philosophy—tian (heavens), di (earth), and ren (humanity).
of more than 30,000. HP has had a Singapore office since
1970, allowing the lab to leverage the HP site infrastructure,
talent pipeline, and business teams, and views Singapore
as a key location in the Asia-Pacific region. “We have 50
years’ experience working with the Singapore government,”
Regan notes. “The growth of digital manufacturing is in
Asia, it’s the hub of the world.”
INSIDE THE LAB
In the western part of Singapore, near army training
camps and dense jungle, sits Nanyang Technological
University (NTU). One of the top colleges in the world,
the 500-acre campus is populated with pastel-colored
residence halls, glass-walled classrooms, and a historic
Chinese garden. And as of January, it’s also home to the
HP-NTU Digital Manufacturing Corporate Lab, a tie-up
between the Silicon Valley giant, the university, and the
Singapore government. HP’s first corporate laboratory
in Asia, it will play a key role in retraining and upskilling
the Singapore workforce, with an integrated focus on 3D
printing, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and
cybersecurity, all part of a larger push by the Singapore
government to prepare the workforce for the advent of
digital manufacturing and the Fourth Industrial Revolution,
known as Industry 4.0.
“This is HP’s largest university collaboration worldwide,”
notes Dr. Mike Regan, the director of the lab, who moved
to Singapore from Oregon to run the facility. “It’s our first
holistic lab at a university where we can set up projects and
recruit talent. Having a presence in a university allows us
to work across different departments.”
NTU was a natural choice given its preeminent research
labs, strong engineering departments, well-respected
faculty, many multidisciplinary fields, and student pool
16
HP Innovation Journal Issue 14
The lab will focus on 15 projects, exploring sectors such
as advanced polymers for manufacturing, predictive
diagnostics for manufacturing test and quality
assessment, and optimization of end-to-end supply chain
operations. Just inside large plate-glass doors, cabinets
contain cases for tools and phones, shaver housings, and
prosthetic appendages, all made with HP 3D printing
technology. Just beyond, a spacious room lined with
desks is where researchers—master’s and doctorate
students from NTU, lab staff, and HP employees—work
on projects, discuss ideas, and tap out code.
In the heart of the lab is the printing room, a broad
space with the same sky-blue floor as the rest of the
office. A pair of HP Multi Jet Fusion 5200 monochrome
printer clusters and one HP Multi Jet Fusion 580 color
printer stand under silvery ducts that snake up to the
ceiling. Regan demonstrates the process, from the
powder that’s loaded into trolleys that are pushed into
the printer housing, to the processing station, to a
sealed bead-blaster cleaning unit whose interior is only
accessible via built-in rubber gloves. Nylon powder is
laid down in thin layers just 100 microns thick to create
a product. Down a narrow corridor, a malware lab is also
under construction—a satellite facility to HP’s main
cybersecurity site in Bristol, England—where research
will be conducted into how malware can disrupt the
security of digital manufacturing environments.
About 85 people, including HP staffers, researchers,
professors, and students, work at the lab. Most projects
start with a scope that comes from HP, and then an
NTU professor works with an HP employee to develop a
research plan, staffing, and project tactics. “The projects
must make sense to both HP and NTU,” adds Regan,