Introduction by CESMII CEO, John Dyck
CESMII has been in operation for several years, and during that time, our membership has grown dramatically, representing a broad range of manufacturers across all industries (discrete, hybrid and continuous process) and all sizes (small, medium and large). What they have in common is a sense of urgency to learn and to participate in the development of the new competencies that will help them on this journey of transformation and growth, particularly given the decline of manufacturing productivity over the past decade. They’re looking for help to build, educate and retain their workforce, for ways to dramatically improve their productivity, and become better stewards of their social obligations and environment. These strategic initiatives all come together under the umbrella of Smart Manufacturing, and CESMII has the privilege of catalyzing and convening people, research, knowledge and innovation such that ALL manufacturers will be able to engage in – and benefit from – these new digital capabilities (not just the Fortune 1000).
CESMII’s stated goal is to ‘Accelerate the Democratization of Smart Manufacturing,’ and to that end, we’ve been intentional and successful in engaging all relevant industry stakeholder groups (manufacturers, vendors, machine builders, system integrators and academia), working with them to develop the necessary Smart Manufacturing skills, technologies, methods and standards and to deliver them at scale. Just as important is our effort to ensure that our capabilities advance in lockstep with the necessary national policy initiatives, paving the way for broad, democratized adoption of Smart Manufacturing in our plants, across the enterprise, and throughout our increasingly resilient supply chains!
The USA has a very real opportunity to re-establish our position as a world leader in manufacturing, despite lagging both Europe and Asia in our adoption of digital transformation, but doing so will demand that we take a highly collaborative approach to advance our national Smart Manufacturing strategy, leveraging many of the assets we’ve already invested in. One important example would be to engage both the Manufacturing Extension Partnerships (MEP’s) and Industrial Assessment Centers (IAC’s) in a more systematic and rigorous partnership, leveraging their market access to deliver a more effective and standardized set of capabilities to the broader manufacturing marketplace, and in particular, the small and medium manufacturers. These already-existing infrastructures and programs – combined with our rapidly-growing set of Smart Manufacturing resources – represent an enormous potential, and the ability to scale these capabilities to the masses.
We hope you enjoy the CESMII story as much as we’ve enjoyed being a part of it.
Learn about our history and current initiatives through the lens of our CTO, Haresh Malkani, and how they align with U.S. Department of Energy objectives for industry-wide adoption of Smart Manufacturing. CESMII’s long history began with the founding of Smart Manufacturing by Jim Davis at UCLA, chronicled in The 15th Anniversary of Smart Manufacturing.
Our CESMII story, as a Manufacturing USA Institute, is one that capitalizes on this history and investments made to date, but it also focuses on developing and scaling new industry-wide capabilities for a more productive, competitive, energy-efficient and environmentally sustainable manufacturing environment in the U.S. and globally.