Course Description

This eight-week, online certification course is designed to educate consultants, advisors and innovation champions working with manufacturers on the CESMII Smart Manufacturing Acceleration Roadmap Framework, equip them the supporting toolkit, and prepare them to take the certification exam to become a certified Smart Manufacturing Roadmap Professional. Supported by an expert mentor, you’ll engage with hands-on projects to assess sample organization’s current and desired future states along six critical areas of world-class manufacturers.

By successfully completing the course projects, deliverables, and accompanying certification test, you will develop knowledge and capabilities to ensure your future client engagements are successful and your work is consistent with SM principles and the SM roadmap process developed by CESMII. Upon passing the certification test, you will receive a certificate from CESMII that designates you as a Smart Manufacturing Roadmap Professional.

Certification Process
Your certification will be obtained through a 3-step process:

• • Certification Step 1: Demonstrate competency through successful completion of the Smart Manufacturing Acceleration Roadmap Certification Course.
  • Certification Step 2: Pass the Smart Manufacturing Acceleration Roadmap certifying test.
  • Certification Step 3: Become a CESMII member (observer-level memberships are available at no cost)

Post certification, CESMII will:

• • Issue and maintain a Professional Community list
  • Provide you with access to shared repository for the roadmapping tools
  • Manage the community and run periodic meetings on a quarterly basis for the community, offering opportunities to discuss success stories and potential enhancements and updates to the community

Once certified, SM Roadmap Professionals remain valid for a period of three years. Certification will automatically be renewed through continuous engagement with the SM Roadmap Professionals Community and continued activity in at least one of the experience-based criteria. Exemplary community members will assist in helping to evolve the tools, sharing success stories (presenting work at conferences or member meetings), and helping to continue to democratize smart manufacturing practices.

Learning Goals

Upon successful completion of this course and certification test, participants will be able to demonstrate competency across the following learning areas. Learning goals and competencies for each module are located in the digital classroom.

CESMII’s Smart Manufacturing Acceleration Roadmap Framework – the six-part process to develop the Smart Manufacturing Strategic Plan which includes: i) identified and prioritized high-value target areas ii) alignment across the organization iii) alignment with other digital transformation efforts iv) alignment to support the objectives of the overall manufacturing strategic plan.

Explore – the first step of the smart manufacturing acceleration roadmap framework meant to increase client exposure to smart manufacturing, its impact, and why it matters.

Assess – the second step of the smart manufacturing acceleration roadmap framework. The CESMII self-assessment survey is used along with the resulting smart manufacturing state transition matrix to establish the current state of capabilities and competitiveness of the organization as achieved through people, processes, and technology.

Focus – the third step of the smart manufacturing acceleration roadmap framework meant to align the current state with a desired future state enabled by SM mindset and tools

Roadmap – the fourth step of the smart manufacturing acceleration roadmap framework. A strategic (not tactical) roadmap is created in which business objectives are identified and the corresponding improvement areas and initiatives are articulated. A process is used to create the roadmap.

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Course Expectations & Communication

Course Duration & Timing
Participants are expected to engage in roughly 1.5 hours per week of interactive, online synchronous sessions with their instructor and fellow participants, as well as ~4 – 6 additional hours per week creating and submitting deliverables for evaluation by the instructor.

Live Sessions
This course offers live sessions to provide you with the opportunity to connect with your mentor and fellow participants in a live setting. Live sessions will be held via Zoom in the evenings and recorded. The live session schedule can be found in the body of the course homepage and in the Course Calendar, which can be accessed on the right-hand side of the course homepage.

Course Materials
All required learning materials and resources for this course are made available within the RensselaerStudio learning management system (LMS).

Course Completion
Your progress will be evaluated by your mentor throughout the course; they will provide substantive feedback. To obtain certification, participants must successfully complete all weekly deliverables (including all steps for the Assess, Focus, and Roadmap phases of the Acceleration Framework for two sample organizations) and pass a final certification test.

Prerequisites
This course and sitting for the CESMII Certification exam requires three years of experience as a consultant in manufacturing or five years working as a professional leading the implementations of integrated systems in a manufacturing organization.