Executive Council formed to promote Smart Manufacturing in the US

The Clean Energy Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute (CESMII) and The Society Of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) have announced that they are to team up to form an executive council seeking to promote smart manufacturing. This ambitious plan will assemble leading players in the smart manufacturing industry with particular attention being paid to attracting business and technology executives, thought leaders and visionaries advocating for the transformation of the U.S. manufacturing ecosystem. The charter of the Smart Manufacturing Executive Council has been drawn up to help steer the transformation of the US manufacturing industry by advocating smart manufacturing processes and provide advice, practical steps, investments and policy recommendations that will help this ecosystem across this digital divide. Initially, the SM Executive Council has three main planks in its charter and will focus on very specific strategic initiatives targetting the ecosystem, technology and the workforce. Ecosystem: The focus on the ecosystem is based on collaborative strategies enabling plants connected to the enterprise and supply chains for real-time data-driven business orchestration. The goal of this strategy is to deliver flexible and agile processes and supply chains easily reconfigured for changing market demands and empowering collaboration between OT and IT. Technology: The Council's technological strategem seeks to accelerate evolution from proprietary, closed systems, enabling interoperability to eliminate data silos, stovepipe architectures and vendor lock-in. The objective of this policy is to drive down costs and improve agility. Workforce: The remaining pillar of the Executive Council's strategy is focused on aligning education, training, and continuous improvement strategies to develop people with the skills needed to accelerate smart manufacturing and create data driven cultures. The end goal of this strand of the policy is aimed at providing organizational structures and capabilities that align resources and people for SM success.