The U.S. Clean Energy Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute (CESMII) will participate in the establishment of the International Manufacturing-X Council, with its official announcement at the 2023 Annual CESMII Member Meeting in Greenville, South Carolina.
“The future of smart manufacturing lies in open, interoperable systems, sustainable and energy-efficient operations, and secure and resilient architectures,” explained John Dyck, who has been CEO of CESMII since June 2018 (Figure 1).
CESMII is a Manufacturing USA Institute chartered with transforming the U.S. manufacturing market and increasing global competitiveness through the democratization of smart-manufacturing technologies, knowledge and business practices.
Dyck was recognized by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) in 2020 as one of 30 Leaders Transforming Manufacturing in the USA. Prior to joining CESMII, Dyck held senior leadership positions in corporations such as GE and Rockwell Automation.
CESMII joins Germany’s Plattform Industrie 4.0, Austria’s Plattform Industrie 4.0 Österreich, France’s Alliance Industrie du Futur, Australia’s CSIRO's Data61, Canada’s Offensive de Transformation Numérique, South Korea’s KOSMO, Japan’s RRI, Italy’s Confindustria and the Netherlands’ Smart Industry in launching this initiative to implement a federated, decentralized and collaborative data ecosystem for smart manufacturing. The group anticipates additional members, as well.
“The data-based economy is changing the forms of cooperation between companies,” said Henning Banthien, secretary general of Germany’s Plattform Industrie 4.0. “For this transformation to be a success, trust between all actors is needed.”
The collective vision for the International Manufacturing-X (IM-X) Council is to enable open, global and cross-industry operation of cost-effective data networks. This will be realized through three sets of strategic initiatives:
1. connect value chains and manufacturing data networks across supply chains, industries and countries
2. implement global foundations for data-driven resilient, sovereign and climate-neutral production covering the full lifecycle of production and products
3. enable innovative value creation in an interoperable and sovereign data ecosystem.
IM-X is an effort to facilitate open, international research and development, partnerships, cooperation, standardization and deployment of manufacturing technology.
“With International Manufacturing-X, we want to expand international cooperation in order to engage in an even stronger exchange, start joint projects and develop uniform standards as a necessary component for scaling,” added Thomas Hahn, chief expert, software, Siemens.
CESMII’s $140-million funding from Department of Energy and public/private partnership contributions comes with a mandate to create a more competitive manufacturing environment in the United States. CESMII is one of 17 Manufacturing USA institutes on this mission to increase manufacturing productivity, global competitiveness and reinvestment by increasing energy productivity, improving economic performance and raising workforce capacity. University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) is the program and administrative home of CESMII.
