Smart Manufacturing Dialogue | June 4, 2019 | Los Angeles, California
For more than two centuries, American industry has harnessed the nation’s abundance of natural resources, energy, talent and ingenuity to power and unleash the most productive economy in the world.
But dramatic shifts spurred by globalization, regulatory and tax trends, accelerating changes in consumer demand, increasing requirement to protect and wisely use energy and material resources, new global market opportunities with next generation technologies, and ascendant and increasingly advanced industrial activity across Europe and Asia have buffeted America’s industrial and manufacturing enterprises, threatening America’s place as a global manufacturing superpower.
At the same time, America finds itself facing a promising frontier shaped by three powerful transformations working in tandem:
- The digitalization of manufacturing creating substantial new economic investment opportunities with radically increased productivity and precision;
- The resulting generational re-emergence of advanced and highly productive manufacturing capacity on U.S. soil; and
- The increasing abundance and ability to more productively use innovative, sustainable, affordable and domestically-sourced energy.
To capitalize on this convergence, the Council on Competitiveness (Council) launched the Energy and Manufacturing Competitiveness Partnership (EMCP) in 2015, which leveraged more than a decade of leadership in energy and manufacturing. The EMCP, a C-suite-directed initiative, focused on the shifting global energy and manufacturing landscape, and how energy and material transformation and demand are shaping industries critical to America’s prosperity and security.
Over a span of three years, the Council executed an ambitious roadmap to focus national attention on the intersection of the energy and manufacturing transformations. Recognizing the tremendous innovation and changing landscape across the manufacturing sector, from 3D printing to the proliferation of sensing devices to the use of advanced modeling and simulation tools, the EMCP was designed to approach the country’s diverse industrial landscape as a network of distinct but interdependent productive sectors, each with its own challenges and opportunities.
In continuation of this work, the Council along with the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)—the program home for the DOE sponsored Manufacturing USA, Clean Energy Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute—will host a dialogue in California on June 4, 2019, focused on the democratization of smart manufacturing (SM) as a practical necessity for the future of U.S. manufacturing.
Democratization of SM is about creating value through the easy and secure movement of information. If data is the new oil, advanced modeling is the new refinery. But without significantly reducing the cost and complexity of information-based manufacturing solutions, the value of data and modeling cannot be fully realized.
The June 4th dialogue will bring together a diverse set of expertise to ask:
- What do industry executives, federal and state governments, and university leaders need to know about smart manufacturing and digitalization in order to make informed policy, business, and educational decisions?
- What are the roadblocks standing in the way of the smart manufacturing/manufacturing transformation?
- Are there examples of replicable smart manufacturing best practices?
- How can policymakers and industry ensure that digitalization does not outpace security in the form of cyber threats from state and unaffiliated actors?
- Is there a need to rethink talent, workforce training and education and entrepreneurship as elements of an overall cultural shift to a data driven, innovation driven economy that can be an outcome of digitalization?
- Is the U.S. and its manufacturing base adequately prioritizing smart manufacturing investment and market priority to keep pace with consumer and global market demand and advanced digital technology, investment, and innovation around the globe?
For more information or to sponsor this dialogue, please contact Council Senior Policy Director, Katie Sarro ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or 202-383-9507).
