Essential education and training will develop skills to accelerate smart manufacturing adoption by U.S. Manufacturers

SOUTHFIELD, Mich. — (BUSINESS WIRE) — June 13, 2023 — Tooling U-SME, the workforce development division of SME, and CESMII–The Smart Manufacturing Institute, sponsored by NIST and the U.S Department of Energy, have launched a Fundamentals of Smart Manufacturing learning curriculum for building awareness and educating the workforce around newly available smart manufacturing processes and technologies.

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Jeannine Kunz, Chief Workforce Development Officer, SME (Photo: Business Wire)

The dynamic, self-paced online training curriculum leverages the collective design, training, and technical expertise of both SME and CESMII, and is a continuation of the industry partnership announced last year between the two organizations. By working together, the program will validate and deploy a common foundation of knowledge for advancing industry’s progress through a smart manufacturing transformation.

“Our shared vision with CESMII is to teach the manufacturing workforce the basics of Smart Manufacturing methodologies to help them understand its essential nature and benefits to accelerate transformation in the U.S. manufacturing workforce,” said Jeannine Kunz, Chief Workforce Development Officer at SME. “This common foundation is important in Smart Manufacturing’s adoption and in realizing the technologies benefits of improved quality, reduced costs and processes and workforce efficiencies.”

The Fundamentals of Smart Manufacturing learning package introduces important business opportunities, technical advances, and organizational factors when considering a smart manufacturing transformation. The convenient online training courses can be easily accessed from Tooling U-SME, education providers, or employer training portals for building awareness across the ecosystem and introducing modern skills required for many existing and emerging smart manufacturing job roles.

“The workforce needs to stay up to date with advances changing the technology landscape for manufacturers,” said Conrad Leiva, Vice President of Ecosystem and Workforce Education at CESMII. “The Smart Manufacturing courses from Tooling U-SME and CESMII offer a great way to update the workforce’s knowledge with the flexibility of on-demand courses. I also encourage manufacturers to engage with the Tooling U-SME team to develop a custom program to enhance the competencies of their workforce in various Industry 4.0 skill areas.”

Organized into 35 short self-paced training modules, the Fundamentals of Smart Manufacturing curriculum covers essential topics including an introduction to Smart Manufacturing, capturing and organizing data, connecting platforms and systems, automating flow and control, cyber security, and leveraging insights for decision-making. Developed in accordance with industry standards for remote learning, employees and students can easily access the program from most common web-based training platforms.

Tooling U-SME works with thousands of companies, including more than half of all Fortune 500® manufacturers and nearly 1,000 educational institutions across the country. Tooling U-SME is an expert at design and distribution of learning resources and at tailoring solutions to the needs of the manufacturing community. With Tooling U-SME’s extensive training experience and reach into industry and academia and CESMII’s subject matter expertise and know-how on smart manufacturing technology and business practices, the CESMII and Tooling U-SME collaboration on smart manufacturing training will expedite adoption and drive progress through transformational workforce development.

Collaboration across the Manufacturing USA Innovation Institutes

With its extensive reach with existing partners, Tooling U-SME will train and educate the industrial base and extensive pipeline of future workers, delivering necessary smart manufacturing curriculum to thousands of OEMs, suppliers, and schools across the United States. The curriculum, with review and input from CESMII (The Smart Manufacturing Institute), CyManII, (Cybersecurity Manufacturing Innovation Institute), and America Makes (National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute) was also supported by the U.S. Office of Naval Research under awards N00014-18-1-2881 led by the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining and N00014-19-1-2742 led by SME. It is an outstanding example of aligning several like-minded organizations with common objectives and complementary strengths to accelerate and optimize the impact on growing the talent and skills needed.

About CESMII

CESMII is the United States’ national institute on Smart Manufacturing, driving cultural and technological transformation and secure industrial technologies as national imperatives. By enabling frictionless movement of information – raw and contextualized data – between real-time operations and the people and systems that create value in and across manufacturing organizations, CESMII is impacting manufacturing performance through measurable improvements in areas such as quality, throughput, costs/profitability, safety, asset reliability and energy productivity. Learn more at cesmii.org and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

About Tooling U-SME

Tooling U-SME delivers versatile, competency-based learning and development solutions to the manufacturing community, working with thousands of companies, including more than half of all Fortune 500® manufacturers, as well as 1,000 educational and workforce institutions across the country. Tooling U-SME partners with customers to build high performers who help their companies drive quality, productivity, innovation, and employee satisfaction and educators to prepare the next-generation workforce with industry-driven curriculum and certification. A division of SME, a nonprofit that connects people to manufacturing solutions, Tooling U-SME can be found at toolingu.com or follow @ToolingU on Facebook and Twitter or visit linkedin.com/company/toolingu-sme.

NOTE TO EDITORS: High-resolution images of Jeannine Kunz and Conrad Leiva are available from SME.

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Michael Scholl
Senior PR Representative, SME
mscholl@sme.org
Tel. +1 313.425.3040