Today, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Clean Energy Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute (CESMII) announced selections totaling up to $1 million for five projects to identify ways to use smart-manufacturing technologies to improve productivity, precision, performance and energy efficiency.

Bolstering domestic manufacturing is a top priority for the Trump Administration. In a report titled, “Strategy for American Leadership in Advanced Manufacturing,” the White House calls for new, smart-manufacturing technologies to “facilitate a digital transformation in the manufacturing sector by enabling the application of big data analytics and advanced sensing and control technologies to a host of manufacturing activities.”

This request for proposals (RFP) falls under a new category of CESMII projects called “smart-manufacturing innovation projects.” Selected project teams will create “smart-manufacturing profiles”—a library of reusable information, including models of manufacturing processes and related equipment—that will help achieve CESMII’s energy objectives.