President Obama announces ninth U.S. manufacturing hub

by Talk Business & Politics staff ([email protected]) 156 views 

As part of this week’s third-annual SelectUSA Summit in Washington, D.C., President Obama announced that the Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition (SMLC) in Los Angeles will lead the new Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute, in partnership with the Department of Energy.

The winning coalition, headquartered in California’s largest city, brings together a consortium of nearly 200 partners from across academia, industry, and non-profits — hailing from more than 30 states — to spur advances in smart sensors and digital process controls that can radically improve the efficiency of U.S. advanced manufacturing.

The Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute is the ninth manufacturing hub awarded by the Obama administration. It will focus on innovations like smart sensors that can dramatically reduce energy expenses in advanced manufacturing.

The Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition will bring together nearly 200 partners to launch the Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute, focused on accelerating the development and adoption of advanced sensors, data analytics, and controls in manufacturing, while reducing the cost of these technologies by half and radically improving the efficiency of U.S. advanced manufacturing.

The president also announced the launch of five new manufacturing hub competitions, which will invest nearly $800 million in combined federal and non-federal resources to support transformative manufacturing technologies from collaborative robotics to biofabrication of cells and tissues, to revolutionizing the ways materials can be reused and recycled.

With the new competitions underway, administration officials said the federal initiative is on track to meet the president’s goal of a National Network for Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI) of 15 institutes underway across the country before the end of Obama’s tenure in office.

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