RALEIGH – NC State is getting a new innovation center focused on smart manufacturing.
On Friday, CESMII, the United States’ national institute on smart manufacturing, announced the launch of the center on the Raleigh campus.
Smart manufacturing is a broad category of manufacturing that employs computer-integrated manufacturing, high levels of adaptability and rapid design changes, digital information technology, and more flexible technical workforce training
CESMI said the facility will now be available for industry to try smart manufacturing solutions and drive their use of artificial intelligence/machine learning, energy productivity, asset performance management and more.
“With this CESMII partnership, the NC State SMIC will be able to build and sustain a skilled and innovative smart manufacturing workforce with expertise in the requisite technology and best practices, and the ability to develop, continuously update, and deploy customizable, interdisciplinary educational training resources and programs,” said its director, Professor Yuan-Shin Lee of NC State.
At NC State, pilot plants for biomanufacturing, papermaking, nonwovens textiles, and advanced manufacturing have already used smart manufacturing tools from CESMII and its nationwide partners.
NC State said it had successfully demonstrated the integration of a dozen vendor solutions (including: Siemens, Honeywell, Allen Bradley, National Instrument, ABB, DeltaV, Andritz and Sartorius) using the CESMII SM Innovation Platform. Avid Solutions of Raleigh, is the strategic Systems Integration partner for this initiative.
Based in Los Angeles, California, SMIC’s objective is to link manufacturers, industrial technology vendors, systems integrators and equipment providers with academia, demonstrating and driving research and innovation that scales to all of US manufacturing.
