In 2016, the U.S. Department of Energy established CESMII (the Clean Energy Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute) to explore how emerging technologies might deliver smart manufacturing solutions. A year later, UCI’s CALIT2 was designated as the CESMII Southern California Regional Demonstration Center, and recently CESMII awarded $2.1 million to CALIT2 to develop the Smart Connected Workers program. The program will develop affordable, scalable, accessible and portable smart manufacturing systems that will help companies gain insight into their energy footprints and workflow activities. These data can lead to optimization and dynamic scheduling of equipment to help reduce energy costs.
Of the more than 250,000 U.S. companies in the manufacturing sector, less than 4,000 have more than 500 employees, while three-quarters of them have fewer than 20 employees. Most of these companies lack financial resources to incorporate sophisticated, advanced automation and control that could give them a competitive edge.
The Smart Connected Worker team is made up of nine UCI faculty and researchers who will join with industrial partners, including Atollogy, Aerospace Corp., Honeywell, General Mills, Southern California Edison, Google, San Diego Supercomputing Center, and university partners UCLA and CSU Northridge.
