Smart Manufacturing Leadership Act

Smart Manufacturing Leadership Act

This bill requires the Department of Energy (DOE) to complete a national plan for smart manufacturing technology development and deployment to improve the productivity and energy efficiency of the U.S. manufacturing sector. Smart manufacturing is a set of advanced sensing, instrumentation, monitoring, controls, and process optimization technologies and practices that merge information and communication technologies with the manufacturing environment for the real-time management of energy, productivity, and costs across factories and companies.

DOE must expand the scope of technologies covered by Industrial Assessment Centers to include smart manufacturing technologies and practices and to equip the centers' directors with the training and tools necessary to provide technical assistance in smart manufacturing technologies and practices.

DOE must: (1) study how it can increase access to existing high-performance computing resources in the National Laboratories, and (2) facilitate access to the laboratories by small and medium manufacturers so that they can fully use the laboratories' high-performance computing resources to enhance manufacturing competitiveness.

DOE may make grants to states for establishing state programs to be used as models for supporting the implementation of smart manufacturing technologies. States must use those grants to: (1) provide access to shared supercomputing facilities to small and medium manufacturers, (2) fund research and development of transformational manufacturing processes and materials technology that advance smart manufacturing, and (3) provide tools and training to aid the adoption of energy management systems and implement smart manufacturing technologies in the manufacturers' facilities.