Resilience turned into momentum

2025 delivered historic growth and
2026 is about scaling impact.

On behalf of the entire CESMII team, we wish you a peaceful, healthy, and prosperous New Year.

As we reflect on the past year and our engagement with many of you, it is clear that 2025 was both uniquely challenging and deeply validating. As many of you know, CESMII was impacted by the Federal Government and UCLA working through issues related to federally funded awards. We’re pleased to share that CESMII’s federal funding was reinstated just before the holiday.

Despite this uncertainty, CESMII remained fully operational and sharply focused on serving our community. In fact, 2025 marked the strongest growth in new members, industry engagement, and Smart Manufacturing adoption in CESMII’s history. We saw unprecedented alignment, urgency, and momentum around Smart Manufacturing as a critical driver of productivity and competitiveness.

Looking ahead to 2026, several high-impact Smart Manufacturing priorities stand out – areas where we believe focused collaboration will deliver meaningful results.

Read full message from John Dyck, CEO CESMII

CESMII is heading to ProveIt! Conference

Thursday morning at ProveIt! 2026, CESMII opens with the keynote Building Better Namespaces with CESMII. John Dyck and Jonathan Wise take on the issues the industry tends to avoid: fragmented namespaces, brittle architectures, and “interoperability” that works in demos but fails on the plant floor. The session digs into why standards are no longer optional, how weak information models quietly limit scale, and what it really takes to align OT and IT.

The conversation is grounded by perspectives from across the ecosystem, including GE Appliances (a Haier company), Georgia-Pacific LLC, Inductive Automation, HighByte, Flow Software Inc., ACE Technologies (Manufacturing IIoT), Siemens, and Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Also debuting at ProveIt! 2026: a major shift for Smart Manufacturing. Smart Manufacturing Profiles are now required for all vendors, acting as an information contract for consistent, reusable data across platforms to enable faster deployment and scalable analytics.

Headed to ProveIt? Use code CESMII50 for 50% off registration.

How Workforce Roles are Changing in Smart Manufacturing Operations

Written by: Conrad Leiva, VP, Ecosystem & Workforce, CESMII
Published: January 2026

As Smart Manufacturing adoption accelerates, workforce roles are evolving across every layer of operations. Operations managers, innovation leaders, industrial and process engineers, automation and controls specialists, and production operators are all taking on new responsibilities shaped by data, connectivity, and interoperability. These changes are redefining skills, workflows, and how teams collaborate to drive performance at scale.

Now Accepting Applications: Software Development Engineer

Want to build technology that shapes the future of U.S. manufacturing? CESMII is looking for a Software Development Engineer to help design, build, and evolve the next generation of our Smart Manufacturing Platform.

⬇58%

SM tools yielded process data that informed a production process change that will reduce energy costs by 58% when implemented.