Robot Revolution & Industrial IoT Initiative (RRI) of Japan and the Clean Energy Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute (CESMII) are collaborating to shape the Future of Manufacturing.
RRI and CESMII are working together to drive the digital transformation of manufacturing. Areas of shared interest include educational benchmarking, technical standards and decarbonization. In the short term, educational benchmarking will compare a shared set of skills and competencies in a rapidly evolving manufacturing domain. This initiative was first revealed at RRI’s International Symposium 2021, highlighting the vision for this collaboration.
Japan and the United States are among the world’s leading manufacturing economies and innovation ecosystems. The two countries’ manufacturers share an interconnected network of facilities and suppliers, including many small and medium-sized enterprises. RRI and CESMII are announcing this collaboration to address similar challenges and needs related to Smart Manufacturing. For both manufacturing economies to compete, they need international collaboration to drive the harmonization of standards and training initiatives and achieve major tasks like the development of workforce skills and fostering sustainable production.
RRI promotes the development of Smart Manufacturing and Robotics in Japan by developing pre-competitive concepts, recommendations and use cases for practical applications.
CESMII promotes Smart Manufacturing in the US by supporting pre-competitive research and development, providing tools and a testbed for new technology as public-private partnerships, and creating content for educating a next generation of smart manufacturers.
“Japan has established today’s leading position in manufacturing by creating effective practices at manufacturing sites such as KAIZEN. On the other hand, with the development of digital technology, new initiatives are being born, and it is necessary for management and the field to respond to the movement and become a next-generation engine that creates further new movements. I am very excited to aim for a global scale initiative in collaboration with CESMII.”, says Tatsuya Ohira, Secretary General of RRI.
At the Robot Revolution and Industrial IoT International Symposium 2021, RRI is particularly honored that CESMII accepted the invitation to Day2 session for Innovation, Education and Workforce Development on Wednesday October 13th, which will be live-streamed via YouTube. The Robot Revolution and Industrial IoT International Symposium 2021 provides an excellent opportunity to present the current implementation of each country as well as the discussion for the future collaboration opportunities. Developing education and workforce competencies and skills for smart manufacturing is essential to continue the path of innovation and to drive adoption. Technologies are evolving faster and manufacturing systems are increasingly connected to support data driven business transformation.
Learning and understanding methodologies and skills at various level of the organization are needed from the management level to the shopfloor level. This collaboration is a highly complementary effort that will help the US and Japan to ensure these systems work well, based on harmonized approaches which are mutually beneficial.
John Dyck, CEO of CESMII, appreciates the joint progress since autumn of 2020: “Both sides have invested significant time to understand each other’s approaches and national context. We have now reached a point where we can start defining concrete activities. It is important to us that our efforts also respond to the needs of small and medium-sized companies, especially to recover from Covid-19 and to create new jobs in the future. RRI and CESMII also see great potential in the digital transformation of manufacturing to enhance decarbonization and ecological sustainability.”
About RRI
RRI (The Robot Revolution & Industrial IoT Initiative) is a private-led organizational platform to promote the “Robot Revolution” stated in the “New Robot Strategy” (2015/2/10, The Headquarters for Japan’s Economic Revitalization). In “New Robot Strategy”, robot is widely defined as a system that executes tasks by utilizing digital and network technology, advanced sensors, and artificial intelligence, and the strategy aims the following targets. RRI is acting as an open innovation platform for wide range of stakeholders to collaborate and make concrete actions to realize these targets. At the “Connected Industries” Initiative in Japan, RRI is recognized as a main promoter of Manufacturing and Robotics fields.
https://www.jmfrri.gr.jp/ https://www.jmfrri.gr.jp/english/