USCAR Roadmap for Automotive Smart Manufacturing

The Automotive manufacturing landscape continues to face enormous headwinds, putting stress on every aspect of the business, including the global supply network. Adding to that is the market move toward electrification, new sustainability requirements, and significant worker retention issues. OEMs are being forced to re-examine every aspect of their business, paving the way for a more resilient and collaborative approach to address these challenges. The post-pandemic move toward supply chain regionalization is also adding stress to an already heavily burdened manufacturing workforce.

This is further exacerbated by the unprecedented reality that manufacturing productivity by worker is at historic lows – and still declining – here in the US. While the reasons for this decline are multi-faceted, there is a growing sense of urgency that we need to improve US manufacturing productivity, competitiveness, and resilience. All of this points to a critical need to rethink the way we use data to empower people and inform strategies, both for real time operations and on a longer horizon for resource planning and predictions.

This Roadmap for Automotive Smart Manufacturing focuses on three vital strategies that will enable a more productive, competitive, and resilient automotive manufacturing environment in the United States. We will address the need for a connected workforce, resilient and modern manufacturing IT infrastructure, and a Smart Manufacturing Mindset that will foster innovation and collaboration with all key stakeholder groups, including suppliers, technology partners, machine builders, system integrators, etc.