Sep 17, 2026
Smart Manufacturing Mindset™: Supply Chain Data Exchange (IM-X)
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In recent weeks, CESMII announced its commitment to connecting global supply chains by joining the International Manufacturing-X (IM-X) Council. Along with leaders from Germany, Austria, France, Australia, Canada, South Korea, Japan, Italy, the Netherlands, and the U.S, the CESMII ecosystem is stepping up to shape a smarter, more connected future in manufacturing.
This 45-minute discussion with industry experts digs into the opportunities and challenges on the horizon for the IM-X Council.
Top 5 Takeaways
- The pandemic exposed the fragility and some underlying structural challenges in our manufacturing supply chains
- There’s an urgent need for a more economical, standards-based, trusted and real time system to share data between manufacturers and suppliers – large AND small
- These capabilities would accelerate digital innovations and enable new data-driven business models to create new value for manufacturing
- No country, no initiative, no company can achieve this on its own, but the business value is clear. The goal is to determine the common criteria needed from suppliers – across industries, countries, and supply chains. This is where the International Manufacturing-X Council plays a key role.
- Don’t boil the ocean! The IM-X Council is chartered to:
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- Facilitate use cases on the collaborative use of industrial data for all manufacturing industries
- Develop the requirements, influence international standardization and framework development for basic infra-structure to deploy federated data-ecosystems for manufacturing
- Provide guidelines to leverage easy-to-use applications and dynamically scale the ecosystems.
CESMII started to engage on the challenges with supply chain disruption in 2020. At that time, the focus was at the US level but in July 2023 the IM-X Council came together to take a more expanded look at developing supply chain standards with a global team of leaders.

Special thank you to our panelists:
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- John Dyck, CEO at CESMII
- Matthias Bölke, Vice President Strategy Industrial Automation at Schneider Electric & Steering Committee Member at Plattform Industrie 4.0
- Mike Tomasco, Vice President Digital Manufacturing, AI, Operational Excellence at Pfizer
- Mike Yost, Series Host
We'll be releasing episodes the last Tuesday of the month. Follow us on LinkedIn to get notified about upcoming episodes.
About CESMII
CESMII – the Smart Manufacturing Institute – has a total current investment commitment of $201M from Department of Energy funding and public/private partnership contributions, with a mandate to create a more competitive manufacturing environment in the US through advanced sensing, analytics, modeling, control, and platforms. CESMII is one of 17 Manufacturing USA institutes on this mission to increase manufacturing productivity, global competitiveness, and reinvestment by increasing energy productivity, improving economic performance and raising workforce capacity. University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) is the program and administrative home of CESMII. For more information about CESMII, its history and Smart Manufacturing, visit cesmii.org.
