Next generation Information Technology (IT) is about network-based data, unprecedented modeling capabilities, extensive mobility and IT clouds that go far beyond today’s infrastructure and software services. This explosion in expansively new systems of integrated devices, data and information, sets the stage for applications that provide unimaginable new insights and solutions, unprecedented opportunities, and relentless forces for changing how we make things. Manufacturing is an industry that is adopting these technologies to meet next generation expectations. It is how, how fast, and how well advanced sensing, control, platforms, modeling, security and data are applied that will impact the future of each individual manufacturer and the supply chain in which they participate. In business terms, Smart Manufacturing (SM) is the enterprise integration of real-time, networked and data-based manufacturing intelligence to address velocity, precision, added value and new product demands while radically increasing economic, energy and material productivity, reducing energy usage, and improving environmental sustainability. SM makes data a key asset and realizes significant untapped opportunity and productivity across value and supply chains and dynamic and accelerated manufacturing markets. SM is the opportunity-based business and technology practices and public-private partnerships to have the right data, at the right time in the right form wherever they are needed to realize these opportunities.
Speaker
Jim Davis
Jim Davis is Vice Provost, IT and CATO with broad responsibilities focused on UCLA’s academic research and education mission and builds on his past position as Associate Vice Chancellor & CIO. Jim has responsibilities for the Institute for Digital Research and Education (IDRE), UCLA’s institutional educational technology initiative, as well as extensive accountability for university-wide IT planning and strategic investment in academic and administrative operations and services. Board memberships include: UCLA’s IS Associates, an IT leadership organization comprised of CIOs from 40+ companies in Southern California; the Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition (SMLC), a national coalition focused on transformations in advanced manufacturing; the Coalition of Academic Scientific Computing, a national coalition of research universities involved with advanced cyber-enabled research; the Manufacturing Leadership Council, an international organization of manufacturers; and the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership program in Southern California (AMP SoCal). Jim is the past Chair of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC), the non-profit corporation responsible for network connectivity and services to all higher education and K-12 institutions in the State of California. Jim is a Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UCLA with expertise in data analysis, decision support, and intelligent systems.