VIMANA Selected As Part of Obama’s Program to Bring the US back to Manufacturing Prominence

February 26, 2014

Berkeley, CA – VIMANA announced that they were one of the technology companies selected as partner with the UI Labs. The Chicago-based organization has been awarded $70 million from the U.S. Department of Defense to fund the Digital Lab for Manufacturing. (See the announcement at http://www.uilabs.org)

The $70 million cooperative agreement from the U.S. Department of Defense was leveraged by commitments of $250 million from industry, academia, government, and community partners, forming a $320 million institute. The investment is part of President Obama’s vision to reinvigorate U.S. Manufacturing, creating new jobs and economic development and spurring future innovation.

According to the White House, the winning Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation (DMDI) Institute team headquartered in Chicago, Illinois and led by UI Labs, spearheads a consortium of 73 companies, universities, nonprofits, and research labs. DMDI created a novel partnership between world-leading manufacturing experts and cutting-edge software companies to enable interoperability across the supply chain, develop enhanced digital capabilities to design and test new products, and reduce costs in manufacturing processes across multiple industries.

Will Sobel, CEO and co-founder of VIMANA noted, “Our team is very pleased to be supporting the efforts of UI Labs in their aim to advance American manufacturing innovation using digital technologies. The pursuit of a digital manufacturing enterprise has been our goal ever since I began work on the MTConnect standard to provide the first real-time predictive data analytics product in the industry. We are looking forward to be once again working with Dean Bartles in his new role as Executive Director and would like to congratulate him on this new endeavor.”