NIST Awards $1,000,000 to the MEP Center in Virginia

The U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) has made one cooperative agreement award totaling $1,000,000 as part of its 2021-NIST-MEP-CAP-01 Notice of Funding Opportunities (NOFOs). This funding opportunity is available for MEP Centers to add capabilities to the MEP program including developing projects to solve new or emerging manufacturing problems that are not already provided for under a Center’s base MEP award. Project themes for these awards include Industry/Manufacturing 4.0; manufacturing workforce services to include employee recruitment, retention and employee development; supply chain management and resiliency; and artificial intelligence application.

A.L. Philpott Manufacturing Extension Partnership (dba GENEDGE Alliance)
GENEDGE Alliance (GENEDGE), the MEP Center in Virginia, will lead a project, the Medical Manufacturer MedAccred Accreditation Pathway (MedMMAP Phase III), to expand the relatively narrow scope of the previous MedMMAP Phase II project and continue to increase the resiliency of the U.S. medical device supply chain while reducing patient risks associated with unacceptable manufacturing quality. The focus of this initiative will be to increase the competitiveness of U.S. small and medium-sized manufacturers (SMMs) that are critical to global medical device production by providing increased access to specialized expertise and resources. MedMMAP Phase III will directly partner with Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and other MEP Centers to address and resolve sources of defects, operational risks, and disruptions that negatively impact the long-term resiliency of the medical device supply chain. The project is funded from 9/1/2023 to 8/31/2025 for $1,000,000.