Provide services to expand existing MEP capabilities to provide national supply chain optimization and to establish a supply chain intelligence network

Montana State University received a $400,000 cooperative agreement from the National Institute of Standards and Technology under the Manufacturing Extension Partnership program to provide supply chain optimization services and establish an intelligence network. The university will hire one full-time employee to serve as the single point of contact for the network and participate in collaboration meetings and activities. This individual will study and document supply chain intelligence, suggest solutions for securely storing and sharing supply chain data, and respond to all supplier scouting requests. The university will also modify its existing customer relationship management system to temporarily house supply chain data and may purchase additional software. The intended beneficiaries are small and medium-sized manufacturers in Montana. No subawards are planned under this award, which runs from June 1, 2023 to May 31, 2025.

Purpose

The purpose of this project is to provide services to expand existing MEP capabilities to provide national supply chain optimization and to establish a supply chain intelligence network. Improve the resiliency and optimization for domestic supply chains in the MEP national network in the state of montana.

Activities

The project will hire one full-time employee (FTE) to be the single point of contact for the supply chain optimization and intelligence network. This employee will participate in MEP national network collaboration meetings and activities, study and document supply chain intelligence, suggest solutions to store and share supply chain data, and be responsible for responding to all supplier scouting requests and for ensuring the security of all data collected. After funding the full-time supply chain optimization employee, mmec will use the remaining funds to modify our existing salesforce customer relationship management (CRM) application to temporarily house our supply chain data and possibly purchase additional software solutions or enhancements (e.g., for mapping of supply chain data). Mmec will use contractors to modify existing salesforce CRM system to allow for temporary storage of supply chain data until a common protocol and an application programming interface has been decided upon at NIST-MEP.

Expected outcomes

Mmec expects that this dedicated supply chain employee and intelligence network will be extremely impactful to our staff, clients, and partners. Mmec will track the number of companies documented, number of supply chains mapped, number of suppliers scouting requests responded to and the number of matches made.

Intended beneficiaries

Small and medium-sized manufacturers (smms) in the state of montana.

Subrecipient activities

The recipient does not intend to subaward funds.