Smart Manufacturing Technologies for Material and Process Innovation | DE FOA 0003329

Opportunity Information: Apply for DE FOA 0003329

The Smart Manufacturing Technologies for Material and Process Innovation funding opportunity (DE-FOA-0003329) is a U.S. Department of Energy solicitation run through the Golden Field Office that aims to speed up the shift to a clean, decarbonized economy by modernizing how the United States designs, makes, and reuses materials and manufactured products tied to energy technologies. The core idea is that meeting the scale of domestic production needed for the energy transition will not happen through incremental tweaks alone; it will require new materials, new manufacturing processes, and better circular flows of materials so resources can be recovered, reused, and kept in productive use longer. DOE is positioning smart manufacturing as a practical way to bring these innovations online faster while improving quality and reliability at scale.

The opportunity focuses on “smart manufacturing” as a broad, system-level digital transformation of manufacturing rather than a single tool or piece of equipment. In this context, smart manufacturing means using platform technologies that can be applied across many products and industrial settings to connect and optimize the full production lifecycle. That lifecycle spans early-stage design, the manufacturing process itself, production operations, supply network coordination, and enterprise-level planning and management. The intent is to support technologies and approaches that make manufacturing more productive and efficient while also improving safety, security, and environmental sustainability. In other words, projects should help manufacturers make better decisions faster, reduce waste and downtime, increase throughput and consistency, and strengthen the resilience and competitiveness of U.S. industrial capabilities relevant to energy.

The FOA is organized around four topic areas that reflect where DOE sees major leverage for smart manufacturing to unlock material and process innovation. The first topic, Smart Manufacturing for a Circular Economy, targets the digital and operational capabilities needed to enable circular material flows, such as tracking materials, improving sorting and recovery, designing for reuse and remanufacturing, and optimizing processes that reduce scrap and emissions. The second topic, Smart Manufacturing of Tooling and Equipment for Sustainable Transportation, emphasizes improvements to the manufacturing of the tools and production equipment that enable next-generation transportation technologies, with an eye toward sustainability, faster scale-up, and better cost and quality performance. The third topic, Smart Manufacturing for High Performance Materials, centers on the manufacturing challenges associated with advanced materials where performance demands are high and process windows can be tight, making monitoring, control, modeling, and data-driven optimization especially valuable. The fourth topic, Smart Technologies for Sustainable and Competitive U.S. Mining, applies smart manufacturing-style digitalization and optimization to mining and related resource extraction and processing activities, supporting goals like improved sustainability, productivity, and domestic competitiveness.

From a funding and administrative standpoint, this is a discretionary grant opportunity using a cooperative agreement structure, which typically means DOE expects substantial involvement during the project period (for example, through technical collaboration, milestones, and active project management). The program lists an award ceiling of $3,000,000 per award and anticipates making about 25 awards. The original closing date is November 18, 2024, and the opportunity was created on July 18, 2024. Eligibility is listed as “unrestricted,” but applicants are directed to review Section III.A of the official FOA for the complete eligibility requirements and any conditions or limitations that might apply in practice.

Anyone interested in applying should plan to use the EERE Exchange portal for the official FOA document, instructions, and submission requirements, since that is where DOE posts the authoritative details on topic-specific expectations, required deliverables, cost share (if any), application components, and evaluation criteria. The FOA can be accessed at https://eere-exchange.energy.gov/.

• The Golden Field Office in the energy sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Smart Manufacturing Technologies for Material and Process Innovation" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 81.086.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2024-07-18.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2024-11-18. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $3,000,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 25 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Unrestricted.

Apply for DE FOA 0003329

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