Optimal Will Provide Data Tool to Better Understand Changes in the U.S. Manufacturing Sector

Date: August 18, 2021

The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) offers tools, solutions, and resources to address manufacturer’s diverse challenges and opportunities. Optimal Solutions Group LLC (Optimal) will provide access to a manufacturing data analysis and modeling tool or service . This tool/service will put dynamic and relevant manufacturing data in the hands of the MEP Centers, which helps with efficiency in serving their local markets.

The goal with this tool/service is to gain granularity in understanding of U.S. manufacturing –– from varying industry levels, to varying geographical levels, to different occupational levels –– and to understand data trends in the U.S. manufacturing sector at various levels of detail. Being able to understand any changes that may be coming to the U.S. manufacturing sector and its subcomponents and being able to prepare for those changes are of importance to the NIST MEP.

Optimal will provide a data tool/service that is hosted on a web-based platform that can be accessed via a site license, which will allow NIST MEP and the national network of MEP Center users to quickly gain access to aggregated manufacturing relevant data from multiple sources and use that data to analyze different aspects of U.S. manufacturing, including changes in establishment counts, changes in employment numbers, and supply chain identification and mapping, etc. Optimal will identify and populate the data. This data will then be aggregated in the tool/service and used to populate analyses and reports, which can also be automatically generated and downloaded from the tool/service. Work is set to begin on this project in October 2021.

Optimal previously provided evaluation support for NIST MEP’s Business to Business Network Pilot Project.

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Optimal Solutions Group, LLC

Founded in 2000, Optimal Solutions Group, LLC, is a nonpartisan public policy research and technical assistance firm that stands out for its quantitative expertise and innovative approaches to provide rigorous, data-driven research and technical assistance to government agencies, corporations, nonprofit organizations and philanthropic foundations. Located at the University of Maryland’s Discovery District in College Park, Optimal is a leader in driving real-time public policy research. Optimal has 60+ employees, including multidisciplinary researchers with backgrounds in economics, education, health, housing, sociology, statistics, information management and entrepreneurship. Optimal has four research centers—Health, Education, Housing and Workforce Development, and Social Policy—as well as an International Practice, Analytics Group, and Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center.