What VSMA Is Building for Virginia Manufacturing
VSMA was established with a clear mandate: help Virginia's small and mid-sized manufacturers adopt smart technology faster, with real support and lower risk.
In 2024, GENEDGE was awarded $2.6 million from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains to establish the Virginia Smart Manufacturing Accelerator. VSMA is one of only 12 such programs funded nationally, selected through a competitive federal process as part of a broader initiative to build smart manufacturing capacity and capability across the United States.
That investment funds the full range of VSMA programs and services at no cost to participating Virginia manufacturers. Roadshows, assessments, and apprenticeship programming are all covered by program funding. VSMA’s mission is to serve, not to sell.
What We're Building
Smart Manufacturing Roadshow Series
Free, full-day events at locations across Virginia. See smart manufacturing technology running live, hear from Virginia’s top engineering universities and manufacturing specialists, and walk away with connections and a plan for optimizing your operation.
Manufacturing Performance Diagnostics™
A free, on-site evaluation by our GENEDGE experts at your facility. Covers digital maturity, cybersecurity, energy systems, workforce capability, and process improvement. We provide a prioritized roadmap and identified grants and funding opportunities.
Advanced Manufacturing Apprenticeship Program
GENEDGE is building a Department of Labor registered apprenticeship pathway for smart manufacturing skills, in partnership with Tidewater Community College and the Virginia Manufacturers Association. It's being designed now, with a target readiness date of December 2026.
"They came in with a problem. They left with an answer."
At the first VSMA Roadshow in Martinsville, a manufacturer pulled us aside early in the morning. Their issue: defect detection on a packaging line. Fully manual. People stationed at every point, every shift, just watching for things to go wrong.
We pointed them to one of the demonstration stations across the room. The technology sitting there was a vision inspection system, capable of 90 to 99 percent defect detection accuracy. No coding required. You show it images of acceptable product and images of defective product, and it learns the difference. To demonstrate it that morning, we used poker chips: program the machine to recognize a clean chip as acceptable, place a single black dot on one, and it flags it immediately as a defect.
Cost: a few hundred dollars.
That manufacturer had been solving their problem with labor, people, scheduling, fatigue, and human error, when an affordable solution already existed. They just didn’t know where to look.
That’s the gap VSMA closes. Not by telling manufacturers what’s possible, but by putting it in the room, running it in front of them, and letting them see it work on their problem before they commit to anything. They are now scheduled for a free Manufacturing Performance Diagnostics™ assessment.
— Frank Otabor, Program Director, VSMA / GENEDGE
The Broader Mandate
Virginia’s manufacturing sector employs hundreds of thousands of workers and contributes significantly to the Commonwealth’s economy. The manufacturers who adopt smart technology reduce operating costs, improve throughput, extend the life of existing equipment, and strengthen their competitive position, without requiring massive capital investment.
VSMA’s impact extends beyond any individual company. Every manufacturer that reduces downtime, improves energy efficiency, or builds workforce capability contributes to the broader resilience of Virginia’s manufacturing economy. VSMA tracks outcomes across the full partner network — companies engaged, assessments completed, jobs retained, and grant funding accessed today, with apprenticeship participation added to that reporting once the pathway launches — and reports program performance to the U.S. Department of Energy as part of its federal mandate.
