# SME, formerly the Society of Manufacturing Engineers: what it offers plants and engineers > Source: https://netray.co/manufacturing/sme-society-of-manufacturing-engineers > Publisher: Netray (netray.co), AI and integration engineering for ERP and manufacturing systems. > Section: Manufacturing Hubs ## Short answer SME, formerly the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, is a US nonprofit professional society for people who work in manufacturing. It is known for engineer certifications, industry events and media, and workforce programs through the SME Education Foundation. Plants use it for credentialing, learning and networking rather than for software or standards of record. ## Kind association ## Country United States ## Area Manufacturing engineers, technologists and workforce education ## Intro SME, formerly the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, is a US nonprofit professional society for people who work in manufacturing. It is known for engineer certifications, industry events and media, and workforce programs through the SME Education Foundation. Plants use it for credentialing, learning and networking rather than for software or standards of record. ## Industries ### Discrete manufacturing and machining **Detail:** Manufacturing engineers in machining, assembly and tooling who hold or seek credentials such as Certified Manufacturing Technologist. ### Additive manufacturing **Detail:** SME is associated with the RAPID + TCT event, which brings together 3D printing users, materials suppliers and machine makers. ### Aerospace and defense **Detail:** Process engineers and quality staff working to AS9100 and customer specifications who rely on training and peer networks. ### Automotive and heavy equipment **Detail:** Plant and process engineers working on lean, automation and launch readiness for Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers. ### Education and workforce **Detail:** High schools, community colleges and universities that feed technicians and engineers into the trade. ## Ecosystem ### SME **Type:** association **Note:** A nonprofit professional society for manufacturing, founded in 1932 as the American Society of Tool Engineers and based in the Detroit area. ### SME certifications **Type:** standard body **Note:** SME offers the Certified Manufacturing Technologist (CMfgT) and Certified Manufacturing Engineer (CMfgE) credentials. ### RAPID + TCT **Type:** trade show **Note:** A large additive manufacturing event produced by SME. ### SME Education Foundation **Type:** foundation **Note:** A nonprofit connected to SME that supports manufacturing education, including the PRIME high school program. ### SME Media **Type:** publisher **Note:** SME's publishing arm, which covers manufacturing technology and engineering topics. ### Association for Manufacturing Technology (AMT) **Type:** association **Note:** Trade association that produces IMTS, which many SME members attend. ### MEP National Network **Type:** MEP center **Note:** NIST-supported state centers that provide consulting to small and mid-size manufacturers. ## Requirements - AS9100 and NADCAP process control for aerospace programs - IATF 16949 and PPAP in automotive supply chains - ISO 13485 and FDA 21 CFR 820 for medical device manufacturing - ISO 9001 as the general quality baseline - ITAR and CMMC 2.0 where defense technical data is handled ## Sections ### What SME is and who it serves **Body:** SME is a professional society, closer to an engineering institute than a trade lobby. Its audience is the individual: manufacturing engineers, technologists, supervisors and students. It offers credentials, publications, conferences and learning resources, and through the Education Foundation, programs aimed at building the next workforce. For a plant manager this means SME is useful for upskilling process engineers and benchmarking practices, not for buying equipment or finding a regulator-recognized quality certificate. Credentials like CMfgT and CMfgE document an individual's knowledge, which some employers value in hiring and promotion. ### Engineering knowledge versus ERP data **Body:** Manufacturing engineers spend a lot of time reconciling what the process should do with what the shop floor records. Routings, bills of material, standard times and work instructions often live in different places: the ERP, spreadsheets, PLM, shared drives and heads of senior staff. A common pain is that the routing in the ERP drifts away from the process actually run. Standard times are set once and not revisited, so costing and scheduling quietly degrade. Engineers who know this problem well are often the best owners of a data clean-up, because they know which routings matter. ### Workforce and skills capacity **Body:** Many plants face a shortage of experienced programmers, setup people and process engineers, and the loss of retiring staff takes undocumented knowledge with it. SME programs and local community college partnerships can help build pipelines, but they do not capture what your own senior staff know. Writing down setups, inspection tricks and common failure modes in a searchable form is one of the most practical steps. Documents, work instructions and past nonconformance reports are an underused knowledge source if the team can search them in plain language. ### Data handling for engineering documents **Body:** Drawings, process sheets and control plans may contain customer proprietary or export-controlled information. Pasting them into a public AI chat service is a risk many customers prohibit in their supplier terms. Check your flow-down clauses before any team member does it. A private deployment on the customer's own servers keeps documents inside the shop's boundary. Retrieval over approved folders, with access following existing permissions, lets engineers ask questions of their own procedures without sending files outside. ### Where private AI helps engineers, and where it does not **Body:** AI helps with finding the right revision of a work instruction, summarizing past nonconformances for a part family, and answering questions across ERP records and procedures. It can speed up routine analysis for engineers who already understand the process. It does not replace process validation, measurement system analysis or engineering judgment, and it should not write back to the ERP without human approval. If a simple report in your ERP already answers the question, use that. ## Faq ### Is SME the same as the Society of Manufacturing Engineers? **Answer:** Yes. SME is the current name of the organization formerly called the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. It is a US professional society for manufacturing engineers and technologists. ### What certifications does SME offer? **Answer:** SME offers the Certified Manufacturing Technologist (CMfgT) and Certified Manufacturing Engineer (CMfgE) credentials. They document an individual's manufacturing knowledge and are separate from company certifications such as ISO 9001 or AS9100. ### What is the SME Education Foundation? **Answer:** It is a nonprofit tied to SME that supports manufacturing education and workforce development, including the PRIME program that partners with high schools. It is separate from SME's membership and events business. ### How is SME different from AMT and NAM? **Answer:** SME is a professional society for individuals. AMT is a trade association of technology suppliers that produces IMTS. NAM is a broad manufacturing advocacy organization focused on public policy. ## Search terms SME society of manufacturing engineers, SME formerly society of manufacturing engineers, SME CMfgT certification, SME CMfgE certified manufacturing engineer, RAPID TCT SME, SME Education Foundation PRIME, manufacturing engineer ERP routing --- Talk to an engineer: https://netray.co/contact?intent=erp_ai | Machine catalog: https://netray.co/agent/catalog.json