Manufacturing added approximately $3 trillion to the U.S. economy in the first quarter of 2026, underscoring the sector’s continued importance to economic growth, jobs and competitiveness. Yet a specific executive role responsible for manufacturing has not necessarily kept pace with the sector’s expanding strategic importance.
Today, there are just two chief manufacturing officers in state governments: Connecticut has an Office of Manufacturing led by one, while Florida assigns the title to a senior executive who also serves as the deputy secretary of economic development. There is no chief manufacturing officer role at the federal level.
In the private sector, companies have yet to broadly adopt the CMO title, with manufacturing responsibilities more commonly distributed among other executives such as chief operating officers and chief supply chain officers.
Proponents of the role argue that having an executive specifically responsible for manufacturing could help organizations better coordinate plans for automation, artificial intelligence, robotics, workforce development and increasingly complex supply networks.
“We recognize that, really, for a healthy manufacturing sector, there are two pillars: technology and talent,” said Dr. Brett Conner, CMO at SME, a nonprofit organization focused on advancing the North American manufacturing industry. The organization did not previously have someone who could oversee both its current manufacturing activities and its future technical and manufacturing needs, he says.
The approach is not limited to one company or industry.
Johnson Controls and Ford Motor Co., for example, have designated chief manufacturing officer roles. McCain Foods has a chief manufacturing and operations officer overseeing manufacturing and supply chain activities globally. Novelis also has established dedicated executive leadership for manufacturing, demonstrating how some manufacturers are elevating production from a plant-level function to an enterprise-level strategic priority.
The responsibilities may vary, but this still reflects a broader shift toward putting manufacturing leadership at the executive level and connecting production with technology, operations and supply chain strategy.
That combination of technology, talent and manufacturing strategy is part of what distinguishes the CMO role from a traditional plant or operations executive. Rather than focusing exclusively on production, a CMO can connect manufacturing with workforce strategy, technology investment, supply chains and broader organizational priorities.
Building the case for a CMO
The potential value of the CMO at the state level became apparent when Connecticut established a cabinet-level position.
Paul Lavoie, vice president for corporate partnerships and innovation and executive director of The Elevation Center at the University of New Haven, served as Connecticut's CMO from 2022-2025.
He said the position was created in response to industry demand. Nine manufacturing associations in the state joined to form the Connecticut Manufacturing Collaborative and lobbied the legislature to establish a cabinet-level position reporting to the governor.
Many of Connecticut’s manufacturers are small businesses. The CMO position provided those companies with a government advocate.
“I had 4,800 customers, meaning that any time a manufacturer called me, they were my customer, and I had to respond to them,” Lavoie said. He viewed his role as serving manufacturing companies across the state, regardless of their size or individual circumstances.
Advocacy is only part of the equation. The CMO can also connect organizations that traditionally operate in silos.
“When you look at either the nonprofit sector or the public sector, I think that the CMO plays an important role in integrating across a government organization, or in our case across a nonprofit, and vertically into the manufacturing industry,” SME’s Conner said. He sees particular value in connecting executives with people closer to manufacturing operations.
In that sense, the CMO may function as a chief collaboration officer as much as a manufacturing executive, linking policymakers, business leaders, technology providers, workforce organizations and operational teams.
The challenges of implementation
However, creating that connective tissue can be difficult, particularly in government.
“Governments are not set up to collaborate,” Lavoie said. He describes the Connecticut position as unusual because effectively serving manufacturers required him to work across multiple agencies and organizations.
That challenge could also explain why the CMO role has yet to become a standard feature of government or corporate leadership teams. Creating the position requires organizations to move beyond existing functional boundaries and determine which decisions and responsibilities should belong to the manufacturing executive.
At the federal level, Conner sees an opportunity for such a role to provide greater coordination.
“The federal government does not have a CMO at this point,” he said, adding that there could be value in having someone “conducting the orchestra” across the federal government to create greater unity of effort in supporting manufacturing.
CMOs in academia can lead universities to increasingly work with industry partners translating research into commercial applications.
Regents Professor of Mechanical Engineering Tom Kurfess said industry recognizes the value of his Georgia Tech students’ and faculties’ ability to help move technologies from research into production. Kurfess said this happens by “taking new technology and scaling it up so that it goes from the laboratory or the bench top up to production operations.” Kurfess is also CMO for the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute.
Kurfess added that government and industry partners prize the institute’s ability to help manufacturers better connect R&D and make products faster, better and at a lower cost.
Does manufacturing need its own C-suite seat?
For manufacturing companies, the question of whether to designate a CMO may ultimately come down to whether their operations are complex enough to warrant an enterprise-level executive.
Tim Gaus, smart manufacturing leader and principal at Deloitte, believes more companies are answering that in the affirmative as they adopt AI and automated manufacturing environments.
He identified three considerations for organizations evaluating whether manufacturing leadership should be elevated:
- Whether the company needs someone to build the right team for its next stage of growth
- Whether its manufacturing network, which may include both insourced and outsourced operations, needs to be managed more strategically
- Whether stronger manufacturing leadership can contribute to a healthier balance sheet
The underlying challenge is productivity. As technology raises expectations for efficiency, simply maintaining existing operations may no longer be sufficient.
“The bar to drive productivity and efficiency gets higher and becomes harder,” Gaus said.
While sources say every manufacturer may not necessarily need another C-suite position, some think the fact that manufacturing increasingly touches enough strategic functions to warrant a single executive view is a central argument to justify the CMO role.
It remains to be seen if more companies will adopt the title. But as manufacturing becomes more technologically sophisticated and strategically important, the question may shift from whether manufacturing deserves a seat at the executive table to what that seat should look like.
According to Gaus, the CMO role is optimal for considering both the technical and the human sides of a business.
“Manufacturing operations is a very people-centric thing,” he said. “This particular role, for all the worry about cost and efficiency and innovation and risk, they also are the ones who are shepherding a lot of the folks who are in this domain space. I think for a CMO to be successful, they need to understand the importance and continue to enhance not just this generation but the next generation of talent.”
