Linda Vasquez of Manufacturing Services in Kennewick holds two circuit boards next to each other and carefully studies them, comparing each tiny filament, wire and weld.

For 32 years, Manufacturing Services has been crafting circuit boards and doing mechanical and electronic assemblies for Mid-Columbia companies like ESTeem Wireless Modems, Bruker Handheld, PNNL and Cadwell Industries.

Manufacturing Services is a small, family-owned company that makes a big contribution to the Mid-Columbia economy.

According to statistics provided by the Washington Department of Revenue, the Gross Business Income of manufacturers in Benton and Franklin counties reached more than $612 million in 2010. In addition, the manufacturing GBI in the counties has doubled since 2006, when it topped $304 million.

And those numbers don’t tell the entire story, said Mike Gowrylow of the Department of Revenue.

“The information is based on manufacturers with a mailing address in (Benton and Franklin counties) – and generally where they are based,” he said. “It will not include businesses that are headquartered somewhere else but may have a facility in these counties.”

Food manufacturing is the largest segment of the manufacturing industry in Benton and Franklin counties, accounting for nearly $265 million in 2010, compared to $97 million in 2006.

But computer and electronic product manufacturing came in second, with those companies collecting more than $116 million in gross business income last year, compared to about $88 million in 2006.

Chemical manufacturing came in third, with $68 million in gross business income last year, compared to about $3.5 million in 2006.

John Vicklund, president of Impact Washington, a nonprofit manufacturing (organization), said manufacturing is a vast industry with many different sectors, so encapsulating information of it as a single broad industry is difficult.

“It covers everything from aerospace to food processing – and each sector is doing differently,” he said.

Vicklund said that during the recession, 2008-2009, many manufacturers “hunkered down,” – holding onto status quo. But according to a survey completed by Impact Washington last fall, the state’s manufacturers seem a little more optimistic.

“Companies have started to look around and say, ‘we see some stability, don’t know that the economy will recover to where it was before but we aren’t going to wait for someone to provide a solution; we are going to see what we can do to grow our biz,’” he said.

Michael Brown, owner of Manufacturing Services, said in 2007, his company had its best year up to that date – but things slumped in 2008 and 2009.

“Customers had inventory and weren’t moving it as fast,” Brown said.

So they weren’t calling as often to order new components.

But the phone started ringing again – in earnest – in 2010.

“From 2009 to 2010, we saw 60 percent growth and beat our previous record by 20 percent,” said Brown, who has added 11 people to his staff since 2007, bringing his total number of employees to 33.

Brown doesn’t expect that kind of growth this year, but he isn’t pessimistic either.

“We could easily grow by 10 percent this year,” he said. “We’ve got a few new smaller accounts.”

Vicklund said the health of the state’s economy ties directly to the health of the state’s manufacturing industry. And his organization is working hard to help small manufacturers grow.

Vicklund said much of that new growth could come from outside the country.

“One of the things we are working hard on right now is helping companies that are domestic suppliers become exporters,” he said.

Vicklund said that nationally only 2 percent of companies export and in Washington, 4 percent of businesses send products overseas.

But Gov. Chris Gregoire wants to increase the number of companies that export by one-third over the next five years. She has tapped Impact Washington to help meet that goal.

“We have received grants to help companies that only sell domestically to help them look at potential markets for their products and see if they can’t align themselves with other markets,” he said. “Our intent is to identify 100 companies this year that don’t currently export and work with them. By the end of the year, we want to have 35 of them exporting.”

For more information, go to www.impactwashington.org.

 While manufacturing is key to a strong U.S. economy, 90 percent of manufacturers are small and midsize companies that seldom have the resources to compete in an increasingly global economy. As a country, helping manufacturign thrive is one of the best investments we can make in our economy. Many people think that with so much of manufacturing moving offshore, the United States has little choice but to transition into a service economy, but Linda Adams of Impact Washington disagrees. “It’s important to fight to keep those manufacturing jobs becasue they are good jobs,” she writes. “The average salary for a worker in manufacturing is about $55,000, compared to $33,000 for the average service worker.”  Read more.

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Small Businesses Look Across Borders to Add Markets
by Paul Davidson, USA Today

Reprinted from April 8, 2011 Edition

Executives at Osagian Canoes of Lebanon, Mo. never thought much about selling their product outside the U.S.  Shipping costs for the 17-foot long alumnium canoes seemed exorbitant. And John Carr, vice president of Osagian’s parent company, Carmeco figured he’d have to learn new languages and worried international sales contracts couldn’t be enforced.  But since attending a workshop last year developed by the Commerce Department, Osagian has opened a small factory in Denmark and exports are on pace to comprise 15% of sales this year.  Read more.

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That’s the overall consensus from Donn Bash, inventory manager at Smith-Root Inc., and other participants of a recent Manufacturers Lean Consortium, funded by the Southwest Washington Workforce Development Council (SWWDC) through a state grant.

The program, a unique 10-day mix of classroom and on-site customized training, featured four participating local manufacturers (Smith-Root, Cadet Manufacturing, CID Bio-science Inc. and Last US Bag Co.) and encompassed a number of topics including: lean manufacturing, computer skills, supervisory training, project management and ISO certification.

Partnering with SWWDC on the consortium was Clark College, Lower Columbia College and Impact Washington, the state Manufacturing Extension Partnership agency. Instruction was provided by Keith McPhun, director of operations for nLight Photonics.

“We had been working with some small businesses that couldn’t afford to do customized training on their own,” explained Bonnie Moore, director of business services for the SWWDC. “Customized training for lean can cost anywhere from $35,000 to $80,000 for a manufacturer. So what we ended up doing was designing a consortium for multiple businesses and then coupled it with a grant, thereby reducing the cost.”

Michelle Giovannozzi, Clark College’s corporate relations manager, said feedback from participating businesses following the consortium has been overwhelmingly positive.

“The learners found the lean training to be a springboard for improvement,” Giovannozzi wrote in an e-mail to the Vancouver Business Journal. “They learned effective, practical principles that are easy to follow and implement in their respective organizations. They also learned that lean principles not only apply to manufacturing processes; they can be employed in administrative environments as well.”

Perhaps the most valuable aspect of the lean training experience, according to the participants, was the fact that they spent two days at each company implementing hands-on projects.

“The proof is in those eight days we spent at other companies,” said Bash. “The results were just amazing. And our management team has been pretty impressed with what they’ve seen. Now they’re planning on having some executive training in lean manufacturing come October. I cannot stress enough how much I enjoyed that class.”

Bash said Smith-Root has been able to reduce its product repair turnaround time from 14-and-a-half calendar days to just eight days — a result he directly attributes to the lean training.

“The results from the two days we spent here at Smith-Root have been tremendously beneficial to our customers,” added Bash.

Will Macia, president of Last US Bag, said his company also witnessed measurable success as a result of the training.

“In one cell, we were able to take about a 23-24 percent reduction in workforce labor per part,” said Macia. “That’s a very measurable statistic of value. And the great thing is we’ve basically rubber stamped that same process and now we’re applying it to each individual cell within the company.”

Macia said lean manufacturing is the only direction his company will continue to move toward at this point, calling it “common sense manufacturing.”

“Lean manufacturing has always been our target and we’ve always practiced it, but never in a formalized way,” Macia explained. “So this training was a wonderful opportunity for us to have experienced leaders to come into our facility and give us hands-on, day-to-day, real world application oat a significantly reduced cost over what we would typically pay a consultancy to do.”

Given the positive feedback from participants, Moore said the SWWDC plans to continue and sustain this lean training model moving forward so that other local businesses can benefit. Unfortunately, Moore said, grant dollars have dried up, so the agency is trying to get creative about how to do it. However, Giovannozzi said Clark College also has access to state and federal funds, so businesses should not hesitate to inquire.

“I would love to see more companies get involved in this sort of thing,” said Bash. “I think it’s very valuable.”

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 29, 2011

MUKILTEO–Impact Washington client, The Bogert Group, was honored at the 2011 National Innovation Conference in Orlando, Florida as a shining example of an American manufacturing success story. A video highlighting the Bogert story, produced by the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP), was introduced at the conference by Roger Kilmer, Director of the MEP, and premiered to over 700 attendees at the conference.

The video tells the story of an American small manufacturer who continues to grow and thrive thanks to continuous innovation practiced throughout the organization. See the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XtJ-wesc2s&feature=feedu.

“Since we started working with Impact Washington and the MEP, our business has grown 10,000%,” said Cathy Bogert, CFO/CIO of The Bogert Group. “With the growth came situations we weren’t familiar with, and Impact Washington’s coaching, mentoring and nationwide network of advisers have proven to be invaluable.”

“The Bogert Group is a great example of what a manufacturer with a culture of innovation can achieve,” said John Vicklund, Impact Washington President. “They have been an ideal client for us because the leadership has adopted the kind of organizational culture that provides a sustained competitive advantage.”

Impact Washington began working with Bogert back in 2005 when they had two employees and worked out of a two-car garage. Today, Bogert has over 25 employees, and their local supply chain helps account for many more jobs in the Tri-Cities. Impact Washington has been an integral partner with Bogert, helping them achieve their growth by providing coaching, resources and services to get them to the next level.

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by Manny Frishberg
April 2009
Seattle Business Magazine

In the Incredible Shrinking Economy, the competition among cities for new business development has reached a fever pitch. Communities of every size are outbidding each other with tax incentives and infrastructure projects to attract new enterprises to their locales.

“There are thousands of U.S. economic development organizations,” says Linda Rotmark, executive director of the Clallam County Economic Development Council in Port Angeles, a picturesque Olympic Peninsula community that has limited highway capacity and no rail link. “We have 999 competitors vying for that business, and I don’t like the odds.” Instead, Rotmark chooses what she calls “economic gardening,” or nurturing home-grown entrepreneurs.

Clallam County already had one of 11 Innovation Partnership Zones in Washington and was in line for a share of $5 million in capital grants from the state’s Community, Trade and Economic Development office to stimulate growth of industry clusters and promote job growth.

But Rotmark says the loans received through the program can only be applied to a joint venture between the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the local community college to develop marine, biotech and coastal assessment and restoration projects.

“What could we do for all the other people that are trying to invent things like the next best apple peeler and the next best survival suit,” asks Rotmark. She found her answer in a program to identify and nurture new businesses from within the community being supported by Washington Manufacturing Services (WMS), an arm of the U.S. Department of Commerce. WMS was established to counter the trend toward manufacturing businesses moving offshore; instead, it helps create and grow hundreds of new manufacturing opportunities here.

Tapping into an existing network of local inventors, Rotmark worked with WMS to recruit about 17 promising entrepreneurs, including Bob Duncan, the inventor of a new kind of cold-water survival gear, and Lynn Langford, a woman in her 70s who developed a disposable funnel that makes it possible for women to urinate standing up. The entrepreneurs were put through a five-step process, which includes a class on how to communicate the benefits of their product and a computer analysis of the idea using a proprietary software tool that scores its commercial viability. WMS President John Vicklund says ideas that the software, called Merwyn, score high have an 88 percent chance of succeeding in the marketplace, far above the average for new businesses in general.

Four of five entrepreneurs in the original group continue to make progress. Two are looking for manufacturers to buy their inventions or with whom to form production partnerships. For example, Langford says that REI has shown an interest in her disposable funnel. She adds that she has spoken with an aide to U.S. Sen. Patty Murray about bringing the device to military procurement officers at the Pentagon, who are interested in supplying them to female soldiers in the field.

“There’re a lot of good reasons for doing this work,” says Rotmark. Entrepreneurs have proven “somewhat recession proof,” she explains, because they see economic adversity as an opportunity to try something new. “Part of it,” she adds, “is that we just have a lot of allegiance to people that live here and want to live here and want to grow a business.”

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January 30, 2009
Puget Sound Business Journal – by John Vicklund and Rep. Maralyn Chase

Washington state is home to some of the greatest innovative minds in the country. We have been recognized as such by the Kauffman Foundation, a private nonpartisan research group, which named us as one of the top five states for innovation. That same foundation that also noted that Washington holds the second most patents per capita.

We shouldn’t be surprised by these facts. Instead we should recognize them as an opportunity to “innovate” ourselves out of the current downward economic spiral. The Legislature is currently considering one way to do that, and they need to move ahead with it.

The process for aiding innovation is a new program called “Washington Grows.” Developed in partnership with Impact Washington and economic development leaders in Clallam County, Washington Grows is a new model for economic “gardening” that takes the natural talent and ideas in our own backyard and turns them into viable commercial opportunities.

For too long Washington has borne the stigma of being the state with the most business startups — and the most business failures. Good ideas are in no short supply here. What has been missing is a proven method for vetting those ideas and then connecting the entrepreneur or small business that owns them with a network of dedicated business professionals who can shepherd them toward commercialization. Washington Grows does just that.

Originally developed in answer to the need for top-line growth with our state’s 7400 manufacturers, Washington Grows was created to assist companies identify new “in-house” products and services. It has now evolved to include ideas not only from existing businesses, but from entrepreneurs and inventors as well. Using a nationally tested business analysis system, ideas are scored, strengths and weaknesses evaluated in terms of their revenue-producing viability, and then translated into a road map that entrepreneurs can use to develop their ideas. Success is enhanced because the road map connects them with professionals who can assist them along the way.

Whether it’s patent protection, market research, business plan development, financing or any other of the many steps businesses require on the road to success, Washington Grows can get them there.

It’s already happening. And in parts of our state that may come as a surprise.

Clallam Economic Development Council hosted the first test of Washington Grows in the summer of 2008. Eighteen entrepreneurs took part in the program, and today there are five ideas that are well on their way to commercialization. One is a biodegradable paper funnel called the Uraid that allows women to urinate while standing. Invented by a 72-year-old great grandmother in Port Angeles, this device has already caught the attention of Sen. Patty Murray, who would like to see six million of them made for our female soldiers overseas.

Another inventor from Port Angeles set a world record with his survival suit, which keeps the human body warm in freezing waters for 25 hours. Today’s survival suits worn by many fishermen in Alaska and off our coast maintain heat for three to five hours. This suit is currently in prototype development. It’s not only on track to become a commercial success, but also undoubtedly will end up saving lives.

Shoreline Chamber of Commerce, Shoreline Community College and the city of Shoreline are working together to bring Washington Grows to their community so that the investors, entrepreneurs and small businesses in the 32nd Legislative District have a place to bring their ideas and realize their dreams. And there are a dozen more economic development organizations across the state that are eager to start this program in their areas today.

Conservative estimates show that with an annual investment of $1 million through IMPACT WASHINGTON over the next 10 years, Washington Grows will enable our state to create $2.84 billion in new revenue, more than 21,000 new good-paying jobs and more than $270 million in additional tax revenue.

Fifty-three percent of all new jobs are created by small business. Washington Grows is a grassroots complement to the existing research and development capability at institutions like Battelle, PNNL, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Washington Technology Center and SIRTI. It represents an opportunity for our state to support and cultivate homegrown entrepreneurs and small businesses and build new opportunities for our future.

We must remember this country was built not on the backs of the government, but instead on the courage and ingenuity of its citizens. We urge the Legislature to support that courage and ingenuity with programs like Washington Grows.

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Download the article here: Lean Healthcare – by Donna Weinstock