Michigan Manufacturing:Growing Again

Manufacturing grows again in Michigan. A Grand Rapids-based group is looking at more than $5 million in capital equipment investment and plans to hire 56 people over the next year, all of whom will make, on average, better than $29 a hour.

Knoxville, Tennessee’s loss is Grand Rapids, Michigan’s gain. Hot Stamp Tooling Systems (HTS), which is managed in Grand Rapids, but manufactures in Knoxville, is going to move a new production line to Grand Rapids instead of expanding in Tennessee.

HTS builds hot-form stamping die sets for the auto industry and is one of several companies affiliated with Tooling Systems Group, a family of mold and die stamping, tooling, assembly system, machinery sales and contract machining companies.

According to paperwork filed at Grand Rapids City Hall, HTS will be investing close to $5 million in capital equipment for its new line in Grand Rapids. That includes a 1,000-ton hydraulic stamping press, two industrial ovens, and a robot to move materials from the ovens to the press.

This means HTS will have to hire ten people and will move 68 jobs from Knoxville to Grand Rapids with an average wage of more than $28 an hour.

The Grand Rapids City Commission has already approved an Industrial Facilities Exemption Certificate for that project along with expansions at four other manufacturing operations that fall under the Tooling Systems umbrella.

Advanced Tooling Systems (ATS), the flagship company of the Tooling Systems Group, will be investing in $500,000 in new equipment over the next year and hiring 10 people who will be making an average wage of $29.59 an hour. ATS designs, builds, re-engineers, and services medium to large-sized sheet metal stamping dies and tooling systems. 

Yet another company that is part of the Tooling Systems Group on the northeast side of Grand Rapids is also expanding. Concept Tooling Systems, a designer and engineer of small- to large-progressive, transfer and line sheet metal stamping dies, is planning a $50,000 expansion. As a result, 5 more people will be added to the company’s 34-person payroll.  The average starting wage is $33.34 an hour.

One more hiring plan: Ultimate Gaging Systems, another of the Tooling Systems Group companies, is going to be hiring 12 people over the next year.

By end of their meeting Nov. 13, 2012; Grand Rapids city commissioners are expected to ask the Michigan Strategic Fund to put all of that into a Tool and Die Recovery Zone. State officials will look at that request later this week, Nov. 16, 2012.

The news that a company is going to invest more than $5 million—a relatively small amount when you compare it to the giants of manufacturing, and hire fewer than four dozen people might not seem like much to you.

But you have to look at this as another small step in the journey of bringing Michigan manufacturing back and think about this: Tooling Systems Group would not be growing if its customers up the supply chain were not also doing better.

This is the Manufacturing Renaissance, and I will have more on that in my next book, scheduled to be published before the end of the year.

Last Chance Mile: The Reinvention of an American Community is now available in hardcover, paperback, or e-book formats at all of your favorite online retailers including Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Abbott Press.  Or you can ask your favorite bookseller to order a copy for you.

Of course you can also click the Buy Now button at the top of this page.

To find out more about Last Chance Mile and sample some chapters,  please visit www.rodkackley.com.

Grand Rapids Manufacturer Ready To Grow

Manufacturing is back. Factories are expanding, adding equipment, hiring workers.

Here is one of the latest examples. Pridgeon and Clay Inc., an independent value-added manufacturer and supplier of stamped and fine blanked components that feels good enough about the economy to make a $4.8 million investment in its future.

The Grand Rapids-based company is adding four weld cells, one CNC machining center and a large press to increase production capabilities, along with hiring 16 new employees with an average hourly wage of more than $16 an hour. At least that is the plan submitted to Grand Rapids City officials along with a request for a P.A. 198 12-year industrial tax exemption.

Good news, right?

How good is it going to get? Will we see the kind of manufacturing employment that built Michigan after World War Two? It may never be the way it once was in Michigan. Maybe that is for the best. That is yet to be decided. However we can see that Michigan’s economy is more diversified now than 20 or even ten years ago. There was no choice.

We will explore those subjects, along with telling the stories of the people who are at the heart of this economic rebirth in Last Chance Mile: The Reinvention of Manufacturing, an e-book that will be released in June 2012.

Rod

Last Chance Mile: The Reinvention of Manufacturing will tell the story of the reinvention of manufacturing in Michigan. The dynamo that powered the state's economy for five decades is back in a big way. However, this rebirth did not occur easily and it is not finished.

Last Chance Mile: The Reinvention of Manufacturing will tell the stories of the people behind the reinvention of this economic powerhouse. We will meet the people who are teaching new skills, the people learning new skills, the people who are reinventing manufacturing in Michigan.

Last Chance Mile: The Reinvention of Manufacturing will also warn of the dangers inherent in any reinvention. Often there are unintended consequences. Sometimes it just doesn't work. There will be failures along the way. We will also look at those.

Last Chance Mile: The Reinvention of Manufacturing. Lets begin with a taste of Chapter One:

The middle class was crushed by the collapse of manufacturing in Michigan. The home of the Detroit Three –General Motors, Ford and Chrysler—was not alone. A Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings study released in June 2011 showed that “between 2000 and 2010, the United States lost more than 5 million manufacturing jobs, amounting to nearly one-third of its manufacturing employment.” That is 5 million people who formed the backbone of the Middle Class in the U.S. who, at least for a short time, didn’t know where their next paycheck would be coming from.

The auto industry’s collapse in Detroit did more than just ripple out to the other communities of Michigan. It hit with the force of a tsunami. The Michigan auto industry is an interconnected network of three tiers of suppliers ranging from companies with thousands of employees to the Mom and Pop, brother and sister tool and die shops run and staffed by families who were expecting that the generations to follow would stay on that path.

The collapse of auto manufacturing in Detroit brought them all down.

The assembly lines that produced the vehicles America and the world depended on in the first decades of the 21st century were not the only production venues slowed and the people who staffed those lines were not the only Michigan residents thrown out of work. The cooks and waitresses at the restaurants where those assembly line workers took their meals lost their jobs too. So did grocery clerks and cashiers. Property values crashed. State tax revenue fell. Teachers, police officers, firefighters and many of the government workers who we depend on --but at the same time take for granted-- were next in the unemployment line.

The same Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings June 2011 study that documented the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs also showed that the “Grand Rapids, Mich. region outperformed the national economy on job creation in eight of 10 major industry groups” from 1980-2005. However the end was near. From 2000-2005, the Grand Rapids region lost 18.5 percent of its manufacturing jobs.

We never imagined it could get this bad.


Stay with me. More installments of Last Chance Mile: The Reinvention of Manufacturing will be coming as a preview of the ebook that will be released in June 2012.

Rod