Fixing Hickory - CVCC’s New Manufacturing Solutions Center

How to Keep Manufacturing and Business in Catawba County. This presentation was made by Dan St. Louis who is Director of the Center for Emerging Manufacturing Solutions at Catawba Valley Community College.

The Manufacturing Solutions Center grew out of Catawba Valley Community College's Hosiery Center. The Center has a 19 year history in Catawba County and was started from a small grant from Catawba County and the State. Over the last few years, the Hosiery Center was asked to branch off and do things for other industries. They have now formalized that expansionary role. The mission is to help U.S. Manufacturing companies increase sales, create and retain jobs. What they want to do is make things happen. The bottom line is that they are trying to find solutions to industry problems.

The type of things the Center does are Research and Development. It isn't about intellectual property or patents. It is about people being able to facilitate their ideas into making money and hopefully they will be able to employ somebody.

The Center helps analyze new materials to enhance structures and programs. Example: Textiles can be made from recyclable or random materials. Examples were shown such as socks, yarn, and fabric being made from bottles or corn. Dan talked about cotton that can be dyed with no alkali, no salt, and it dyes in 1/3 the time. This is a huge savings. This has been developed by a U.S. company that is committed to keeping this technology here.

The Center wants to create prototypes for new and existing offerings. How do you move items from concept to marketplace? The Center is providing a forum for the roll-out of 21st century technologies, International Marketing and Sales, and Industry advocacy. The Center tests products for reliability and content quality.

The Testing Center employs 18 full-time employees and 17 part-time employees. 240 manufacturers, retailers, and brands from throughout the world utilize the Center's services. They solicit customer interaction and even invite customers in to see how products are tested. They have strict confidentiality agreements with customers to ensure intellectual property and average a "3 day turn" on tests and try to keep it to 5 days.

The Center will be ISO certified ( International Organization for Standardization) this fall. Their customers want that. The Consumer Product Safety Commission says they must be certified in order to be able to testify and do industry advocacy. They began the certification process last May.

The Center doesn't compete with other labs. They actually go to them. What they found is that industry testers were doing things that weren't scientifically correct. The Center has equipment that many manufacturers don't have. Basically the testing lab enables the manufacturers to do what is necessary to maintain quality control of their products by efficient means and at lower costs. Dan said that 10 years ago he wouldn't have bet that there would be a testing lab (at CVCC), but here we are.

Dan stated that much of the testing equipment that is used for textiles can also be used for a whole lot of other stuff. They can do medical compression for medical garments. He stated that they are probably the only lab in the Western Hemisphere that can do this. They do defect, fiber, flammability, and formaldehyde analysis.

The center does microscopy and has one of the finest microscopist (Jill McCann) in the country. They have looked at everything from food to fiber and have even gone into plants to do in-plant quality audits.

As far as training services, the Center works with a lot of partners. They know they can't do everything. They do LINK manufacturing, which involves going in-plant and helping set-up training and implementation. They work with Manufacturing Industrial Partnership, supply chain management, industrial training, and software training. They will do whatever it takes to help companies succeed.

3-D printing and visualizations are types of engineering services provided by the center. They are looking to expand this role, which includes 3-D modeling, which is located at the NC Center for Engineering Technologies. CAD software, rapid prototype, and plant layout are also issues they are dealing with and looking to further expand upon. This partnership with works very well with what they do over there. They also have a modeling machine on CVCC's main campus. They do reverse engineering and have plastics engineers that are creating models that can do small-scale prototype molds that help sell products before developing the full-scale mold. This saves thousands of dollars, which is especially helpful to smaller companies and start-ups.

The Center does a lot of marketing. This helps associated companies to sell their products. "If you don't sell anything, then how do you make money? How can you be successful?" The Center received a grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce three years ago to help do international sales. These grants help businesses to market their products throughout the World. The Center brought together 54 apparel manufacturers to market jointly at the World's largest apparel show, which is held in Las Vegas. The goal was to market "Made in the USA" products. Over $30 million in new sales are directly attributable to joint marketing ventures forged by the Center. The Solutions Center has been working closely with the Industrial Extension Service at NC State, since 1994, to find new ways to market products. Statistical Analysis provided helps to focus the marketing efforts.

As far as Government Procurement, just this past year the State of North Carolina received $9.5 million in new sales directly attributable to to Solutions Center. Close to 50 jobs will be created in the Valdese area, because of this Government Procurement. They have a person that sifts through government needs to see how they can match those needs with what Solution Center customers and partners can supply.

Businesses from throughout the U.S. have started coming to Hickory to visit the Solutions Center and see what services they can provide. The center is getting a good reputation and Dan wants to expand and create jobs based upon this. The vast majority of people who are working at the center have come from manufacturing.

The Center is bottom line results driven. 96% of the Center's customers and partners returned surveys that were issued to them. The surveys show that the Solutions Center created an impact of an increase in sales of $2.8 million, a retention of sales of $1.6 million, cost savings of $274,000, retention of jobs - 75, and creation of jobs - 53. The bottom line is that the Center had an impact of $5.122 million. The Center had a 58 to 1 return on the grant ($399,000) it received from the Department of Commerce based on sales.

The Solutions Center utilizes the NC and U.S. Departments of Commerce to get into places that they can't get into on their own. This helped them contact the Japanese Embassy which helped them go to Japan and sell the "Corn" sock. At that time the Green Economy was not big in the U.S.

Dan stated that, in summary, they are the place where the problems meet the solutions. They exist to do whatever it takes to create and secure jobs. The Center is 60% self-supporting and receives 40% State and Federal funds. Right now the center is spread out and chopped up. They will be moving into the Ryan's Steakhouse building soon and it already looks as though it will be filled up.

The Hound can see that this is the type of Public-Private partnership that gives local businesses a chance to compete. This type of organization has been facilitated long ago in Europe and Asia. It gives innovators a chance to test their wares before going to the public and it gives local industry the ability to have an outside opinion at a reasonable cost. Too bad we didn't have such an organization 20 years ago. Maybe if we had, then our local manufacturing enterprises would have been quicker to modernize and we wouldn't be suffering the economic pain we are today.