Manufacturer’s Edge Announces New Addition to the Board of Directors
Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, the Markle Foundation, and
20 States Launch the Skillful State Network; Introduce Skillful State Playbook
Manufacturer’s Edge Hits $1B 5-Year Milestone
Manufacturer’s Edge Launches a New Series of Workshops Aimed at Bringing Emerging Technologies to Colorado Manufacturers
Small businesses in manufacturing find success with Small Manufacturer’s AdvantEdge Program
Colorado Manufacturing Awards: Checking in with last year’s winners
Colorado SBDC Network Partners with Manufacturer’s Edge to Offer Small Manufacturer’s AdvantEDGE
New Money, New Strategy, New Services
Manufacturer’s Edge Department of Commerce grant the latest win for Colorado manufacturing
Manufacturer’s Edge awarded $1.7M to be NIST MEP center
NIST Awards $26 Million to Support Manufacturing in 10 States
Colorado center for manufacturing lands $1.6 million federal grant
Manufacturer’s Edge Announces New Addition to the Board of Directors
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 10/17/19
Suzan Damron, Vice-President of Accounting, Finance & IT at Birko Corporation joins the non-profit Board of Directors
(Denver, CO) Manufacturer’s Edge, the official Manufacturing Extension Partnership Center for the State of Colorado, is pleased to announce the recent addition of Suzan Damron to the Board of Directors.
Ms. Damron has a wealth of experience in finance, food safety, leadership, and manufacturing. Before relocating to Colorado, Damron spent several years as a business leader in her home state of Illinois. Damron brings a variety of different skills and experiences to the Board and has, over the course of her career, learned to wear many different hats. At one point, she held three roles simultaneously (CFO, COO, and executive management team member) at VIPAR Heavy Duty, Inc.
“My passion lies with helping small- and medium-sized manufacturers, especially family-owned businesses, increase their value,” says Damron. “My 20 years of experience combined with the resources that Manufacturer’s Edge provides, will allow me to take that passion further.”
Read the full press release here
Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, the Markle Foundation, and
20 States Launch the Skillful State Network; Introduce Skillful State Playbook
Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, Zoë Baird, CEO and president of the Markle Foundation, announced that twenty governors are joining together to form the Skillful State Network, a collaboration to transform the U.S. labor market at scale to one that is skills-based, in which people can demonstrate or obtain the skills needed for good digital economy jobs. The Network marks the national expansion of Skillful, a Markle Foundation initiative incubated in Colorado, which leverages data and the very technologies that are disrupting the economy to achieve a skills-based labor market where employers are able to find the talent they need and individuals can continuously acquire new skills and keep up with the pace of change. Founding governors are committed to sharing what works and have made partnership and innovation in workforce development a state priority to enable their residents and local employers to thrive in the digital economy.
Read the full press release here
Manufacturer’s Edge Hits $1B 5-Year Milestone
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 05/30/2018
MANUFACTURER’S EDGE HITS $1B 5-YEAR MILESTONE
Company passes $1 billion in sales impact to Colorado manufacturers since 2012
(Denver, CO) Manufacturer’s Edge CEO Tom Bugnitz announced this week that the company helped small- to mid-sized Colorado manufacturing firms increase and retain $1.04 billion in sales since February 2012. Additionally, Manufacturer’s Edge assistance to manufacturers prompted $325.4 million in plant and IT investment and workforce development, $191.5 million in new product & process investments, and led directly to 4,291 Colorado jobs being created and saved. These numbers are tracked and reported by a third-party company contracted by the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Read the full press release here
Manufacturer’s Edge Launches a New Series of Workshops Aimed at Bringing Emerging Technologies to Colorado Manufacturers
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Manufacturer’s Edge is pleased to introduce the 2018 Technology AdvantEDGE Series – a series of workshops introducing new and emerging technologies that manufacturers can implement into their processes and products. The first event in the Technology AdvantEDGE series will be held on Thursday, March 29 at 9am in Denver.
“Building a Business Case for Additive” is presented in cooperation with GE Additive and is aimed at organizations that are interested in exploring in metal additive manufacturing (AM) and need to quantify the economic opportunity.
The workshop will focus on the ROI that metal additive brings and will equip participants with the knowledge to sell the business case for AM to their leadership.
The session will be led by consultants from AddWorks™, GE Additive’s in-house design consulting group, who helped design the fuel nozzle and Advanced Turboprop (ATP). Both parts are FAA certified and were re-engineered using AM and gained significant weight savings, part count reduction, and better performance. The AddWorks™ team will help attendees understand how to develop an AM mindset from the outset.
“Additive manufacturing is fundamentally changing how manufacturing is done, but what often stops organizations from starting their additive journey is a fear of the unknown and understanding what the payback is going to be,” says Heidi Hostetter, Vice President of Faustson Tool.
Read the full press release here
Small businesses in manufacturing find success with Small Manufacturer’s AdvantEdge Program
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Office of Gov. John Hickenlooper
Office of Economic Development & International Trade
Emily Williams, 303-892-3847
emily.williams@state.co.us
DENVER – Thurs. Nov. 9, 2017 – Small Manufacturer’s AdvantEdge (SMA), a program designed to assist small businesses in Colorado’s manufacturing industry, has seen great success in its initial two years of programming. Economic development numbers released this week show that companies who have participated in the program have not only increased sales but also created and retained jobs as well.
More than 115 companies across the state have applied to the program which provides direct assistance in the form of consulting and training expertise to small manufacturing companies in Colorado. Sixty-five of these companies have been accepted into the program and have received some type of development assistance.
To date, participating SMA companies report more than $1.5 million in increased company sales, 85 jobs created, 43 jobs retained, and over $5.5 million in capital formation.
This economic development strategy is a first of its kind partnership in the nation, leveraging expertise from various entities across the State including the Small Business Development Center Network, Manufacturer’s Edge, World Trade Center Denver, and the Procurement and Technical Assistance Center.
Read the full press release from the Office of Gov. John Hickenlooper
Colorado Manufacturing Awards: Checking in with last year’s winners
By Tom Bugnitz, CEO Manufacturer’s Edge
Last year’s first-ever Colorado Manufacturing Awards was an important step in acknowledging the contributions of manufacturing and supply-chain companies to the regional economy. Manufacturer’s Edge is pleased to be a co-presenter of the awards.
As we continue receive nominations for the 2017 CMAs (nominate a company here), it’s important we stay connected to past winners, to the alumni who continue to shape regional manufacturing even as we recognize a new crop of finalists and winners.
We’ll provide weekly updates from last year’s winners in the run-up to the event.
Electronics & Aerospace: Modular Robotics
After manufacturing its robot-building blocks in Boulder for five years, Modular Robotics took a hard look at its operations and started manufacturing overseas in 2016. “For a while, we’ve been running parallel facilities — one in Boulder and one in China,” says CEO and Design Director Eric Schweikardt. “We’re able to get much better quality and much reduced costs.”
Schweikardt says the company made the move for several reasons, chiefly the “agility” to deal with sales spikes during the winter holiday season. “Having capacity to manufacture all year and deliver at the end of the year is prohibitive to us,” he says. “We’ve been fighting the good fight and manufacturing in Boulder for five years, but all of our competitors manufacture in China.”
In late 2015, about 100 workers assembled Cubelets in Boulder. That number dipped to 36 in late 2016 and about a dozen as of early 2017. But sales are up, and “more critical for us [are increases] in margin and profitability,” adds Schweikardt. “We’ve been selling a bit more internationally. We are selling more into large school districts — many $100,000-plus orders.”
With parallel computing coming into vogue, there’s a broader need for educational tools like Cubelets, which students can program with the newly released Blockly platform. “Cubelets are decentralized and parallel — lots of different little brains,” explains Schweikardt. “They’re a great model for many of the things we see in the world.” (…)
Read the full article at CompanyWeek.com
Colorado SBDC Network Partners with Manufacturer’s Edge to Offer Small Manufacturer’s AdvantEDGE
Denver – Nov. 8, 2016 – The Colorado Small Business Development Center (SBDC) Network announced today they are partnering with Manufacturer’s Edge along with the Denver World Trade Center and the Colorado Procurement Technical Assistance Centers (PTACs) to make the pilot program Small Manufacturer’s AdvantEDGE official with the goal of strengthening and growing Colorado’s manufacturing industry.
Carroll Thomas, director of the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Kelly Manning, director of the SBDC Network and Tom Bugnitz, CEO of Manufacturer’s Edge signed a memorandum of understanding making the Small Manufacturer’s AdvantEDGE program official at the Economic Development Council of Colorado annual conference in October.
“We were seeing a gap in resources available to manufacturing companies, specifically small manufacturing companies not being able to access adequate resources to help them grow and succeed,” said Manning. “Being able to bring them the resources offered by the MEP is extremely advantageous to the companies, local communities, and the state as a whole.”
The Small Manufacturer’s AdvantEDGE program leverages state and federal funding, along with a small contribution from the manufacturer, to provide industry experts for coaching, consultation, and/or training for small manufacturing companies, with fewer than 20 employees.
Participant companies receive up to 40-hours of support and education in the areas of business strategy, search-engine optimization, advanced marketing analysis, operational excellence, export gap assessment and compliance, quality systems and certifications. The program is customized to the needs of the individual manufacturer and can support a manufacturer from concept through maturity.
Since the pilot program was launched in March 2016, over 50 companies from across the state have applied and 34 are actively involved and receiving assistance from the program.
“I am excited to commemorate this partnership as Colorado is the first state to foster such a relationship. Our hope is that other states will see the value this brings to small manufacturing companies, local communities, and the state’s economy and will follow this lead with innovative programs such as these,” said Thomas.
Read the full press release here
New Money, New Strategy, New Services
By Tom Bugnitz, CEO Manufacturer’s Edge
We thought that, with our new award to continue as the Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partner starting on July 1, it might be a good time to talk in general about the strategies and goals of the MEP system in general and Manufacturer’s Edge in particular.
But first, let’s talk about money. Previously, the MEP system funded Manufacturer’s Edge up to $665,201 per year, subject to our matching that amount with twice that, or $1,330,402. Said another way, the MEP system didn’t give us money as a grant; they gave us $1 every time we came up with $2. Our challenge was to find those $2, and we did that by selling consulting and training services to manufacturers in Colorado. (In some states, state funding is used for the match. In others, larger institutions house the MEP center, and provide the match directly.)
Starting July 1, the yearly amount will increase to $1,655,389. People are wondering, what will we be doing with all of that money? Again, that’s the cap. We still need to come up with a match, but it is easier for the next three years…we only need to come up with $1 to get a matching $1 from MEP. So again, what are we going to do with all of that extra money?
What we will do is driven by the new MEP Strategic Plan, our guiding principles for the next three years. The stated mission of the MEP system nationwide is simple: enhance the productivity and technical performance of US manufacturing. Our role, as defined by MEP, is to “facilitate and accelerate the transfer of manufacturing technology in partnership with industry, universities and educational institutions, state governments, and NIST and other federal research laboratories and agencies.”
Gulp. That’s a handful, and a mouthful, and something that sounds like a lot of fun. Especially in Colorado, with the wealth of labs and university resources at our disposal.
But operationally, we have to engage manufacturers on the ground, in Colorado. MEP has guidance there as well, in a set of four strategic goals:
- Enhance the competitiveness of U.S. manufacturers, with particular focus on small and medium-sized companies.
- Support national, state, and regional manufacturing ecosystems and partnerships.
- Develop MEP’s capabilities as a learning organization and high performance system.
- Serve as a voice to and a voice for manufacturing and manufacturers in engaging policy makers, stakeholders, and clients.
Read the full article here
Manufacturer’s Edge Department of Commerce grant the latest win for Colorado manufacturing
“Last week, Colorado Senator Michael Bennet announced that Manufacturer’s Edge (formerly Colorado Association of Manufacturing and Technology) is the recipient of a five-year, $8.34 million grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s (DOC) National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). As Bennet’s release outlined, “Manufacturer’s Edge was one of 10 state MEP centers selected for funding in a nationwide competition. NIST awarded a total of $130 million in funding to help MEP centers increase their services and customer base. The new cooperative agreements are for five years, subject to availability of funding and successful annual reviews…”
Read the full article here
Manufacturer’s Edge awarded $1.7M to be NIST MEP center
“Manufacturer’s Edge, a statewide manufacturing assistance center based in Boulder, on Tuesday was awarded an increased contract worth nearly $1.7 million annually from the National Institute of Standards and Technology to continue to serve as the Manufacturing Extension Partnership center for Colorado.
Manufacturer’s Edge, formerly the Colorado Association of Manufacturing and Technology, has satellite offices in various cities throughout the state, including Fort Collins and Denver. The public-private partnership provides consulting, education services and training to help strengthen manufacturing in the state…”
Read the full article here
NIST Awards $26 Million to Support Manufacturing in 10 States
“GAITHERSBURG, Md.—The U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) today announced the award of new cooperative agreements to 10 nonprofit organizations and universities to manage Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) centers. NIST’s MEP program helps small- and mid-size manufacturers create and retain jobs, increase profits and save time and money. In an open competition, the existing MEP centers in Colorado, Connecticut, Indiana, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia, were selected to receive a total of $26 million in federal funding, an increase of about $10 million or nearly 60 percent. The funding will allow the centers to reach new customers and offer new services.
“We are excited to award new agreements that bring increased funding levels to better meet the needs of manufacturers in these 10 states,” said Acting Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and Acting NIST Director Willie May. “These awards will allow the centers to help more manufacturers reach their goals in growth and innovation, which will have a positive impact on both their communities and the U.S. economy…”
Read the full article here
Colorado center for manufacturing lands $1.6 million federal grant
“Manufacturer’s Edge, a program that helps small and midsize manufacturing companies in Colorado stay in business, will get a $1,668,359 grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
Manufacturer’s Edge (formerly known as the Colorado Association for Manufacturing and Technology) is a statewide manufacturing assistance center, partially funded by the NIST Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP)…”
Read the full article here
