Here’s the second wave of finalists for the 2020 Colorado Manufacturing Awards

As Denver flashed its diversified manufacturing economy in the first wave of CMA finalists announced last week, a Colorado Springs-based contingent emerges in this second group of industry finalists, even as Northern Colorado continues to make its case as the the most growth-oriented manufacturing community in Colorado.

Colorado Springs’ Titan Robotics and Montrose’s Mayfly Outdoors lead an innovative group in contention for the inaugural Advanced Manufacturing and Machining Award, racking up the most points in a two-round assessment of machining and operational acumen.

The state’s bioscience industry is often a quiet contributor to regional manufacturing, yet finalists in the Bioscience/Medical CMA speak loudly as one of the strongest finalist contingents in the 2020 Awards. Molecular Products, a Bioscience finalist, also contributes Angie Hellstern, one of four women selected among nominations in the Outstanding Woman in Manufacturing category, sponsored by the Colorado chapter of Women in Manufacturing.

Throw a dart at a map to locate any of a hundred quality brewers or distillers that dot the state. Colorado’s craft beverage stalwarts are among the new power players in America’s beer and spirits market — and continue to innovate to the delight of a growing number of consumers. Change agents, indeed.

Finally, Colorado’s major cannabis manufacturers and brands are leaders in the emerging national industry, and finalists in the second annual Cannabis Manufacturer of the Year award carry an even heavier industry load. Finalists this year documented progress in achieving safer, more professional operations through key certifications and audits, crucial for a sector still fighting for legitimacy — and trust.

2020 Colorado Manufacturing Awards Finalists


Outstanding Woman in Manufacturing, with Women in Manufacturing’s Colorado chapter

Debra Wilcox, The 3D Printing Store

Heidi Hostetter, Faustson Tool / H2

Susan Frank, TEI Rock Drills

Angie Hellstern, Molecular Products


Outstanding Bioscience Manufacturer

Leiters, Englewood

MBio Diagnostics, Boulder

Molecular Products, Louisville


Outstanding Cannabis Manufacturer

Medically Correct, Denver

Stillwater Brands, Denver

Hemp Depot, Colorado Springs


Outstanding Craft Distiller

Mythology Distillery, Denver

Storm King Distilling Co., Montrose

Dry Land Distillers, Longmont


Advanced Manufacturing & Machining Award

Columbine Label Co., Centennial

Mayfly Outdoors, Montrose

Titan Robotics, Colorado Springs

StickerGiant, Longmont


Outstanding Craft Brewer

Goat Patch Brewing Company, Colorado Springs

High Hops Brewery, Windsor

Dry Dock Brewing Co., Aurora

Bart Taylor is publisher of CompanyWeek. Reach him at btaylor@companyweek.com.

Register here to attend the fifth annual Colorado Manufacturing Awards April 2, 5-8 p.m., as winners are announced at a gala reception and program.


Here’s the first group:

Outstanding Food Brand/Copacker

Ready Foods, Denver

American Outdoor Products, Boulder

Honey Smoked Fish Holdings, Denver


Innovative Product — Design-to-Manufacture

Eldon James/WilMarc, Fort Collins

Guerrilla Gravity, Denver

TEI Rock Drills, Montrose


Outstanding Consumer Brand

Black Hound Design Company, Arvada

Meier Skis, Denver

Parasoleil, Westminster


Aerospace Manufacturer of the Year

Barber-Nichols, Arvada

AdamWorks, Centennial

Roccor, Longmont


Outstanding Energy & Environmental Manufacturer

VAIREX air systems, Boulder

Agri-Inject, Yuma

Segrity, Denver


Winery of the Year

Carboy Winery, Littleton

The Storm Cellar, Hotchkiss

Buckel Family Wine, Gunnison


Building & Construction Manufacturer of the Year

RK, Denver

Tharp Cabinets, Loveland

CeDUR, Aurora


Industrial/Equipment Manufacturer of the Year

TEI Rock Drills, Montrose

Right Stuff Equipment, Denver

Panther Industries, Highlands Ranch

U.S. manufacturing, the road less traveled, beckons for Outdoor Industry’s reluctant brands

Among America’s growth industries, none seem to value the importance of company culture more than the Outdoor Industry. OI companies and the trade groups that support them — including the Outdoor Industry Association, its powerful national mouthpiece — are today leaders in sustainability, climate and environmental awareness, diversity, employee empowerment and other progressive values. It’s commendable stuff.

Yet a challenge for many OI companies is ensuring these admirable tenets extend across supply chains that stretch from here to Asia. Most domestic OI companies make things, and most of them make things offshore. Materials, labor, expertise — the industry’s manufacturing supply chain — have largely been offshored.

OI brands have become master supply-chain managers, if not domestic manufacturers. In the best cases, owners and operators have developed relationships with offshore factories that extend a brand’s core values, manifest in how materials are sourced, products are made, and employees are managed.

But let’s be real. Qualities that define a company can be lost along the way, stopped cold by distance, the vastness of the Asian production ecosystem, and cultural differences. More, supply chains stretching from here to Asia are highly unsustainable compared to a domestic counterpart. And the machinations of designing and prototyping products locally, only to marry them up with an overseas factory to refine the prototype and manufacture, present ongoing challenges.

Yes, factories in Asia are modern and efficient: how else to explain the fantastic products and high level of quality emanating from most American OI brands? And many companies manage, over time, to find production partners that become reasonable extensions of the U.S. company they build for. (For an example, read our Krimson Klover feature from last week.)

But they’re Asian companies! OI’s investment in Chinese human capital and infrastructure alone, is staggering. That U.S. corporations aren’t making those investments in the U.S. manufacturing commons is the irreconcilable piece of the brand extension game. It’s also the most underreported story in the outdoor industry.

It’s easy to understand why: The biggest and most outspoken brands in the outdoor world are investing millions in materials, workforce development, technology, and machinery in Asia. It’s not a story that VF Corporation’s PR team is rushing to get published.

The Industry’s trade groups follow along. Protecting public lands in Utah was a priority for OIA. Adding substantial manufacturing and production content to the educational track of Outdoor Retailer? Not so much. Developing a 21st-century U.S. production ecosystem doesn’t seem a priority for its largest sponsors and stakeholders. It would shine light on an issue that OI leadership would prefer remain behind the Asian production wall.

This then, is OI’s crossroads as the decade begins. Yes, brands like Patagonia, Under Armour, even Nike, are investing in U.S. factories. It’s not enough. Until domestic production is a central part of the industry ethos, OI companies will continue to manage bifurcated organizations where the brand promises a company lives by matter to only parts of the business.

It’s no less than an existential decision, a “Boeing moment”. Last year, The Atlantic‘s Jerry Useem summed up Boeing’s current crisis by citing a single event: the decision in May of 2001 to move of 500 executives to Chicago away from 30,000 engineers in Washington. “The present 737 Max disaster can be traced back,” Useem said, “to the moment Boeing’s leadership decided to divorce itself from the firm’s own culture.”

Today, some OI companies have divorced themselves from the culture their customers value. In 2020, we’ll focus a lens on companies choosing the road often less traveled; companies working hard to ensure that brand promises are best kept by shortening a supply chain, by investing in local talent and local entrepreneurs.

It’s the least we can do to advance their cause, and that of American manufacturing. Today they’re one and the same.

Bart Taylor is publisher of CompanyWeek. Reach him at btaylor@companyweek.com.

Special Report: California manufacturing employment on a razor’s edge

Eight years of employment growth brings the future of California manufacturing into focus.

California manufacturers are writing the next chapter in a storied century that’s already, in 20 short years, been a blockbuster tale of bust to boom to high anxiety.

Consider a recent report that documents “that since 2001, when China joined the World Trade Organization, to 2018, the Golden State lost 654,100 jobs to the Asian nation, about double the next highest state loss, Texas’ 334,800 jobs.”

It’s a staggering number, but consider that in the same period, total manufacturing employment in California fell from 1,779,000 to 1,320,000, or about 459,000 jobs. California lost more manufacturing jobs to China than it did total jobs during the same period.

That’s largely because California manufacturing has made a comeback, adding manufacturing jobs every year this decade save one after bottoming out in 2010, with net job growth of 1.16 percent the past five years, 1 percent three-year, and 1.27 percent one-year (ending 2018; 2019 final numbers are forecast to remain flat). Today, manufacturing totals 1.32 million jobs in the state.

But as we report every week, manufacturing ebbs and flows through 20+ industries.

Here’s how manufacturing employment data looks over the past 10 years, by industry, ranked by growth (source: Bureau of Labor Statistics):

Employment in only five of 21 industries showed net gains the past 10 years — and it’s modest growth at that:

  1. Beverage Mfg: 3.66%
  2. Food Mfg.: .57%
  3. Electrical Equipment Mfg.: .49%
  4. Transportation Equipment: .32%
  5. Chemical Mfg.: .08%

Growth picked up as the decade progressed. Here’s an industry breakdown with a focus on five-year employment trends:


And here are the numbers sorted by year-over-year growth, 2017 to 2018. Growth industries outnumbering laggards as the decade begins:


Yet the new decade is already notable for a significant headwind that many believe have stopped the manufacturing comeback in its tracks. The tariff war, by objective measurements, has hit manufacturing hard. Quarterly data points to net job losses in the U.S. for the first time in eight years.

California will add manufacturing jobs for the ninth year in the past 10. But the more compelling takeaway from a decade of employment data, is the emergence of a powerful new industry mix reshaping California manufacturing. And despite the pervasive gloom that again seems to have descended on U.S. manufacturing, the mix here and in other states seems poised to drive more growth across America’s domestic manufacturing footprint.

Consider the big growth industries:

  • An inspired new food sector, already one of California’s largest manufacturing industries, is flush with innovation from small and middle-market brands. Growth is statewide, fueled by a global-leading agricultural engine.
  • The same is true of the state’s beverage juggernaut. Change agents in brewing have tipped the balance of power to small-and-middle market brands. Here and across the West, craft makers have won, big beverage has lost — good news for states that have nurtured craft industries. Here, the craft beverage industry has grown to stand side-by-side the state’s spectacular wine industry.
  • California is also very-well positioned in legacy industries turning to advanced machining, automation, and robotics — like aerospace and aviation, automotive including EV OEMs, and other transportation-related sectors emerging in L.A. and other locales. San Diego’s impressive bioscience cluster is another. Companies like Westlake Villages’ inVia Robotics, profiled this week, are fueling industrial change.
  • The state is very capable of competing for new domestic jobs in other promising industries like computers and electronics, to the extent that U.S. brands are reconsidering domestic options. Trends certainly point to a sustained reengineering of offshore supply chains. U.S. companies were reevaluating China before the coronavirus. The trend may accelerate.

In sum, California is well-positioned for growth in the industries that promise to reshape U.S. manufacturing; to capture a higher percentage of the domestic jobs that do materialize in the 2020’s. For every job lost in apparel manufacturing, others are materializing across the region. Will they materialize here? .

Bart Taylor is publisher of CompanyWeek. Reach him at btaylor@companyweek.com.

After 10 years of expansion, is U.S. (and Colorado) manufacturing’s improbable comeback story finally over?

The answer is no, the party’s not over. But as we begin the decade, I think factors have aligned to create some stiff barriers. Manufacturing will have to work harder for its gains.

Here’s why 2020 is shaping up to be a tough year:

A trade deal will still leave manufacturing investment lacking

Last week’s report from the Federal Reserve confirmed that tariffs have been a net drag on manufacturing.

As positive a new new deal will be for some, like U.S. farmers, it still leaves us where we were before, lacking a grand strategy to rebuild American manufacturing. Until manufacturers have more options and incentive to make things here, and consumers and businesses are rewarded for buying products made in America where they wouldn’t have before, a China deal alone won’t change manufacturing’s prospects.

America needs an enhanced manufacturing supply chain. We’re focused on the wrong tactics.

Cutting the corporate tax rate emboldened manufacturers, sort of. What’s left in the quiver?

President Trump’s most decisive move in support of manufacturing was cutting the corporate tax rate. But it’s unclear whether enthusiasm for improved balance sheets and stock prices has translated into investments in long-term competitiveness.

Consumers are powering this phase of the expansion. Business needs to do its part. But new trade and monetary tactics that would inspire confidence the way tax relief did, don’t seem to be on the horizon.

Besides, manufacturers and farmers want a fair playing field and the tools to compete, not handouts.

Manufacturing’s vision vacuum

Who’s providing a compelling vision for manufacturing’s next phase?

It would be reassuring if we could agree on what constitutes success and failure. We can’t. Each year the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University publishes an annual Manufacturing Scorecard, and each year, as we’ve reported, the Report rewards states with high per-capita manufacturing employment. That’s not a measure of prosperity.

Ball State’s home state of Indiana received an A for overall health (as it does every year), despite losing nearly 6,000 manufacturing jobs year-over-year for the first time since 2009.

Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb pointed to a changing economy. “Older manufacturing jobs are becoming advanced manufacturing jobs . . . but also where we’re excelling is we’re attracting more life sciences and more high tech, more IT jobs,” Holcomb said. Huh?

Manufacturing’s future indeed lies in technology — but also in industries powering net job growth in other states. Jobs lost to automation are being replaced with jobs from manufacturing’s new industry mix. As his state earns the nation’s highest manufacturing grade every year, the governor should have an airtight explanation as to why that’s not happening in Indiana.

Manufacturing’s leadership vacuum

As China pursues its national manufacturing and industrial strategy — Made in China 2025 — manufacturers in the U.S. are left to assemble workable supply chains wherever they can find them.

The tactics to rehabilitate American manufacturing aren’t a mystery. States and regions must be cognizant of those industries suited to place and people; manufacturers must be transparent about what they do and who they work with to fuel collaboration and new domestic orders; and policymakers must develop a toolbox of incentives that keep companies and jobs home. Punishing companies for finding the shortest path to raw materials, cost-effective services, and skilled labor isn’t an answer. Developing them here is.

Who will be manufacturing’s champions in 2020? By year’s end, we’ll need every one.

Bart Taylor is publisher of CompanyWeek. Reach him at btaylor@companyweek.com.

California’s golden mix of manufacturing industries bodes well for the future

As CompanyWeek Editor Eric Peterson recaps some of the standout manufacturing companies featured in 2019, it’s also a good time to look forward. Much has been made recently about U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) employment data. We summarized Colorado’s numbers here.

What to make of California’s 2018 and 2019 data, but more importantly, the BLS forecast that after 2020, U.S. manufacturing employment will begin a prolonged swoon? What’s in California’s future?

Any manufacturing employment conversation today is two-sided: positive with respect to the sector’s current 10-year national expansion, yet bookended by a loss of four million manufacturing jobs during the Great Recession and a forecast by BLS actuaries who believe employment will fall from 13 million or so jobs in 2020 to 12 million in 2028.

It’s easy to find voices to argue both sides of the story in California. Skeptics cite California’s rich technology ecosystem as a priority, or the impact of automation on future manufacturing job growth. A small but vocal faction might argue that manufacturing is incompatible with a “modern” economy.

Indeed, a recent study suggests California enjoys a commanding position in technology, with three of the top five cities in a cabal that essentially controls America’s high-tech economy:

Just five metropolitan areas—Boston; San Diego; San Francisco; Seattle; and San Jose, Calif.—accounted for 90% of all U.S. high-tech job growth between 2005 to 2017, according to the research by think-tank scholars Mark Muro and Jacob Whiton of the Brookings Institution and Rob Atkinson of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

Not surprisingly, we’ll argue the opposite.

Here are California’s top five manufacturing industry employers (final numbers 2018):

  1. Computer and electronic product manufacturing 278,514 employees
  2. Food 160,350
  3. Fabricated metal product manufacturing 132,731
  4. Transportation equipment manufacturing 126,557
  5. Chemical manufacturing 80,469

Machinery manufacturing is a close sixth, with 77,197 employees.

Why are these numbers positive?

  • Three of the top five are trending up (year over year, 2017-2018): computer and electronic product manufacturing, +2.4 percent; transportation equipment manufacturing, +13 percent; and fabricated metal product manufacturing, +2.4 percent.
  • Food is down less than a percent, but the trend in food is smaller, more agile and innovative companies. It’s easy to surmise that California’s in an envious position given the state’s world-class agricultural sector and dynamic entrepreneurial food (and beverage) ecosystem.
  • Industry mix means everything in today’s manufacturing sector. The same week that many Western cities with highly diverse sectors realized high-water marks for manufacturing employment, officials in Pittsburgh were facing the stark reality that manufacturing employment had reached an all-time low as a percent of the regional labor force. An ideal mix in 2020 tracks to California’s combination of technology-informed manufacturing (e.g. computer and electronic product manufacturing, transportation equipment including EVs, aerospace and aviation, etc.); food and beverage; chemical manufacturing; and high-potential manufacturing industries’ sectors like cannabis, the outdoor industry, and other consumer sectors searching collectively for a path back onshore.

Other data points to a hyperactive California sector. CMTA, the California Manufacturers and Technology Association, notes that “a third of California’s current 1.6 million job openings are in manufacturing industries sectors.” As tough as it is for companies to find qualified employees, it’s clear that today, manufacturing is a job creator in California.

As we turn the page on a successful year in manufacturing, our focus on Californian companies changing the narrative is unchanged, only heightened. We begin 2020 with a yearlong quest to find the “10 Most Influential Manufacturers” in California.

Have a company in mind? Email me to get the 2020 underway.

Bart Taylor is publisher of CompanyWeek. Reach him at btaylor@companyweek.com.

Five Colorado manufacturing storylines for 2020

As we look back this week at a great 2019, it’s also time to forecast the storylines shaping 2020 manufacturing in Colorado and the region.

1. Food’s undersized brand gets a lift

Before publishing last week’s manufacturing employment report, I asked a handful of respected manufacturing executives and development officials to name Colorado’s largest manufacturing industry employer. One got it right.

Colorado’s food sector may be underappreciated, but its success can’t be taken for granted. For example world-class growers along the Arkansas River plains, in verdant Western Slope enclaves, and emerging cannabis plays across the state would benefit from a more cohesive and robust production ecosystem and supply chain widely available along the Front Range.

Developing a Colorado food brand that fuels interest and collaboration statewide seems a priority. Do we even know how to do that?

2. Technology’s oversized reputation gets an overhaul

Here’s a stunning factoid from the Wall Street Journal about the U.S. technology sector that also puts Colorado’s manufacturing opportunity in perspective.

Just five metropolitan areas—Boston; San Diego; San Francisco; Seattle; and San Jose, Calif.—accounted for 90% of all U.S. high-tech job growth between 2005 to 2017, according to the research by think-tank scholars Mark Muro and Jacob Whiton of the Brookings Institution and Rob Atkinson of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

The report also mentions technology’s next tier. No Colorado city is part of that group, either. Boise, Idaho; Provo, Utah; and Madison, Wisconsin, are, and while they may be up and coming tech outposts, they sure ain’t Denver when it comes to overall economic heft.

Colorado’s tech ecosystem may be worth the considerable hype and attention we seem to shower on it. But tech-informed manufacturing is a blue ocean opportunity that technology isn’t. Ergo:

3. Will Colorado’s global manufacturing brands engage more locally?

Big companies comprise a small percentage of manufacturing here, but also lead the industry in technology and automation. But for every Woodward, RK, and OtterBox, big manufacturers investing in growing the local production ecosystem, many others seem uninterested.

Colorado could be an epicenter for outdoor industry manufacturing. A new technology-inspired production paradigm is waiting to be championed by any of a dozen global brands that call the Rocky Mountains home. Innovation percolates in small companies — ask Molson Coors or any number of industrial food brands investing in Colorado startups — but manufacturing needs its bellwether brands to reach down and engage with best practices, experience, and talent.

4. Industrial cannabis is here. Like, right here.

In the second half of 2019 we profiled three cannabis manufacturing companies that combined, employed 400 people — Folium Biosciences (220), Mile High Labs (140), and Paragon Processing (40). Include Colorado’s largest self-manufacturing brands like incredibles and Wana Brands and dozens more that employ thousands, and it’s clear that cannabis is a workforce tsunami.

Manufacturers and the associations that support them have been unenthusiastic or downright hostile to cannabis industry. We hope this changes in 2020. For one, the kids working at Colorado’s cannabis companies would benefit from understanding a career pathway that would keep them in manufacturing when they’re ready to move on if not up.

Last year at this time I wrote that manufacturing is codependent, that manufacturers must come together to solve their challenges. I also said that collaboration is “a work in progress.” Let’s ensure the epicenter of industrial cannabis, and the human capital that’s catalyzed growth, stays here.

5. It won’t always be this easy.

America’s longest peacetime expansion will end, if not in 2020, then sometime soon. What happens when a growth economy normalizes?

For starters, business development becomes mission-critical. In the race for new business, Colorado’s top industries are highly competitive nationally:

Top Gainers (% employment gain in 2018, excludes sectors with less than 50 jobs):

Chemical manufacturing +10.7% (6th fastest-growing sector nationally)

Primary metal manufacturing +5.46% (12th nationally)

Machinery manufacturing +4.5% (19th nationally)

Beverage manufacturing + 4.1% (31st nationally)

Food manufacturing +2.2% (13th nationally)

Our collective challenge is to ensure these industries remain best-in-class as companies work harder to land new contracts when the going gets tougher.

Good luck in 2020!

Bart Taylor is publisher of CompanyWeek. Email him at btaylor@companyweek.com.

“It’s official: Manufacturing is getting crushed.” It’s not, but here’s why that sentiment matters.

Conventional wisdom holds that manufacturing’s recent job surge is an aberration, that automation and robotics, combined with cost savings from offshore production, will diminish the need for U.S. workers and the importance of manufacturing at the same time.

It’s not a trivial conclusion. Jobs matter. People starting a career or business, or developing a city or state economy, want to bet on a sure thing. Is manufacturing growing or not?

The narrative CNBC favors is that it’s retreating, citing Bureau of Labor Statistics last month to argue that President Trump’s manufacturing-related trade policies are falling short — but more, to suggest that “national manufacturing appears to have peaked”:

It’s reasonbable to believe that jobs “have peaked.” In the same report, the Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts more net manufacturing job losses in the future — from roughly 12.5 million U.S. jobs in 2018 to 12 million in 2028, falling from 8 percent of total U.S. employment to about 7 percent during that time. A decline would lengthen manufacturing’s downward trend from 13.4 million jobs in 2008 — and earlier, pre-Great Recession, when 16 million Americans worked in manufacturing.

Yet both Obama and Trump have presided over a manufacturing employment surge, and as we’ve chronicled, manufacturing is today a tale of diverse industries and regions. The sector is growing in some states as it retreats in others. For example, Western states, our primary focus, are witnessing the emergence of a new industrial makeup that seems to upset conventional wisdom.

As the New York Times has noted, America’s West is a new engine of manufacturing employment, with its counties growing at twice the rate as their Rust Belt counterparts. In the same period that CNBC’s graph depicts job losses in Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania — manufacturing employment in Colorado, Washington, Oregon, California, and Arizona — bellwether economies in the West — stayed the same or grew slightly.

We’ll dig in deeper to Colorado and California manufacturing employment in the weeks ahead, but the message seems clear enough: Industry mix means everything. In Colorado, we know that food and beverage is the state’s fastest growing manufacturing industry. When combined with high-tech clusters across a range of industries like aerospace and bioscience along with construction-related fabrication that shows no signs of slowing, manufacturing here continues to challenge conventional wisdom. So far it’s lost on CNBC. They surmise: “It’s official: Manufacturing is getting crushed.”

In some industries, and in some places, maybe. But here and other pockets across the U.S., it’s at the center of innovation and growth in industries expanding along new fault lines, in communities that value local production. Or value like-minded companies that outsource manufacturing in regional or international supply chains. It’s the next best thing. Companies like Teton Waters Ranch, featured this week, a manufacturer to be sure but not manufacturing here. Colorado’s food and beverage ecosystem is richer for them being here.

In America’s new and dynamic manufacturing ecosystem.

Bart Taylor is publisher of CompanyWeek. Email him at btaylor@companyweek.com.

How design-centered manufacturing is transforming Industry 4.0—and the 2020 CMAs

There was a time when American manufacturing’s most effective promotion was products Made in the U.S.A. Today, products designed in the U.S. but made offshore tend to capture the imagination of consumers. “I design it, you build it” is still a rule of thumb for industrial designers, and the build is often “over the wall” offshore.

But the rules are changing, and growth industries of the West are at the center of a broad transformation. Powered by new technologies like 3D printing and software-enabled machining, designers increasingly control the means of production.

The trend promises to alleviate challenges at the center of America’s manufacturing conundrum. Prototyping at the point of design reduces iterative cycles and costs. Intellectual property is more easily managed and less exposed to overseas “partners.” Parts and products also become smarter when manufacturing processes are “baked into” industrial designs.

In sum, the design-to-manufacturing continuum is narrowing. At tomorrow’s factories, tech-savvy machine operators will rub elbows with industrial designers and engineers. It’s a component of Industry 4.0.

We’re embracing the trend. As we launch the nomination period for the 2020 Colorado Manufacturing Awards later this month, we’re pleased to announce a new category that focuses on product design and engineering as much as the build.

A new 2020 CMA category — Innovative Product Award/Design-Centered Manufacturing — will showcase consumer and commercial products designed for manufacture in the U.S.

Here’s the criteria:

The Innovative Product Award recognizes leading-edge industrial design and engineering in a part or product manufactured locally (highest ranking) or in the U.S. (required).

Criteria:

  • Products must be designed or engineered in Colorado
  • Focus is on the design-to-manufacture continuum; integration of design and manufacturing processes

Products will be evaluated on:

  • Aesthetic: Leading-edge visual and aesthetic properties
  • Integration: Degree to which manufacturing considerations are incorporated in design or engineering
  • Advanced processes: Use of advanced manufacturing processes like automation, additive manufacturing, software-enabled CNC
  • Functionality: Innovative functionality, utility, and consideration of human factors: consumer popularity of the final product

Two award categories: Commercial and consumer

Nominations for the 2020 Colorado Manufacturing Awards open Tuesday, October 1 and extend through the end of 2019. Award winners will be announced in April 2020.

We’ll announce criteria for the entire slate of industry and advocacy awards later this month at a kickoff in Denver. Register here to join us Sept. 26 from 3-6 p.m. as we preview the 2020 CMAs, rally for local manuacturing, and hear from stakeholders providing key services for the manufacturing community — all a prelude to national Manufacturing Day events, Friday October 5. Or, contact me anytime with questions.

Bart Taylor is publisher of CompanyWeek. Reach him at btaylor@companyweek.com.

Manufacturer or distributor? Both, but let’s help apparel brands reshore production

A reader in California took us to task last week for “promoting” O’Neal USA, a sports apparel company we featured in CompanyWeek. A legend in the powersports market, Jim O’Neal’s jerseys are a motocross staple.

He also moved apparel manufacturing offshore, a reality not lost on our reader. Instead, the reader said, “highlight and promote companies that keep production/manufacturing and business in California/USA. This story should be sent to Sacramento and DC to discuss the problems with the high cost of doing business here and the tariffs.”

We do feature those companies, every week, but he raises an important issue. Should O’Neal be celebrated as a manufacturer, brand, distributor, or what? Our reader suggested “a U.S. Corporate Office and Warehouse.”

Does it matter? Yes. Because companies that do travel the last mile to manufacture in America think it does. And they’re right. Navigating the issues that bedevil companies like O’Neal, to keep production in the U.S., is often the hard way to go. We should notice. And buy their products.

But in apparel and outdoor industry, O’Neal is the rule, not the exception. Jim O’Neal’s explanation for manufacturing offshore — wages, environmental laws, qualified labor — is common.

We can agree that most designers would keep their means of production closer to home if they could. And the good news is that we’re developing more domestic production infrastructure. Technology is a catalyst.

CompanyWeek Editor Eric Peterson’s story this week on Elementum 3D is one in a series we’ve published that demonstrates how additive manufacturing is becoming a mainstream production option. And it’s only getting better. Elementum 3D is expanding “the materials library” by fueling printers with aluminum, copper, and custom materials, and composites, tungsten, and tantalum in the pipeline.

Yet for O’Neal and others in apparel, production solutions are elusive. Where Nike is on the cusp of printing an entire shoe in America, and doing so in volume, apparel brands still rely on sewers. Innovation comes slowly to apparel production.

But there’s a path, and it’s navigable. The physical act of sewing may be the last thing to change, but that shouldn’t slow us from innovating everywhere else in the apparel supply chain — including what we buy. Supporting small, independent brands is an important step; they keep production home if there’s a way. Focusing on technology that fuels new prototyping and production is a given, including, as Elementum 3D’s Jacob Nuechterlein says, training a new generation of designers. “There aren’t that many people who know how to design for 3D printing,” he says.

Lastly, let’s keep pushing to develop new production and prototyping facilities companies like O’Neal can support — with business. Big guys like Nike and Under Armour are funding their own. We should all work toward democratizing enabling technologies by raising new centers of manufacturing innovation and excellence.

In doing so, we’ll help O’Neal and others keep production onshore. Then we’d have no doubt what to call them.

Bart Taylor is publisher of CompanyWeek. Reach him at btaylor@companyweek.com.

5 takeaways from a week in manufacturing data

1. Is manufacturing dead or a leading indicator for the economy?

Whenever the Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) from the Institute for Supply Management lands under 50, as it did last week, manufacturing naysayers proclaim the sector irrelevant or worse.

This time around pundits are struggling to explain how manufacturing also seems to be a bellwether for the rest of the economy.

“The weakness in manufacturing has now infected the services side of the U.S. economy, which makes up about 80% of it,” sniffed Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer with Bleakley Advisory Group, in a note to clients.

In other words, the U.S. economy goes as manufacturing goes.

Manufacturing’s demise was always overstated. It’s a strategic sector and getting more so.

2. Manufacturers are creating jobs. They can’t find employees.

Manufacturing has an employment crisis — just not the kind reflected in Friday’s jobs report released by the Labor Department that showed U.S. manufacturing losing 2,000 net jobs in the quarter.

How would the graph below look with an additional half-million employees in jobs that remain unfilled? Employment would look a lot different if companies could fill open jobs.

3. Trump’s tariff plan needs a strategy.

President Trump’s trade plan hasn’t yet panned out. CNBC reporting last week summed up the consensus among analysts:

Eric Winograd, senior economist at AllianceBernstein, said in a note Friday that the president’s trade war strategies appeared to be in part responsible for the slowdown.

“A big part of the story for the economy as a whole, of course, is the trade war. We can see that in the payrolls figures too,” Winograd wrote. “Manufacturing has been the hardest hit industry by trade policy and, not coincidentally, manufacturing employment has suffered.”

At some point soon, short-term pain must be framed by long-term gain.

4. American brands have gotten themselves into the tariff pickle by investing in offshore manufacturing.

Trump’s strategy-less tariffs get tarred and feathered, but the crisis in supply-chain management — in making things offshore in China — isn’t Trump’s fault. American companies have made China a manufacturing superpower. (Manufacturers aren’t the only U.S. companies beholding to China.)

It was inevitable that tariffs would be used to change China’s behavior and protect the interests of American companies and workers. The status quo wasn’t working. It’s unfortunate that its intended beneficiaries are suffering given the shortcomings of Trump’s plan.

But this is an industry problem that companies, not government, must fix. Collectively and collaboratively, brands and manufacturers must lead a U.S. production renaissance by investing here, and not in overseas production.

5. Innovation and industry diversity continue to distinguish U.S. manufacturing.

The sector continues to surprise, and much of the good news is related to growth industries shaping a new American industrial character.

Manufacturing is growing fastest in the West, in state economies with thriving natural food, craft beverage, and value-add industries like aerospace. Innovation is rampant here, even in legacy industries where technology is powering a new wave of engineering, prototyping, and manufacturing solutions. (Read this week’s profile of Barber-Nichols.)

There’s a race to a new, global-defining manufacturing economy comprised of exciting new industries flashing the tools of Industry 4.0. And it’s winnable. Here in the U.S.

Step into the fight or step aside.

Bart Taylor is publisher of CompanyWeek. Reach him at btaylor@companyweek.com.