NC State of Business

This past week, I saw some of the famous “green collar jobs” so often talked about as the key to America’s future prosperity. Charlie Parrish spoke of them extensively in his post on 4/18/09 – What are the Green Jobs? The interesting part is that these jobs I saw did not stand out, and I would not have known the difference between these jobs and the traditional “blue collar jobs” had I not been told.

I was visiting a local cable and wire assembly plant to discuss their need for coaching in some advanced quality tools such as FMEA and Control Plans. This place was loaded with good news. They had new customers, increased orders and quantities, and INCREASED EMPLOYMENT LEVELS. There were only a few workers called back for now, but some optimism exists.

Ok, back to the green jobs. During a tour of the plant, I was told that the company had orders to produce wind turbine wiring assemblies now and were discussing assemblies that would support new solar energy applications. Since no special training for the workers was required to follow the fabrication and assembly requirements for these orders, the “green collar” jobs are simply “blue collar” jobs in disguise. A point to make here is that many NC manufacturers are already participating in the new green economy and plenty of others are ready based on well proven capabilities. So bring on the technology…

It would be nice to hear of other jobs like these in North Carolina. So let me know about what you are seeing.

On a similar note, next week I will attend a venture capitalist function in Durham called the SJF Summit on the New Green Economy. Ahh…now this is the place where I could hear of the new green inventions that would use those wiring assemblies I saw last week. Maybe I will see you there.

How does $152 million in economic benefit sound? How about 750 jobs created or saved?

Every quarter, the National Institute of Science and Technology surveys some of our manufacturing clients to find out how our lean/Six Sigma, ISO, safety, or other work has paid off for them. It takes NIST awhile to collect, analyze, and validate the results through a third party, but I'm proud to announce that the survey results for the fourth quarter of 2008 exceeded everyone's expectations -- and set a new IES economic benefit record!

Those clients reported over $73 million worth of increased or retained sales -- astounding, considering how the economy was starting to tumble -- and over $21 million in cost savings associated with the work we did for them. The additional benefits that added up to the $152 million accrued in plant equipment, information systems, workforce practices, and other areas.

The last quarter of 2008 was better than the other three quarters combined, and brought our total survey results for 2008 to $274 million in economic benefit and 1470 jobs created or saved. And that just represents a fraction of our work, because NIST doesn't survey all of our clients!

I'm very proud of all of our IES specialists and the fine work they do on behalf of our clients. Do you want to be a part of this kind of economic benefit? Just call us.