Making it Big

The Judges To select the winners of the first Washington Manufacturing Awards, we drew upon a panel of experts from business and academia. Ron Benoit Partner Moss Adams Peter Haug Professor, Management Western Washington University Loren Lyon CEO Magic Wheels Inc. Robert Olsen Director, Harold Frank Engineering Entrepreneurship Institute Washington State University Ted Sprague President Cowlitz Economic Development Council Richard Lee Storch Chair, Industrial & Systems Engineering University of Washington John H. Vicklund President Impact Washington Bill Virgin Editor & Publisher Washington Manufacturing Alert Columnist Seattle Business magazine Gary White Business Retention and Expansion Tridec

If you heard that manufacturing is
a sunset industry and that innovation had moved on to biotech labs and software
code writers, you heard wrong.

As the stories of the award
winners in Seattle Business magazines
first Washington Manufacturing Awards demonstrate, manufacturing in this state
is not only alive and kicking even in the midst of a brutal economic recession,
its also a thriving generator of innovative ideas, companies, products,
technologies and people.

It matters hugely to Washingtons
economy that manufacturing does well. Its the one industry that really adds
value, says Peter Haug, professor of manufacturing management at Western
Washington University and one of the judges for the awards. Youre actually
producing a tangible item. Its not just about moving money from place to place
or investments or services. Its about actually building something that people
will use and consume and pay money for. Supporting that is the fact that these
are very good-paying jobs. While employment has gone down, the jobs that are
remaining tend to be very highly skilled, very technical, requiring a high
level of education and knowledge.

Even with the layoffs and plant
closings that have hit it and most other sectors of the economy, manufacturing
still provides 255,000 jobs in Washington state, about 9 percent of total
non-farm employment. Its economic contribution is even bigger; manufacturings
share of total gross business income in Washington is about 21 percent,
according to the latest data available from the State Department of Revenue.

To keep manufacturing thriving will
take work because immense challenges loomcompetition with lower-cost
production centers like China, rising energy and raw-material costs, and the
loss of skilled, experienced workers as the baby-boom generation moves into the
retirement years.

But manufacturers appear willing
to take on those challenges. As David Giuliani, founder and chief executive of
Pacific Bioscience Laboratories Inc. and one of our award winners, puts it,
Lets get manufacturing going again in this country, shall we?

Thanks to the efforts of the
companies profiled here, we are.

Click for the winners…

Click here to see a photo gallery from our awards ceremony May 17.