Lacks Enterprises – $350,000 incentive from the MEDC for $31.9m expansion; 120 new jobs projected

The incentive will allow Lacks Enterprises to proceed with the development of a new manufacturing plant in Cascade Charter Township. The plan will be used to manufacture and warehouse trim systems, wheel trim systems and plastic plating for the automotive industry.

Michigan was chosen over competing sites in Kentucky, South Carolina and Virginia.

“Lacks is a vitally important player in our automotive supply chain with more than 2,200 employees here and their decision to expand in Michigan says much about our improved business climate,” said MEDC President and CEO Michael A. Finney. “Our flexible incentive program, Michigan’s simplified business tax structure and our new efforts to connect employers with talented workers, are propelling us to one of the best business climates in the country.”

“The Lacks family is pleased to be able to provide additional premium employment opportunities for West Michigan residents and to continue to grow in West Michigan, as they have since 1961,” said Jim Green, Executive Director of Human Resources for Lacks Enterprises. “We were actively pursued by other states and based on the quality and caliber of the available work force in West Michigan, the business climate and cooperation from all of our business partners from the State of Michigan and The Right Place it was an easy decision to continue to grow in our own backyard.”

“When most new jobs in West Michigan are created by existing businesses, it’s that much more important to have a strong retention strategy. This announcement demonstrates the success of our business retention strategy, keeping companies like Lacks Enterprises growing in the region,” said Birgit Klohs, President and CEO, The Right Place, Inc.

Cascade Charter Township is supportive of this project and plans to approve tax abatements for Lacks.

“We commend Lacks for choosing to expand in West Michigan instead of other states that were pursuing this opportunity. The Right Place is committed to ensuring that our region’s companies continue to thrive, and through collaboration with our state and local partners like the MEDC and Cascade Charter Township, we are making it happen,” Klohs added.

Signed into law by Snyder in December, the Michigan Business Development Program provides grants, loans and other economic assistance to qualified businesses that make investments or create jobs in Michigan, with preference given to businesses that need additional assistance for deal-closing and for second stage gap financing.

The MSF will consider a number of factors in making these awards, including: out-of-state competition, private investment in the project, business diversification opportunities, near-term job creation, wage and benefit levels of the new jobs, and net-positive return to the state. Business retention and retail projects are not eligible for consideration of these incentives.

The Michigan Business Development Program replaces the state’s previous MEGA program that was a feature of the Michigan Business Tax that was eliminated under business tax restructuring legislation approved and signed into law by Snyder in May 2011.

(left to right) Mike Finney, Michigan Economic Development Corp. (MEDC), Aurora Battaglia, Comerica; Maria Gabriella Zignone, Banca Sella Spa; Giuseppe Gradi, Intesa San Paolo S.p.a.; Governor Rick Snyder; Massimiliano Iguera, J.P. Morgan; Birgit Klohs, The Right Place; Mark Kinsler and Maureen Krauss, MEDC promote Michigan during a mission trip to Italy and Germany.

During its first day of a six-day mission trip, Governor Snyder and the economic development leaders comprising the trade mission team met with the Turin Chamber of Commerce, as well as meetings with area companies. During lunch, it joined local corporate and economic representatives for a U.S. Commercial Services / Consul General Briefing with the American Consul General, Kyle Scott. The briefing covered Italy’s political and economic status, as well as the new Monti government.  A more detailed discussion of the country’s northern region and economic opportunities available there were also discussed.

The lunch was followed by a bank roundtable discussion of the changes to Michigan tax law, economic opportunities for investment, and the potential for Michigan exports to Italy.  The day concluded with afternoon meetings with area companies and a reception.

On the behalf of Governor Snyder and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation,  The Right Place (RPI) arranged a reception for the Michigan team in Stuttgart, and secured meetings for Snyder with top-level German executives.

RPI also provided significant support in planning and securing speakers for a forum between the Michigan delegation and the Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical Technology. The event includes discussion of advanced electrification technologies and how they are transforming the auto industry. Michigan’s presentation will focus on advanced electric storage due to Michigan’s industry leadership position in North America. Private industry leaders recruited by RPI to speak during the forum include Ulrich Alkemade, Corporate Research, Robert Bosch GmbH as well as Jack Hall, Vice President & General Manager, Power Solutions EMEA, part of Johnson Controls Advanced Power Solutions.

Right Place President Birgit Klohs and Vice President, Business Development Therese Thill will be traveling with the Governor and other economic development organizations during the trade mission. While there, they will attend and host mission events as well as represent West Michigan exclusively during separate calls on Italian and German prospect companies.

According to a recent Area Development article, Mexican manufacturers are experiencing the same rebound as their northern peers with OEMs re-examining the true cost of moving manufacturing to China.

The article sites an August 2011 study published by the Boston Consulting Group, which notes:

“After China’s entry into the WTO in 2001, however, maquiladora industrial zones bordering the U.S. suffered a large loss in manufacturing. Now that has changed. By 2010, Chinese workers were earning only two-thirds as much as their Mexican counterparts. By 2015, BCG forecasts that the fully loaded cost of hiring Chinese workers will be 25 percent higher than the cost of using Mexican workers.”

Success stories like Terryberry’s Pandora bead partnership, and lauds for American Seating’s success from Vice President Biden are just a couple of examples of how West Michigan companies are combining efficiency, reasonable cost and  manufacturing skill to bring jobs back from China as well

As quoted in Corp! Magazine, Deb McDermott, vice president of marketing at American Seating, noted. “When the vice president’s advance team visited they were initially focused on our transportation seating but they were amazed at the breadth of what we do,” she says. “When I told them that we had done the seating at the Washington Nationals stadium, as well as the Eisenhower Theatre in the Kennedy Center, they were surprised.”

The six universities that make up MCRN are Wayne State University, the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, Michigan Technological University, University of Michigan-Dearborn, and Western Michigan University. Each member university maintains an office that connects businesses to university resources and faculty that can assist research needs. Companies interested in applying for the SCIP will be paired with the appropriate faculty principal investigator (PI) to outline a project and submit a proposal.

The resulting collaboration will give small companies the opportunity to meet research needs that may not otherwise be affordable. The SCIP will also stimulate talent retention in Michigan by creating relationships between small companies and university graduate student researchers.

Individual SCIP projects are funded at $20,000 to $40,000 and require one-to-one matching funds from the sponsoring company. MCRN member universities will supply funds to cover all their indirect costs. Additional information is available at http://michigancrn.org/scip/. The deadline to submit a proposal is May 1, 2012.

It’s an opportunity lost for some of West Michigan’s smaller medical device companies who cannot justify the cost of attending, nor guarantee they would be remembered in such a large gathering.

Working in concert with the Michigan Economic Development Corp. (MEDC), The Right Place was part of a large pavilion representing Michigan’s medical device industry. Within the West Michigan area of that space, Right Place provided signage and basic marketing materials for:

• DonerWorks,
• Extol,
• Keystone Solutions Group,
• Koops,
• Medbio,
• Micron Machine Company,
• Rose Techologies,
• Safari Circuits, Inc., and
• Superior Manufacturing Group Cleanrooms.

Right Place staff members Sue Jackson, Sr. Business Development Manager, and Karen Benson, Director, Innovation Services were also there, to represent West Michigan and its medical device manufacturers.  With the additional support, the manufacturers had the opportunity to work the booth or connect with customers and prospects.

“It was their time to shine; we were there to support them; doing whatever they needed us to do,” Benson said, noting the collaboration was mutually beneficial as it gave The Right Place an opportunity to showcase the innovation that is happening in West Michigan. She and Jackson also connected with several other West Michigan medical device manufacturers who were there with their own booths.

The MEDC and Right Place have reserved the same, highly visible corner space in the exhibition hall for next year. Clustering all of the Michigan medical device booths around that corner for greater impact has been discussed.

The new Michigan plant will employ more than 50 workers and support production for the nutrition category of Amway, which accounted for more than 40 percent of 2010 sales.

The 120,000-square-foot facility on the company’s mile-long Ada, headquarters complex, is the company’s first consumable goods plant in Michigan. It features state-of-the-art production technology, a $1 million quality assurance lab and an innovative work system.

“Amway continues to make strong investments in manufacturing so we can bring the best quality of products to consumers and our distributors,” said Lauren Walker, vice president of Ada operations. “This is evident not only in our investment in infrastructure but also in our investment in human capital. Many of the employees at this plant will have had six months of skill development and team building before the first batch of product leaves this facility.”

The new facility will produce nutritional powder products such as POSITRIM®, a meal-replacement powder mix; ACTIVE 8®, a powder drink mix containing eight essential vitamins; and INVISIFIBER®, a blend of three types of natural, soluble, tasteless fiber that is sold in individual packs.

It will also produce a reformulated, NUTRLITE All Plant Protein Powder made of a tri-blend of soy, wheat and pea.

Walker said the company used the opportunity of a new facility to rethink and restructure its work system, with employees’ input. The new system not only improves efficiency and quality assurance, it also creates a new career path for employees while ensuring Amway remains competitive in the long term.

The system includes:
• Individual weekly work schedule of three 12.5-hour days on, three and a half days off
• Quarterly rotation of day/night shifts and work days
• Cross-training of employees including training to use all the equipment

“We value the input of our employees and continue to empower them to create best practices for their work environments,” said Kelly Savage, chief human resources officer at Amway. “The result is engaged employees who are invested in the process and proud of their work.”

For those who might think such reforms only apply to some Michigan schools, note this from Amber Arellano, executive director of Education Trust-Midwest.

“The conventional wisdom in Michigan holds low-income, and black and brown children responsible for our state’s low average – and assumes middle-class and white children are doing just fine. Indeed, this belief is so prevalent that state educational leaders and policymakers have been known to say, ‘If it wasn’t for our urban and poor students, we would be doing a whole lot better.’ Not only is this belief based on dated stereotypes, it also is patently false. Yet it is used to justify inaction on improving our state’s schools.”

All of which comes on the same day the Obama Administration released 10 states from some of the requirements of No Child Left Behind – a law designed to get all children up to par in math and reading by 2014. The reprieve may offer more freedom to local governments, but it does not erase the fact that we are running out of time to give our children the skills they need to compete globally.

And those skills go beyond the classroom. A 2011 report from the University of Phoenix Research Institute showed that such factors as super collaborations outside traditional business boundaries, smarter machines, and the rise of a global media network are driving the need for skill sets beyond basic literacy, math and science. A successful 2020 employee will have to have such abilities as adaptive thinking and virtual collaboration, as well as a design-oriented mindset and cross-cultural competency to place them – and their employers – on solid, competitive ground by the start of the millenium’s second decade.

Grand Rapids, MI (January 31, 2012) – Continuing its efforts to aid growing West Michigan companies and recruit new employers to the area, officials from The Right Place, Inc. announced today the hiring of former City of Wyoming Downtown Development Authority Director Megan Sall as its newest Business Development Manager. Sall, a noted economic development professional, was hired in January. She will actively represent the Right Place to businesses located in West Michigan or who are interested in locating in West Michigan.

“We’re pleased to welcome Megan to The Right Place and back to West Michigan,” says Birgit Klohs, President and CEO, The Right Place. “Her experience in state and local government and international development will be a tremendous addition to our business development team.”

Sall brings more than five years of economic development experience to her new role. She most recently served as a program manager for the International City/County Management Association (ICMA), based in Washington D.C., where her responsibilities included managing all administrative aspects of ICMA International’s Regional Afghan Municipal Program for Urban Populations programs, a portfolio valued at $25 million which covers the eastern, western, and northern regional command centers in Afghanistan. Prior to that Sall spent nearly four years in administrative roles for the City of Wyoming. She holds a masters of public administration and bachelors of arts degree in international relations from Grand Valley State University.

• Brian Donovan, City Manager, City of East Grand Rapids
• Terry Frewen, GRI, E-Pro, Broker/Owner, Coldwell Banker Frewen Realty (representing the Ionia County Economic Alliance)
• Bob Roth, President and CEO, RoMan Manufacturing, Inc. (representing The Right Place Manufacturers Council)
• Robert C. Shaver, President, Rhoades McKee PC

Current board member, Blake Krueger, President & CEO, Chairman of the Board, Wolverine Worldwide, Inc., was appointed to The Right Place Board executive committee.

The following current board members were reappointed for an additional three-year term, beginning January 2012:

• Doug DeVos, President, Amway Corp. (2011-2012 Right Place Board Chair)
• Dan Gaydou, President, Mlive Media Group
• Thomas Haas, President, Grand Valley State University
• James Hackett, President & CEO, Steelcase Inc.
• Richard P. Haslinger, President, West Michigan Region, Chase Bank
• Hank Meijer, Co-Chairman/CEO, Meijer, Inc.
• Craig Mutch, Managing Partner, Miller Johnson
• David Van Andel, Chairman/CEO, Van Andel Institute
• Sean Welsh, Regional President, The PNC Financial Services Group