A self-described conservative, George Wendt is a small-company president with no love for taxes, red tape, the family-leave law or a proposed health-insurance mandate.
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So why has he become a cheerleader for the latest government-funded program to hit Chicago’s business community?
“Because it works for us,” Wendt said.
“Us” is Chicago Metal Rolled Products Co., an outfit that bends metal on the Southwest Side of a city known the world over for metal-bending.
“It” is the newly opened Chicago Manufacturing Center, part of an outreach program to help small and medium-size companies such as Chicago Metal stay on top of the latest in technology and management.
When big manufacturers want to modernize, they call high-priced consulting firms. Small manufacturers generally don’t have that luxury, but now they can call the Manufacturing Center, said Edward Noha, chairman of Chicago’s Economic Development Commission, which formally launched the center a week ago.
The commission is a gathering of top business leaders (Noha is chairman of CNA Financial Corp.) who advise and assist the city on economic-development matters. It also directly manages several projects, such as the city’s chain of industrial parks. For years the commission has groped for a role, unsure whether to be a council of elders or hands-on dealmakers.
The new Manufacturing Center splits the difference. Rather than recruit businesses to the city or hand out tax breaks, it will dispatch teams of experts to companies that ask for help. For a bargain fee, it will analyze a shop’s operations, make recommendations, monitor changes and measure results.
The commission had some success with a business visitation program before Noha took over 18 months ago. He spotted an opportunity to expand the program when the federal government, in an effort to speed the conversion of defense technology to domestic use, began financing “technology extension centers” around the country.
Noha’s commission set up the Chicago Manufacturing Center as a private, non-profit group and obtained pledges of financial and technical help from the city, the state and local colleges of engineering. The project won a $3 million startup grant from the U.S. Commerce Department, and offices have been set up in the vacated Sears, Roebuck and Co. complex on the West Side, 3333 W. Arthington St.
A small staff was recruited, headed by Rheal Turcotte, former associate director of Northwestern University’s Basic Industry Research Laboratory, or BIRL. The plan is to keep it small but bring in experts as needed from Argonne National Laboratory, BIRL, the Illinois Institute of Technology and the University of Illinois, as well as training specialists from the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning and the Jane Addams Resource Center.
That’s a lot of technical firepower, but what small-business owner would pick up the phone and invite a bunch of government-funded inspectors into his or her shop?
“I had to be talked into it,” said Wendt, who had second thoughts about opening his books until he got an assurance of confidentiality.
The family-owned business recently had purchased a huge steel-bending machine but was having trouble getting the word out to customers about its new capabilities. Among recommendations made by a team of experts led by professor Keith McKee of the institute was a program to market the expanded product line.
It worked so well, Wendt said, that sales doubled over a two-year period, causing the little company at 3715 S. Rockwell St. to add 20 employees. Chicago Metal pays $5.75 an hour to start, and as workers advance in skill and experience, so does their pay, to an average of $10 an hour. They also get health insurance-George Wendt’s dim view of employer mandates notwithstanding.
Chicago Metal has 60 hourly workers, Wendt said, many of them first-generation Hispanic- and Polish-Americans who “have a car, a two-flat and money in their 401(k).”
“I’m sold 100 percent,” he said of the center. “Every dollar that’s spent on this organization will create $5 in payroll somewhere else.”
Small manufacturers, even conservative ones, can reach the Chicago Manufacturing Center at 312-265-2020.