Enterprise Minnesota magazine - Summer 2024

FROM LINE TO LEADER Gauthier’s Mike Jensen guides his company with empathy, analytics, and a drive to keep learning.

Building a Pipeline

Northern Tool + Equipment’s Tools for the TradesTM program revs up high school students’ interest in hands-on careers.

Suresh Krishna, CEO, Northern Tool + Equipment

A Brighter Future

St. Paul Corrugating Company enhances its leadership development and human resources operations to set the stage for growth.

Leading the Way

The

BUILDING A PIPELINE

Northern Tool + Equipment’s Tools for the TradesTM program revs up high school students’ interest in hands-on careers.

From Line to Leader

Gauthier’s Mike Jensen guides his company with empathy, analytics, and a drive to keep learning.

Empowering manufacturing employees to solve problems makes good days even better.

Less Red Tape

Race to Success

Why leaders at Marine Innovations want less stringent licensure. The Value of

Starting with a packaging gambit, Lind Electronics uses efficiencies to goose profits.

Manufacturers can benefit by offering a public glimpse inside their companies.

Helping Manufacturing Enterprises Grow Profitably

Leading the Way

The rest of America could learn from how Minnesota prepares future employees.

For more than 30 years Enterprise Minnesota has worked to show policymakers, the media, and other key stakeholders that pursuing work in manufacturing isn’t a fallback option — it’s a great first-choice career.

The national media has now joined our chorus. The Wall Street Journal recently published articles about the resurgence of skilled jobs, including “How Gen Z Is Becoming the Toolbelt Generation” and “A Maine Lobster Town Sees Its Future in Shop Class,” while CNBC announced, “High school shop class is back — and it’s showing students alternatives to ‘traditional college.’”

It’s encouraging that they recognize what we’ve known all along: manufacturing jobs are high-potential careers. Positions in manufacturing require brains and specific training, they demand teamwork and dedication, they pay well from the start and offer tremendous potential growth, and they give employees the satisfaction of building something tangible each day.

These quality jobs are here to stay. Supply chain issues will continue to drive production back to the U.S. (That’s particularly true for large, high-value parts and products that are costly to ship and might not be as reliably produced in developing countries.) Plus, the wave of retirements expected in the next decade means manufacturers will need a new source of employees for years to come.

For those just catching on to the value of these careers, Minnesota’s experience in preparing the next generation of employees is instructive. The key, especially in recent years, has been partnerships between schools — both vocational/technical

colleges and high schools — and the manufacturers in their communities. These partnerships couldn’t come at a better time. Vocational and technical college programs are booming, with particularly high demand for welding/ fabrication and CNC/ machining training. High schools, which often ditched shop classes in the 1980s, have been renewing their commitment to career and technical education programs for years and want to boost their investments to help students prepare for manufacturing careers.

Good training programs are costly to run, but manufacturers understand that their own success depends on a steady source of highly skilled employees. Companies are eager to partner with schools, contributing the equipment students need for training and offering advice on developing course materials and curricula.

Along these lines, check out this issue’s feature about Northern Tool + Equipment’s Tools for the Trades™ program (p. 28) and Four Questions with Clint Link, the principal at North Branch Area High School, who’s working to help his school’s top students launch careers with local manufacturers (p. 22).

Enterprise Minnesota and the manufacturers we support have always known that manufacturing will drive future economic growth and generate quality careers. We’re happy to show other states the way forward.

Bob Kill is president and CEO of Enterprise Minnesota.

Publisher

Lynn K. Shelton

Editorial Director

Tom Mason

Creative Director

Scott Buchschacher

Managing Editor

Chip Tangen

Copy Editor

Catrin Wigfall

Writers

Joe Bowen

Sue Bruns

Suzy Frisch

Robb Murray

Peter Passi

Kate Peterson

Mary Lahr Schier

Photographers

Amy Jeanchaiyaphum

Robert Lodge

Lynn Shelton

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PROCESSES

A Year of Introspection

Elastech Solutions/Caliber Inc. hopes ISO-inspired improvements will harness record-setting growth.

You might be hard-pressed to find a business that looks back as fondly on the COVID pandemic as the Burnsvillebased Elastech Solutions/Caliber Inc.

“We had the biggest growth in the history of the company during the heart of COVID. People all went home and decided to play with their toys,” says Jon Leikvold, chief operating officer at Elastech Solutions, maker of custom-molded rubber parts for products like Yeti coolers.

Another company called Caliber, which manufactures parts and accessories for

the power sports industry, exists under the same financial and management umbrella as Elastech Solutions. Together the pair have achieved substantial growth, roughly 20% annually except for the COVID year when sales skyrocketed.

“People took their stimulus money and bought a lot of our products,” Leikvold says. “It was quite an amazing and interesting process to get it all out the door.”

While the near-snowless winter this year caused sales to dip slightly, the COVID boom year allowed Elastech

“People took their stimulus money and bought a lot of our products,” Leikvold says.

“It was quite an amazing and interesting process to get it all out the door.”

Solutions/Caliber to analyze its processes and conclude changes were needed if the company, which currently has close to 70 employees, was going to continue to prosper.

That’s when they called Enterprise Minnesota and business growth consultant James Thomas to help them achieve their ISO certification, including their entire operation: manufacturing, distribution, and warehousing.

Leikvold says the process zeroed in on the company’s written procedures, which were “loose at best.” He says 2023 will go down as a year of change. Going through the ISO process, he says, kind of “ripped our department apart,” but in a way that was good; some things, after all, needed to be ripped apart.

“It forced us to look at ourselves hard,” he says. “For us, 2023 was definitely a fundamental change year.”

The ISO process for Elastech Solutions/Caliber already has produced concrete results. For one thing, it nudged

the company to remove some things they knew were holding the company back, such as the ERP system. When they ditched Excel and QuickBooks, they purchased Epicor software, considered one of the top manufacturing ERP systems.

The process also prompted them to add two management positions — chief financial officer and director of operations — which they hope will ultimately make the company more efficient and instill a culture that embraces the findings of the ISO audit.

The ISO process required the company first to document and improve its processes, and then use audits to maintain them.

“We had to be careful not to write up procedures that we don’t believe in, or that we haven’t fixed yet,” Leikvold says. “That structured us to look through our entire process from top to bottom. The audit uncovered lots of warts and ugly things and forced us to

Left to right: Don Whalen, director of operations; Tony DeLanghe, assistant general manager; and Jon Leikvold, general manager.

look at them as a company.”

Next up on their ISO journey is examining the production parts approval process. Leikvold says he has pushed back a bit on some of the ISO recommendations. Instead of a better inspection process, he says he’d rather put resources and energy into inspecting the process and ensuring they’re doing things right — and defectfree — the first time.

“I don’t want to have an inspector checking parts or even the employees checking parts. Let’s make sure the process is running smoothly,” he insists.

Elastech Solutions/Caliber purchases Chinese-made parts. He says the Chinese solution is simple but inferior: Instead of ensuring that all parts are high quality, they’ll merely hire many more people to make many more parts and, by the sheer volume of parts produced, more of them will be decent.

He says he’d rather train workers to get machines set up properly the first time, quickly recognize and reconcile variances, and make adjustments as needed.

Leikvold says 2023 will go down as a year of change.

“I want to make my parts inspection proof,” he says.

One aspect of the Caliber side of the business that can’t be solved with an ISO audit or certification is the lack of snow last winter — and the continued downward trend of people purchasing snowmobiles.

In 1970, according to the website snowmobile.com, sled sales topped out at 600,000. By 2023, that number has plummeted 500% to 124,8000. Whether it’s the weather or the myriad time-killing options available today, it doesn’t seem

likely snowmobile sales are going to climb anytime soon. That’s why Caliber is pivoting to other revenue streams, and manufacturing products for the marine power sports industry and the auto industry.

And when dealing with the auto industry, an ISO 9001 certification isn’t a feature or perk; it’s a necessity. By going through this process, Caliber was able to land Penda, an aftermarket automotive company.

“This [ISO] allows us to sell now, through them, into Ford, GM, and those types of clients,” says Ernie DeLanghe, CEO/owner of Elastech Solutions. “We’re a lot more confident that we can actually execute on that work consistently.”

DeLanghe says the year of change, as challenging as it may have been, should position Elastech Solutions/Caliber for sustained profitability and growth.

“The foundation we’ve set up is going to help us achieve that growth,” he says. “We’ll continue chasing growth in new markets, building trusting relationships, and keeping the train rolling.”

—Robb Murray

A LEGACY OF TRUSTED ACCOUNTING & CONSULTING

Olsen Thielen has a legacy of more than 100 years

Research

Cost

Ownership

Fraud

to right: Mike Botzet, president and founder, Marine Innovations; U.S. Rep. Michelle Fischbach, R-Minnesota; Lori Botzet, vice president, Marine Innovations; Nick Botzet, sales and installation manager, Marine Innovations; Rep. Krista Knudsen, R-Lake Shore; and Sen. Paul Utke, R-Park Rapids.

A Frazee Manufacturer Asks

Lawmakers for Less Red Tape

Why leaders at Marine Innovations want less stringent licensure.

Leaders at a Detroit Lakes-area manufacturer got a chance to air their frustrations and concerns to lawmakers earlier this year.

The Botzet family, who have owned Marine Innovations for decades, met in January with U.S. Rep. Michelle Fischbach, a Republican who represents the bulk of western Minnesota in Washington, D.C., as well as fellow state GOP legislators Sen. Paul Utke and Rep. Krista Knudsen, who represent the area in the Minnesota Legislature. At the company’s shop in Frazee, Minn., the Botzets told the lawmakers about their company’s struggles with supply chain issues and state regulations.

The point of the visit was, ultimately, to emphasize how important rural manufacturing is to the health of small towns, according to Lori Botzet, the company’s vice president. Botzet arranged the meeting.

“If any factories aren’t going to do well, then retailers aren’t going to do well,” Botzet says. “It’s nice to visit the city council, but the state needs to focus on protecting the manufacturers because that is what’s going to

make small towns thrive.”

Marine Innovations workers produce and install “inclined” elevators meant to haul people and equipment from, for instance, a lakeside cabin at the top of a hill to a dock at the bottom and back again. The company has installed lifts in 38 U.S. states and abroad: an aquifer in Hawaii, marinas in Texas, and even acclaimed director Francis Ford Coppola’s resort in Guatemala.

“Wherever there’s a hill and a need to

get people up,” Botzet says. “We’re all over the place.”

In Minnesota, the company’s products are governed by the same rules and regulations as the more commonplace elevators that shuttle people up and down from, say, one floor of an office building to another.

And that’s a point of contention for the Botzets, who take issue with some of the state’s licensure requirements. In a nutshell: a state-licensee must submit plans for a given lift to regulators at the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry and then oversee the project while it is being worked on. Near the end of a project, a state inspector makes sure the lift has been installed correctly and watches it undergo a series of tests to ensure that its safety mechanisms are working properly.

Earning the correct license requires know-how that largely doesn’t apply to the type of elevators Marine Innovations staff build and install, according to the Botzets.

“We’re not an elevator company,” Lori Botzet says. “And it’s really hurting the industry by forcing us to

A Marine Innovations hillside lift in New York.

Left

abide by codes that only apply to half of our system.”

Also considered an “elevator” under state law are escalators, dumbwaiters, and belt lifts. Excluded are temporary lifts at, say, a construction site.

Mike Botzet, the company’s president and founder, says he has no problem with the state inspections conducted after Marine Innovations workers install a lift.

“I think it’s a good deal. It protects the homeowner,” Botzet says. “But when you start with all this licensing, that’s where I have a problem. I don’t agree with it.”

Marine Innovations pays about $125,000 each year to employ a licensed elevator contractor, a cost that Lori Botzet says gets passed on to their customers. Other workers at the company are operating underneath that employee’s license until they can qualify to take the test necessary to earn their own.

Hillside lifts like the kind Marine Innovations workers install are considered “limited elevator contractor work,” according to staff at the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry. Earning a limited journey worker license requires 24 months

installing lifts for an already-licensed contractor, and earning a limited master license requires 36 months.

“It adds a lot of cost and time and money,” Mike Botzet says. “We could provide the same service and go through all the tests without having a $125,000 salary on board.”

Many politicians aren’t familiar with the businesses in their district and vice versa, according to Lynn Shelton, Enterprise Minnesota’s vice president of marketing and organizational development. The consultancy plays “matchmaker,” she says, introducing business leaders and legislators to one another so the latter can understand what the former does and what their products are.

“Legislators need to understand and appreciate how valuable small manufacturers are to Minnesota’s economy,” Shelton says. “And when they’re passing laws, they ought to have knowledge of how these companies are operating and also how the laws that they’re passing might impact a manufacturer.”

Fischbach, through a spokesperson, says Marine Innovations is a great company that’s doing great work and is fighting an

uphill battle against supply chain complications and overregulation. The congressperson says meetings like the one she had with Marine Innovations staff are hugely beneficial and that she can’t adequately represent her constituents without speaking to as many of them as possible.

Fischbach, though, is a federal legislator, which means she can’t make changes to Minnesota’s business regulations, which are ensconced in state law, not federal law.

But Bill Martinson, a longtime business development adviser at Enterprise Minnesota, who’s been helping Marine Innovations expand its business and optimize its Frazee shop floor, says the meeting was to raise the issue with lawmakers as much as anything.

“The legislators can’t change regulation, that comes from bureaucrats,” Martinson says.

Sen. Utke, Martinson claims, suggested a meeting between Marine Innovations leaders and high-level administrators at the state’s labor and industry department.

That, Martinson says, would make the January meeting a figurative home run.

—Joe Bowen

CONTINUITY

A Legacy of Quality

Northern Woodwork retains a reputation for high quality with growth and productivity.

Apartial church pew in the entry of Northern Woodwork, Inc. (NWI) provides a reminder of the company’s beginnings in 1920. The three-ply oak pew dates back to when NWI built windows and sashes, pews, altars, and did custom milling. Owner Corey Teie says the pew end came from Trinity Lutheran Church in Thief River Falls. Since that pew was built, NWI has seen a continuous evolution of ownership, craftsmanship, products, and markets.

Teie joined Northern Woodwork in 1992, fresh from a post-high school job in a parts store in Thief River Falls. He wanted something better. He started at NWI with no background in carpentry, but after he’d been there for two years, his boss, Art Tranby, offered to put him through the Architectural Technology & Design program at Northland College.

Teie took classes during the day, then went directly to work, managing NWI’s late shift from 4:00 p.m. – 11:30 p.m.

to support his wife and three kids. Most nights, his wife brought the kids by with dinner for him. It was the only family time they could find together during the week.

A group of six craftsmen had incorporated to form the business in 1996, initially describing it as a manufacturer of “fixtures, furniture, building material and all other manner of articles partly or wholly wood.” As the business evolved, NWI expanded from hardwoods to work with everything from particle substrates and laminates to acrylics, metals, quartz, and just about anything else in an architect’s specs.

The company produces high quality, custom commercial work from a 30,000-square-foot facility. NWI works with major contractors for public and commercial buildings across Minnesota, North Dakota, and parts of South Dakota and Wisconsin. They build cabinetry for hospitals and offices; cubby-holes, lockers, and workspaces for schools and

libraries; eating bars and breakroom centers, dramatic entryways, light sconces, metal-wrapped columns — even bulletproof judges’ benches, jury boxes, and council seating for courtrooms and meeting chambers.

Ownership of the company has changed several times since 1920. In 1945, Howard Hoel, Sr., and his son Howard, Jr., acquired controlling interest in the business. Over the next few years, other stockholders came and went until Art Tranby and Bill Ness purchased NWI in 1981. By that time, virtually all of the company’s business was obtained through bids with major contractors. When Tranby and Ness decided to sell in 1996, a year after NWI was named Thief River’s Business of the Year, Teie and five other employees bought the company, coming full circle to another six-member ownership team. In the past few years, one owner passed away and four others sold their shares as they retired. When Teie bought out the last of the five in 2022, his son Cody bought into the company.

Cody started working with NWI as a high school senior in 2010, and has climbed the ranks much as his father did — starting on the shop floor and working his way up. Today he is NWI’s main saw operator and plant manager.

Bill Martinson, a business development consultant at Enterprise Minnesota, has worked with NWI over the years and notes

Owner Corey Teie (right) alongside son Cody, who bought into the company in 2022.

the consistency of quality and longevity of craftsmen. He says the company keeps up to date with the best machinery and delivers on time. “A company has to be good to get the bids NWI gets,” Martinson says, “and they are.”

Teie credits the company’s employees for its success. Now in his 32nd year at NWI, he has two employees with even longer tenures: one in his 42nd year and another in his 34th. The last partner Teie bought out had been with NWI for 38 years.

Most of the people who come work at NWI enter with no carpentry background, Teie says. “So we train everything.” New hires start out on the production floor, as he did over three decades ago. “We have a 90-day rule, but if I see somebody who is working extremely well within the first two weeks, I’ll give that person a raise right away.”

Cody describes his dad as “a laid-back guy who gets things done.”

“I don’t micro-manage,” his dad says. “I trust my employees to do their work; they know their jobs. I point them in a direction,

and they follow through.”

Today’s high tech machines help offset labor shortage issues; they cut, drill, glue, and edge boards quickly and efficiently. Every board that comes off the main saw is labeled with a bar code. Parts then go to

“A company has to be good to get the bids NWI gets.”

–Bill Martinson, business development consultant, Enterprise Minnesota

a CNC machine, where the operator scans a code that pinpointedly prescribes all the drilling needed on each piece. A dowel system is used to put cabinets together. A dowel inserter injects glue and then shoots a dowel into each hole. Cody foresees additional automation in the future, particularly as the company’s production continues to grow and laborers become more difficult to find.

The company has seen continued growth, with 2023 one of their best years yet. “You have to grow a little bit every

year, otherwise it doesn’t work,” Teie says. The plant’s site has enough space to add another 5,000 square feet if needed. “We can spend the money and add on,” Teie says, “but employment issues are the most challenging right now.”

Currently, NWI has 21 employees producing more than 40 workers could in past years, but Teie could use another estimator and another saw operator.

March through August are especially busy. Schools have only two and a half months in the summertime to get things done, Teie says. Last summer was NWI’s busiest ever. “We worked seven days a week all summer.” The company doesn’t have mandatory overtime, so Teie was often in the shop himself. He still loves the hands-on part of the job.

“We have a lot of schools lined up this summer already — five in Mankato alone and two or three other school projects, so we’re pretty full through August right now.”

The start of 2024, he says, is even better than 2023.

Sue Bruns

Peering at Improvement

New production-oriented peer councils enable manufacturers to discuss the nitty-gritty issues of the shop floor. COMMUNICATION

Sumit Mahajan recently joined a new Enterprise Minnesota Peer Council, and just a few months in, he says his company already is reaping significant benefits.

As production manager for General Label in Golden Valley, Mahajan represents one of nine manufacturers who have seized the opportunity to sharpen their operations and learn from one another.

While many of Enterprise Minnesota’s 10 other peer groups convene CEOs to discuss big-picture strategy in a wholly

confidential setting, Mahajan appreciates the chance to discuss the nitty-gritty issues of the production floor, even though they come from disparate industries.

“What’s a company? A company is a group of people making something or providing a service. So, that’s the common link: We all have people, and we all have products,” he says.

As its name suggests, General Label started out in the label business. But in the 40-some years since its inception, the

company evolved and now offers precision electronic printing, including membrane switch overlays and custom gaskets.

Regardless of product lineup, personnel issues remain a universal challenge, Mahajan says. General Label employs just south of 50 people and like most manufacturers is looking to hire.

“Most of my problems are related to employees. How can I motivate them? How can I form high-performing teams?” he asks, noting that all successful manufacturers strive for similar operational goals.

He’s found drawing from a collective pool of knowledge and experience to be invaluable, even when it comes to miscues.

“It’s good to learn from others’ mistakes,” Mahajan says.

For instance, he feels fortunate to have discussed his plans to roll out a KPI — key performance indicator — tracking system at General Label, only to receive a warning from fellow council members that his idea

“Many people tend to think of peer councils as networking. But our councils are different. Ours serve the purpose of: How can we help our manufacturers learn about each other and utilize that learning to become better companies themselves?”

–Kari Rusing, business development consultant, Enterprise Minnesota

of rewarding staff for ideas could prove counterproductive.

Eric Blaha, a business growth consultant for Enterprise Minnesota who facilitates this newly-formed group’s 3½- to 4-hour monthly meetings, says the council members gelled quickly into insightful discussions.

Mahajan appreciates how the meetings typically begin with “fast burn” conversations that enable members to share pressing concerns. He spends time in advance to narrow the scope of a challenge so that the discussion will prove useful.

Kari Rusing, a business development consultant for Enterprise Minnesota, has teamed up with Blaha to form the organization’s latest ops Peer Council, and says participants often discover a compelling

value proposition for their investment of time and money.

“To walk away from every meeting with a wealth of information and things to bring back and apply to your company is pretty amazing,” she says.

Meetings often follow that fast burn discussion with a presentation from a guest speaker who will discuss relevant issues, such as the principles of lean manufacturing, KPIs, measurables and accountability, tax code changes, artificial intelligence, and pending legislation that could affect businesses.

Blaha says the meetings help businesses step outside their bubbles and achieve breakthroughs.

“Manufacturers spend so much time in the same facility and in the same environment that it can be hard to see the forest for the trees. They don’t get unique and broad perspectives on how to solve problems,” Blaha says.

Rusing has found many manufacturers to be eager participants, especially coming out of the pandemic.

“People were looking for connections and conversations where they could compare stories and get advice,” she says. And that desire to share has not waned, even as conditions have improved.

“As we came off of the supply-chain issues, lead-times shortened and material wait-times shortened, it was good for operations people to compare notes to see how they were dealing with all this,” she says.

Enterprise Minnesota encourages peer council members to host site visits, where a first-hand view of other operations can make advice and feedback even more relevant.

Rusing says: “Manufacturers are proud of what they have going on. It’s always a treat for them to share that with other manufacturers and get feedback.

“Everyone’s looking for a way to improve,” she adds. “Many people tend to think of peer councils as networking. But our councils are different. Ours serve the purpose of: How can we help our manufacturers learn about each other and utilize that learning to become better companies themselves?”

“That learning journey in management and people never ends,” Rusing says. “While you may think you have the answer, there are always going to be curveballs or something to think about.”

Peter Passi

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THE STATE OF MANUFACTURING

Common Purpose Through Information

More than 70 people turn out for the rollout of the 2023 annual survey of manufacturing executives.

nterprise Minnesota has been working hard to tell manufacturers’ stories through its State of Manufacturing® survey, now in its 16th year. And the organization takes that message on the road, sharing the annual results in communities around the state. This February it organized an event in Duluth that drew an unusually robust crowd of around 70, says Arik Forsman, an economic development specialist for Minnesota Power, which hosted the gathering.

In all, 400 manufacturers were interviewed for the latest survey and another 200 participated in the related focus groups. Lynn Shelton, Enterprise Minnesota’s vice president of marketing and organizational

development, says it has proven to be a useful undertaking.

“There are a lot of stakeholders who are not aware, or may just be becoming aware, of the value of manufacturers and how much they contribute to Minnesota’s economy,” she says.

The State of Manufacturing surveys manufacturing executives about their challenges and opportunities, the feelings they have behind the economy, and where business is headed. “We get the results and then we publicize the heck out of them,” Shelton says.

Bob Kill, president and CEO of Enterprise Minnesota, presented the survey

results at seven regional events this year, including one in Minneapolis before an audience of more than 500 people.

He says it brings together all sorts of stakeholders, including educators, economic development folks, suppliers, lenders, and law firms.

“We see it as our role to bring these parties together to further manufacturing,” Kill says.

Forsman says he was impressed.

“I think that having them come up to Duluth and share highlights from their most recent survey and talk about some of the trends they’re seeing was pretty impactful for folks,” he says.

“Certainly, we seem to be seeing some challenges with our permitting system and the amount of legislation that manufacturers have had to adjust to recently,” Forsman says. “But there are also a lot of opportunities, too. And that was on full display.”

Kate Ferguson, director of trade and business development for the Duluth Seaway Port Authority, suggested Minnesota manufacturers could play a key role in driving the development of clean energy.

“We, as a state, have a really great opportunity to be the manufacturer of choice for the green economy,” she observed at the Duluth event.

Shelton says the survey has historically

Taking stock, making connections: The State of Manufacturing survey spurs valuable discussions in Duluth and in other communities.

unearthed emerging issues before they were well recognized by mass media, including the present workforce shortage that researchers first noted as it began to loom about a decade ago.

In response, Enterprise Minnesota has worked to build stronger ties between manufacturers and educators.

Joe Mulford, president of Pine Technical & Community College in Pine City, says those efforts are paying dividends and are encouraging more young people to go into manufacturing. During a video portion of the Duluth event, he said: “I don’t recognize there’s ever been more support for that pathway.”

“So, enrollment in higher education has been on a historical decline over the last decade. The exception to that has been in career technical education programs, and I think that’s exciting as we think about the future,” Mulford said.

Elena Foshay, Duluth’s director of workforce development, has been working with local stakeholders as part of a federal Good Jobs, Great Cities initiative:

“(This opportunity) is a great way to elevate what’s really important to small manufacturers throughout our region.”

—Michael Lattery, director of business finance, Entrepreneur Fund

“The number one priority was just raising awareness about the manufacturing industry in our region and the jobs that it provides, and then really thinking about how do we build stronger linkages and connections between career tech ed in the K-12 system up to community college, four-year college and beyond, and then with strong ties to jobs, to employers.”

Kill stressed that building a robust talent pipeline is crucial to manufacturers’ success.

“If you can’t get people, you can’t grow your business,” he says.

Brad Pieper, CEO of American Peat Technology in Aitkin, says finding capital

has been another recent challenge. “I see inefficiency in the market right now, where there’s all this capital sitting on the sidelines, yet the cost of borrowing is super high and there’s a lot of great projects out there.”

The survey raises the profile of Minnesota manufacturing, according to Kill.

The annual report is time-consuming and expensive, but Shelton says a team of 52 sponsors make it possible.

“They get out of it just as much as we get out of it, in terms of connecting with manufacturers, connecting with other suppliers, connecting with other stakeholders, and they really value those connections,” she says.

Rachel Johnson, president and CEO of APEX, an organization that works to drive investment in northeast Minnesota, notes the Duluth event brought together a broad cross-section of people.

“It wasn’t just manufacturers who attended but also all the support people, including folks from academia and financiers,” she says. “I think there’s an interest in how we all intersect and can help each other, so we have a bigger voice.”

Johnson describes what she sees as a growing spirit of “coopetition.”

She explains that manufacturers “recognize that they need to come together to address certain barriers they face in the state.” But Johnson says businesses also are competing fiercely for workers.

Michael Lattery, director of business finance at the Entrepreneur Fund, says Enterprise Minnesota does manufacturers a service in simply bringing them together.

“Small business owners’ voices are hard to gather, especially when they’re busy working all the time. So, when there’s a public opportunity to meet like this, it’s a great way to elevate what’s really important to small manufacturers throughout our region,” he says.

“It matters a lot to be able to invite people to something like this and to hear what’s really on the minds of manufacturers,” Lattery says.

He says such events also give manufacturers a chance to learn from one another and expand their networks in ways that lead to benefits they might not have anticipated.

“Connections are real. And that’s one of the magical things that can happen at events like this,” Lattery says.

Shelton says Duluth has emerged as a true manufacturing ally in recent years.

“Manufacturing has seen a renaissance, and Duluth is a part of that renaissance.”

Peter Passi

line, because that’s exactly how it works.

As expected, the consultants lost…but not by much.

“That was a transformational moment,” says Joe Carlin, general manager at Lind Electronics.

How transformational?

“It changed their whole perspective. After that experiment they were on board with making changes,” Blaha says. “Now they operate everything on a singlepiece flow line, and their productivity in distribution has jumped tremendously.”

The point, says Blaha, was that on a manufacturing shop floor — or anywhere else — it’s smart to question how we do things, and whether there’s a better way.

Race to Success

Starting with a packaging gambit, Lind Electronics uses efficiencies to goose profits.

rom the beginning, it seemed like a horrible mismatch — think Harlem Globetrotters vs. the Washington Generals.

A team of Lind Electronics package shipping veterans, who had shipped thousands of power supply units and other electronic equipment around the country, were about to compete in a race to see who can package the most parts. Their opponents: Enterprise Minnesota consultants Eric Blaha and Kari Rusing, who together had exactly zero experience packaging anything.

Why, exactly, are they doing this?

“We were struggling to get them to see how minor changes in the way they worked could result in significant improvements,”

Blaha says. “So, one day in the middle of class I thought, ‘Well, let’s go try it. We’ll put the masters against the Padawans.’” (The Padawans, of course, being the inexperienced packagers.)

When the race started, the Lind team dropped right into their familiar routine — pre-assembled boxes, printed labels up and down their arms, with warranty cards at the ready. They prepared packages for shipping in batches.

Team Blaha-Rusing prepared nothing. Instead of all that prep, they did it singleflow style, where one person executes one phase of the packaging process — boxing, labeling, etc. — before handing it off to the next phase. Think of it like an assembly

The packaging gambit, while technically unsuccessful, proved to be an eye-opener.

And it was just one example of leaving money on the table by not examining and improving inefficient processes and long-held habits.

Blaha and Rusing worked with Lind employees and management over several months. They conducted lean assessments and value stream mapping exercises, all to make them more profitable by removing waste and eliminating

“We

figured out we removed about a halfmillion dollars for the cost through that exercise.”

unnecessary work. And in several instances, those changes produced substantial financial impacts.

Lind has a reputation of making parts that almost never fail, a value instilled by company founder Leroy Lind, who started the company in the basement of his Minnetonka home. The business’ early struggles disappeared when Lind secured a contract to provide power supplies for Apple computers. That coup would eventually lead to contracts with IBM, Panasonic, and other tech industry giants. But while the industry evolved and Lind evolved with it, one thing never changed: an almost compulsive commitment to quality.

Lind’s quality control process required that parts are double, and sometimes triple, checked, even when the manufacturing

process had progressed to a point where it’d be impossible to fix the part. Through value stream mapping and data analysis, Enterprise Minnesota helped Lind put quality in the process rather than inspection, which reduced waste.

“Lind has been known for a really, really high quality product. But they’ve achieved it at their own expense because they over-inspect,” Blaha says. “So they’re spending massive amounts of money to achieve those last couple tenths of a percent.”

Added Carlin, “We were just adding a tremendous amount of waste to that product. We figured out we removed about a half-million dollars for the cost through that exercise.”

This realization led to brainstorming, with employees offering ideas on how to improve that process without sacrificing quality.

The result?

“By partnering with Enterprise Minnesota we recognized enormous

Left to right: Cortlann Little, manufacturing engineer; Joe Carlin, general manager; Travis Wilk, production manager.

capacity gains through workflow design,” Carlin says. “We also realized we were tripping over dollars to save dimes.”

Carlin suspects the company wouldn’t have enjoyed this gain without the guidance of Enterprise Minnesota as a neutral, third-party observer.

He says that production employees might have been skeptical of a request to perform their jobs differently to become

more efficient and save time and money. But the way Blaha and Rusing helped employees visualize ways to improve was softer, easier to swallow.

“That neutral party facilitation gave them a voice in the process, gave them a voice in the innovation and the fixing of the workflow design — in a way that we wouldn’t have gotten had we done it internally,” Carlin says.

Carlin says both he and Lind’s operations manager could have executed a value stream mapping session with any department at the company. But, he says, had they done that the ultimate message would have been prescriptive, or like a decree. With Enterprise Minnesota consultants delivering the message, it came sans agenda. They just want to help the company get better, Carlin says.

“Doing it this way gives them the voice,” he says. “They have ownership of those ideas. I think that was a big part of success.”

—Robb Murray

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EXPANSION

Pine Tech Breaks New Ground

Pine Tech’s new building project will increase the school’s facilities by 30%.

Officials from Pine Technical and Community College ceremoniously broke ground in early May for an ambitious $24.1 million building project that will add 24,000 square feet of space for technical trades and nursing to its existing 80,000 square foot campus. All told, the project will encompass:

• A welding lab that will be 10 times larger than its current space;

• A gunsmithing lab with 72 student

stations and a state-of-the-art test range that will support three cohorts; and

• An automotive lab designed to support 46 students.

A new student commons area will connect the addition to the rest of the campus and its expanded nursing area and sciences classroom.

“It was time to finally integrate the trades and engineering labs, create

automated systems that combined manufacturing and a prototyping lab, so that all these programs could happen ideally right in the middle of everything,” says Ann Voda, president and principal architect of BTR, the Minneapolis firm that designed the new facility.

Pine Tech President Joe Mulford, who has guided the expansion project throughout its life, called the achievement “the single largest investment in career and technical education in our region’s history.”

He said the development began in 2016 with a master facility planning process that grew from the realization that “our region’s businesses needed more skilled workers, the region needed more entrepreneurs, and more households needed higher wages from having high skills.”

A key challenge for planners, he adds, was that the school’s limited physical plan would thwart its effort to meet that growing demand. As evidence, he cites Pine’s all-time highpoint in enrollment this year. “All indicators are that future years will be just as strong.”

Left to right: Jake Kiel, national sales engineer, Atscott Manufacturing Co. Inc.; Karen Jansen, board member, Pine Tech Foundation; Nolan Peterson, project manager, BCI Construction; Bill Maki, vice chancellor for finance & facilities, Minnesota State; Sen. Jason Rarick, R-District 11; Ann Voda, president, principal project planner & programmer, Bents/Thompson/Rietow, Inc.; Ann Boldt, composition/technical communication instructor, Pine Technical and Community College; Gina Pettie, acting mayor, Pine City; Steve Hallan, Pine County commisioner; and Joe Mulford, president, Pine Technical and Community College.

Staff Update

Enterprise Minnesota adds two new experts to its staff.

With backgrounds in a wide range of business practices, two new experts have joined the staff at Enterprise Minnesota. Doug Dittbenner and Andre Tramm are well-positioned to help match manufacturers with the consulting services that will best serve them, says Bob Kill, Enterprise Minnesota’s president and CEO. Dittbenner brings two decades of strategic business development and sales management to our team. He’ll cover southern and western Minnesota and

portions of Carver and Wright counties.

With experience in telecommunications and construction, Dittbenner will now focus exclusively on manufacturing. He likens the process of transforming raw materials into finished, manufactured products to writing music, which he does in his spare time. “You start with a blank page and add lines, beats, and harmony to create music. Manufacturing is similar. You start with just materials and create amazing products,” he says.

One of Dittbenner’s goals is to meet faceto-face with all the manufacturing clients in his territory. As a resident of Mankato, he understands the critical role manufacturers play in their communities. “Their success leads to the success of the towns and the people around them,” he says.

Tramm operated his own business for several years before joining Enterprise Minnesota this spring. His territory covers Ramsey County and includes some sections of Washington and Anoka counties. His favorite aspects of running his company — sales and customer relations — make him an excellent fit for the role of business development

consultant. “I love bringing value to customers and seeing the satisfaction on their faces as a project moves forward,” he says.

Tramm has already participated in a handful of consulting sessions since joining Enterprise Minnesota last month. At one, Ally Johnston, one of our top business consulting experts, was presenting to a group of production workers. “Their transformation from being somewhat resistant to the new process to totally buying into it was amazing,” he says. “Having an expert who knows how to get the whole team on board makes a huge difference for companies.”

Both Dittbenner and Tramm appreciate that Enterprise Minnesota builds longterm relationships with manufacturing clients. “We’re with them throughout the process and always available. It’s not a one-and-done arrangement, and I love that,” Tramm says.

“Our customers want to get better at the process, so I like the emphasis we put on long-term relationships at Enterprise Minnesota,” Dittbenner says.

INNOVATORS

Smiling in Fosston

Dean 3Digital (D3D) uses dental technology to bring innovation and profit to a small town.

hen Fosston-area dentist Todd Sandwick came up with a better idea for an orthodontic retainer, no one predicted that his new business would become a cornerstone for innovation and economic development for the city.

Sandwick graduated from the University of Minnesota School of Dentistry and started practicing in his father’s dental office in Bagley in 1993. Soon afterward, he was recruited to join Fosston Family Dental. Sandwick bought the business in 1995 and continues to practice at what is now Smile Designs by Sandwick.

Orthodontic retainers, the final step for most tooth alignment processes, are only effective when patients wear them. But acrylic retainers are thick, often uncomfortable, and tend to produce an annoying “retainer lisp.” They’re also cumbersome to wear while eating, and their porous surface retains food smells and bacteria.

In 2012, after several years of working with young patients whose retainers had inadvertently been tossed into the trash when left on a cafeteria tray or chewed up by the family dog, Sandwick had a better idea.

He designed a cast metal retainer, the Dean Ultra Thin Retainer, named for his father. Today’s metal-printed retainer is about 0.3 millimeters — about twice the thickness of aluminum foil — and is considerably thinner and stronger than traditional acrylic retainers (about 0.7 millimeters). Wearers can eat with the metal retainer in place, and the thin design makes it easier to speak without distortion.

There was no doubt the Dean Ultra Thin was a good idea, but Sandwick needed to find a manufacturer. His wife Melinda encouraged him to patent the device, which he did on the first try, after some good advice to not limit the patent to cast metal retainers.

The first Dean 3s were cast by Johns Dental Laboratories in Terre Haute, Ind., in 2015. But casting dental products takes time and is becoming a lost art. Sandwick needed to find a manufacturer that could 3D print cobalt chromium alloy orthodontic devices.

He had met Bryce Oakes through a mutual friend and admired his ability to think outside the box. Now the company’s COO and co-owner, Oakes, a farm kid from Pembina, N.D., says where he grew up “if you didn’t know what you were doing, you got your neighbors together and figured stuff out.” He brought that collaborative can-do spirit to D3D.

Oakes offered to help Sandwick find a lab to 3D print metal retainers. Sandwick had many connections in the orthodontics field and Oakes had a variety of other connections. Plus, he wasn’t afraid to pick up the phone and cold-call people he didn’t know.

Oakes and Sandwick hit several roadblocks: Some labs said 3D printing wouldn’t work; others said it could, but it was not financially feasible. Most metal 3D printing was happening in high-tech fields like aerospace.

Finally, they connected with a dental lab in Albany, N.Y.

Today the original retainer is less than 2% of their business. The company prints various orthodontic appliances for several orthodontic labs throughout the U.S. and Canada.

“We sent them sample files to validate the product, which got us very excited,” Oakes says. “Then we made two trips to Albany to learn the process hands-on.”

In 2017, they took the Dean Ultra Thin Retainer to the Northwest Minnesota IDEA Competition, won first place, and earned a spot in the MN Cup, the largest entrepreneur competition in the country. They finished in the top eight there.

In January 2018, Oakes left his insurance career to join D3D and focus full time on developing 3D printed orthodontic

Todd Sandwick and Bryce Oakes

appliances. Todd’s wife Melinda had been operating a bakery in a shop attached to the dental office. She also came aboard, and they closed the bakery, converted it into a manufacturing plant, set up their first metal 3D printer, and started printing Dean Ultra Thin Retainers. The date of their first printing — 09-15-18 — is etched on the wall in D3D’s post-finishing room.

The Sandwicks and Oakes applaud the city of Fosston for making things happen as quickly as possible. Todd says about 20 people showed up one day — council members and community leaders — to check out the operation.

They asked, “What do we need to do to keep you here?”

The City, the local Ultima bank, and Minnesota Business Finance worked with the company to keep them in Fosston. The City helped with infrastructure needs for power and utilities as well as financing the adjacent parcel of land for phase two of their expansion. They built a 3,500-squarefoot addition onto the plant, brought in two more printers, and started production there in January 2022.

Meanwhile, Sandwick’s team continued to create more metal orthodontic products. Today the original retainer is less than 2% of their business. The company prints various orthodontic appliances for several orthodontic labs throughout the U.S. and Canada.

“I wouldn’t say we’re inventors,” Oakes says. “We’re innovators and adapters. We’re replacing appliances that are analog based — made by technicians, mostly by hand — with 3D-printed appliances.”

Oakes describes one D3D innovation that replaces orthodontic “separators” used to open up spaces between teeth:

“With digital scanning technology, we can design appliances that don’t go interproximal (in between the teeth) or subgingival. Kids are much happier because they don’t have separators that go below the gum line and that could cause discomfort and bleeding.”

Oakes estimates approximately 15% of orthodontists currently use 3D-printed bonded appliances, but within the next three to five years, he believes it will rise to about 90% adoption.

New processes cut the number of ortho appointments needed, opening up the schedule for other dental patients sooner, allowing dentists and orthodontists to see more patients in a day and generating more income.

As patients find the ease of a digital bite scan compared to the cumbersome impression trays full of alginate putty, there’s no going back. Traditional analog appliances take considerably longer to produce and can’t match the precision fit of 3D orthodontic appliances.

Once a patient’s scan is complete, the orthodontic lab sends the prescription and relevant patient information digitally to D3D along with any special instructions. If the order is received by 11:00 a.m. central time, most orders are designed, printed, processed, and shipped by the end of next day’s business.

Digital designers manage things on the front end, communicating with the lab, making sure the specifics of the doctor’s prescriptions are clear. As many as 50 appliances can be printed at one time on a “build plate.” After printing, the build plate is removed from the printer and the appliances are heat treated and removed from the plate.

The last step is post-finishing, which involves removing build supports and creating a jewelry-like finish. Each part is checked for fit and accuracy.

Post-finishing is labor intensive. Within the past year, D3D’s post-finishing crew

has grown from five to 12 team members. Last summer, D3D experienced a major growth spurt, doing most of the work for over 50 different labs. Only four other labs in the U.S. are printing metal orthodontic devices. This year, Oakes predicts, D3D’s production will more than double.

Oakes attributes the company’s growth and success in their half decade of printing orthodontic appliances to their 27 employees. “We look for new hires who can get along with people and are eager to learn,” he says. “You have to have some aptitude, but a positive, can-do attitude is key.”

The company plans to expand production as more orthodontic clinics and labs adopt the newest and best technologies for their patients. Future areas of growth and efficiency will involve improvements in automation and AI-supplemented CAD design. These advances will allow D3D to produce more products with fewer staff but higher skills and higher pay.

Sandwick says dentists and orthodontists are slowly catching on and becoming more comfortable with hanging up the paradigms they’ve been familiar with for 120 years.

Sue Bruns

Left: A post-finisher works on an orthodontic appliance. Right: A print plate of orthodontic pieces.

Enterprise Minnesota’s Nicole Lian says that not all companies communicate in a consistent manner and at key moments.

KEEPING WORKERS

Culture Matters

How communicating a well-defined company culture boosts employee retention.

When helping companies boost retention, talent and leadership expert Nicole Lian urges leaders to integrate a well-defined corporate culture into key areas of employees’ experiences. Lian is one of Enterprise Minnesota’s business growth consultants whose advice has been in high demand as manufacturers continue to wrestle with persistent low employment. Lian says manufacturers understand that retaining employees is more cost-effective and less disruptive than continually recruiting a stream of new hires to replace those who leave. She says the key to successful retention efforts is to use culture to keep employees closely connected to the company, especially in three critical areas of their

employment: hiring, professional development, and compensation.

First things first

Enterprise Minnesota President Bob Kill has repeated for years that employees have become manufacturers’ most important customers. All outcomes, from quality and on-time delivery to profitability and growth, depend on employee satisfaction.

Most manufacturers in today’s low unemployment climate strive to develop employee-centered corporate cultures. Still, many struggle to articulate and demonstrate a clear sense of their culture to employees.

“The companies I work with are very employee-focused,” Lian says, “but not all

of them communicate that in a consistent manner and at key moments.”

That might be because even the concept of corporate culture can be difficult to define. It isn’t about hanging banners with catchy slogans in the breakroom, Lian says. Instead, she describes it as a combination of the values, shared purpose, traditions, and communication styles that drives the team.

In companies with a strong, employeecentered culture, leaders visibly live out their stated values that treating employees, customers and suppliers with respect. Employees feel valued and appreciated; they understand they are a critical part of a team and want to do their best work to help the company reach its goals.

Right from the beginning

Lian says communicating culture is valuable throughout an employee’s life cycle with the company.

In the early stages of recruiting, both employers and employees are determining if they are a good fit for each other. During informal networking or structured recruiting events, managers need to clearly and honestly articulate the company culture to possible hires.

Leaders need to be transparent about what employees can expect from the company: How do employees and managers interact with each other? Are employees empowered to offer suggestions or make process changes? Are they encouraged to develop new skills? Is there clear room for career growth?

Employers should also use that time to determine if candidates are likely to thrive within the company’s culture. “Have a clear understanding of how your company communicates and then ask potential employees about their communication styles to see how they will fit in,” Lian says. “Ask them to talk about a time when they worked as a team to solve a problem. Invite them to explain how they have handled a flaw in a system.”

While hiring often feels urgent, Lian encourages companies to avoid rushing to fill open positions. “You know your values, and you know your purpose. If you take your time to find employees who will fit with your culture you’ll have much better odds of long-term retention,” Lian says.

Onboarding procedures also offer a great opportunity to demonstrate how culture translates into day-to-day expectations, Lian says. “Use this time to get employees started in the right direction.”

A company with a creative, flexible cul-

PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBERT LODGE

ture should introduce that atmosphere on day one. Hands-on tours, workshops on innovation and creative thinking, mentorship programs with internal innovators or visionaries will display the mindset that new employee is expected to have, Lian says.

Onboarding in a family-oriented culture should focus on building relationships, team-building activities, and “show-andtell” about the organization’s traditions and values. Coaching or mentoring programs should connect new hires to those who can best demonstrate and instill that ethic.

Lifelong development

Companies that promise career growth and development opportunities during the hiring process must stay true to those commitments. “The worst thing you can do for your company culture and employee morale is to assure employees that you value their personal and professional growth and never give them additional training or responsibility,” Lian says.

It’s tempting to keep top performers in the same position, Lian says, noting that moving people into new roles and filling those

openings adds more work for leaders. To ensure that doesn’t happen, she encourages companies to make employee growth an established, predictable part of operations.

Employees will appreciate having a written, scheduled process that reviews training opportunities and explores career growth within the company, Lian says, adding that managers should discuss professional growth with employees at least every six months. “Once you boil that into your culture, you will have people who want and expect to keep learning. And that will translate into higher employee satisfaction.”

Lian also recommends using a skills training matrix to assess what a team needs now, and what it will need to support future objectives and growth. Involving employees in determining those strategies will help employees understand processes and needs as much as anyone in the organization.

When employees are consistently challenged to grow, and they are part of the process that determines what skills the company will need for future success, it strengthens their connection to the company. “They won’t feel the need to look at other employ-

ers for opportunities,” Lian says.

Finally, manufacturers should emphasize personal development by marketing current in-company opportunities, even those outside an employee’s existing skill set. “Let them know about all the openings. They might not be in their current area, and might not involve lateral moves,” she says. “But it shows the company is true to its commitment to encouraging employee development.”

Aligning compensation and culture

Effective managers use the structure and communication surrounding employee compensation to reinforce culture and build good will in the workforce, Lian says. She recommends evaluating market-level compensation, making necessary changes, and communicating those changes. “Even if you are already paying at market levels, it’s important to let employees know that. If you need to make some adjustments, explain what they are and why you’re making them,” she says.

Kate Peterson

Four Questions

Clint Link, principal, North Branch Area High School

D

escribe your tech-oriented evolution as an educator.

I was a high school social studies teacher. I started drifting from traditional teaching methods when I saw how Chromebooks provided tools for more independent learning. So, I started learning and teaching a little bit differently. I eventually left the classroom to teach teachers how to leverage technology to personalize education for kids with different backgrounds and skill sets.

I moved from just technology into career pathways as career and technical

When I moved to North Branch as a principal, I found a growing district that shared my vision. We have the facilities and the postsecondary partners to execute it. I think we are what the modern high school should be.

education evolved. High schools went away from career tech ed in the late ’90s because reading and math standardized tests — and later science — were being pushed on schools. So, we put our resources into those spaces. But labor markets were looking for students with skilled-based understanding. When I moved to North Branch as a principal, I found a growing district that shared my vision. We have the facilities and the postsecondary partners to execute it. I think we are what the modern high school should be.

Parents understand that most kids don’t need a four-year postsecondary path. I worked in Waseca for 20 years

of my career. Sixty percent of jobs in that region required a certification or a two-year degree. Only 20% of those jobs required a four-year degree, but we still had 80% of our graduates going to fouryear institutions. They were becoming educated and under-skilled for the labor market — and they were also getting severely in debt.

How meaningful is the relationship between secondary schools and tech schools?

It’s essential. We need each other. At the high school level, I need a

INNOVATIONS

postsecondary partner with the resources — either teachers or equipment — to help kids get higher levels of skill training in areas like industrial, machining, welding, or auto courses. These are very expensive courses to run. We have several postsecondary partners like Pine Tech, in our case, that have equipment and have those teachers. And then it’s up to us to be creative in how we partner together. Do we share equipment for a duration of time? Do they bring a trailer to our campus so that we can use some equipment for a period of time? Do we do tours? Can

Clint Link, principal of North Branch Area High School, turned heads at the regional rollout of Enterprise Minnesota’s 2023 State of Manufacturing® in North Branch when he discussed the proactive role of public education in the future of Minnesota’s manufacturers. Link has been principal at North Branch since 2022. Before that, he served in several positions in the Waseca Public Schools district beginning in 2000 — including as a teacher, director of innovation and career pathways, and girls’ basketball coach. Link received a degree in secondary education from the University of North Dakota and a master’s degree from Saint Mary’s University. “My entire education career is built on creating systems and content that allow learners to first better understand the world around them but second, to see their futures in it,” he says. “The world around us is constantly changing. How we teach and learn needs to reflect that.”

kids work at night up there? It’s a good partnership: They need our students to go into their pathway, and we need their skilled training and equipment.

What about the relationship with manufacturers?

The Perkins V Federal Grant for Career and Technical Education helps us supplement the associated expenses and requires that we have an advisory board composed of more than 50% of industry partners. Those industry partners help guide what and how we’re teaching kids and give us a direct partnership in resources. For example, our local Ford dealership Anderson & Koch helped us get a free curriculum for our auto classes. And the more we use that curriculum, the more equipment that comes to us at no cost. Our advisory committees also help the work-based learning program. Those internships help them evaluate the talent pipeline of new entry-level workers who could move right out of high school and into their field.

You’re fairly bullish about how North Branch is progressing on all of this. What’s your vision for how that educational process might evolve?

My vision for this school is built around a concept called “Choice, not Chance” that I used as a basketball coach. We have choices every day that directly influence our future. Once high school kids understand how things they do now will impact their future — and how those things are within their control — then it’s up to me and our staff to provide them with relevant opportunities. Those choices are going to evolve with what the industry needs.

The second part is called the Big Blur, a concept that blends the high school setting and post-secondary classes with work-based learning. I see that scaling out more in the next five years: More kids taking collegelevel courses in career and technical education and more kids leaving school during the day to do internships, externships, or apprenticeships. So, when they leave high school, they feel confident about whatever education choices they need to make to start their professional career faster.

KEEPING MINNESOTA A MANUFACTURING LEADER

Cultures

A Brighter Future

St.

Paul Corrugating

Company enhances its leadership development and human resources operations to set the stage for growth.

A

fter nearly 140 years in operation, St. Paul Corrugating Company (SPC) was poised for fresh growth. But there were some concerns. Different functions at the company were siloed, threatening its ability to pursue new opportunities for its diverse line of residential window well products.

Hugh Burhans, president and owner of Columbia Heights-based SPC, knew it was time to take action. The entire staff of 20plus people, from shipping and assembly to leadership, needed to change in order to grow the business.

Bob Arvold, an Enterprise Minnesota business development consultant, observed other potential obstacles to growth. As a small business, SPC lacked a dedicated human resources person who defined job responsibilities and linked compensation to

performance. That resulted in a staff “that lacked understanding of how their jobs tie to the company’s strategy and goals,” he says.

“Hugh has always had a desire to create a positive culture of communication,” Arvold says. But “what he needed was structure to give employees the opportunity and skills to build accountability in their respective areas.”

A 50-year veteran of SPC, Burhans understood that it would be more effective to bring in outside expertise to make the necessary changes. He retained Enterprise Minnesota to guide key staff through leadership development and bring more structure to its human resources functions. And with these efforts to get back on track,

By Suzy Frisch

the company is now growing.

“There’s no question it’s been a good investment of time and dollars spent, which I’m happy to say. You’re not buying a new piece of equipment or adding on to the building — you’re basically trying to invest in your human capital,” Burhans says. “The bottom line is, if I can’t have an organization that’s running in top form, it limits my ability to go out and get more business. You are nothing without your people, and I would add that people aren’t much without a good business or a good culture — you need both.”

Before working with Enterprise Minnesota, Burhans would have said that SPC paired a family-oriented culture with a propensity to occasionally fly by the seat of its pants. Many of the staff are thirdgeneration employees with long tenures

Employees in a staff training room. Hugh Burhans says he looked for structure to get employees working from the same playbook.

who have helped the company thrive for decades. Now those attributes have been burnished with a more professional glow, from the way staff communicate with each other to how employees receive feedback from leadership.

Early results from the Enterprise Minnesota consulting have been positive, says Jeremy Thornburgh, who joined SPC in 2021 to lead sales and account management. To start, it helped the company identify some unrecognized talent who stepped into leadership positions. “We have a really good crew right now,” he says. “We’re here and focused on one goal and realizing that everyone has a role in achieving the goal of getting orders out and satisfying customers.”

Metal to its core

SPC has long operated in the realm of metal fabrication. Its niche lies in manufacturing products for basements and foundations, particularly focused on egress window wells. From galvanized window wells to ladders, covers, and grates, the company’s Lux-Right™ brand is sold through wholesale distribution. Its product menu of 250 options also includes egress window systems featuring energy-efficient tilting windows.

engineering industries.

While pausing its regular work to contribute to World War II efforts, St. Paul Corrugating ran advertisements targeting homebuilders across the country. It read: “When peace returns, look to us again for ample stocks of Lux-Right Areawalls, Yellow-end Culverts, But-N-Tite Roofing, Skylights and Ventilators, rain-carrying equipment, and special sheet steel fabrications.”

Post-war, a new owner moved the company’s operations to Columbia Heights, where it operates out of two neighboring

SPC has been steady and successful, owing to its loyal customer base and investments in new technology, including robotics. Though the company was humming along, there was room for improvement, Burhans says. In recent years, employee relations started getting rocky as veteran staff retired and new employees joined the team. Everyone wasn’t always on board with various changes, and communication among team members eroded.

Burhans came to understand that an outside consultant like Enterprise Minnesota might be more effective in instituting the changes he wanted to see. “I needed to take myself out of the whole culture change and bring in someone with professional HR skills to break down those barriers,” he says. “We have opportunities — and our inability to create some of these changes could jeopardize our growth.”

Adding a dose of structure

Its roots date back to 1885, when two French-Canadian cornice makers set up shop in St. Paul to develop architectural metal products. Its early business involved fabricating sheet steel and other metals for contractors and builders in the region. SPC kept up with the evolving times, adding corrugated metal, ornamentation, steel ceilings, and other roofing lines to its product assortment.

In the early 20th century, SPC honed its craft in residential metal, producing garages and other components of manufactured homes sold in the Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalog. It also developed metal window well products and stayed on top of advances in metal roofing. According to a 1943 article in Snips magazine, the company was a pioneer in sheet metal fabrication for the building, highway, and

buildings. SPC’s residential building egress business really took off about two decades later as building codes started requiring basement egress access.

“The basic window well had been in existence since the 1900s, but the building codes forced a change in our product. It was an opportunity for new growth,” Burhans says. “The code was adopted state by state over the last 30 years. In the 1990s and 2000s, the code was a primary driver of our new product development.”

Over time, SPC focused on the egress opportunity, developing a vertically integrated business model. To eliminate logistics headaches and costs, the company sells solely to distributors. They supply SPC products to hardware stores, lumberyards, big box retailers, and building supply companies.

In working with Enterprise Minnesota, Burhans’ goals included incorporating additional structure and processes that would get employees working from the same playbook. He also sought more uniform ways to incent strong performances and compensate staff.

Nicole Lian, an Enterprise Minnesota business growth consultant, started by facilitating a custom leadership development program to foster effective communication among SPC staff. It was eye-opening for many employees to learn about their own and others’ distinctive leadership styles, based on Tracom’s Social Styles assessment. Participants also engaged with techniques for recognizing and accommodating their co-workers’ mix of styles.

When Lian started this work in early 2022, several people reported a culture that was lacking in trust, openness, and honesty. Much of the leadership development, focused on front-line supervisors, addressed essential skills and interpersonal communications. She helped employees develop strategies to bring a

Hugh Burhans, president and owner of St. Paul Corrugating, stands aside an egress window.

more professional tone to interactions among the team.

“It had been a ‘do as I say, and just get it done’ culture. Coming into SPC and really getting to know people and helping them realize that you can give individuals inspiration to want to do really good work and want to be here by listening to them, teaching them — that really helped,” Lian says. “They became cognizant that they need to work on the business as opposed to just working in the business. By taking a breath and putting some things in place, I’ve seen this huge turnaround.”

That shift has been apparent to Rick Kramber, too. He came onboard at SPC in 2020 as the production supervisor,

“SPC is heading in one direction, instead of all different directions.”

–Rick Kramber, operations supervisor, St. Paul Corrugating

moving into the role of operations supervisor in 2023. Initially, Kramber saw a company that was investing in itself with new machinery and trying to make improvements. Yet some people lacked information about their job responsibilities while others were getting direction from too many sources.

“The difference from when I started to where we are today with the improvements that have been made, it’s beginning to look and feel more professional,” Kramber says. “SPC is heading in one direction, instead of all different directions. And now when I leave most days, I feel like we have made a difference.”

After implementing the leadership development program, Kramber notices a difference in himself, too: “It was such an eye-opener for me. If I could have known what I learned about leadership styles 40 years ago, my life in the manufacturing world and management positions would have been so much different. Learning my leadership style as others see me [compared to] where I saw myself was the most important thing I could have learned about myself, and that is something anyone in a leadership position needs to know.”

For example, Kramber appreciates having better techniques for interacting with other people. “It just seems to be more free and non-confrontational. I believe that was the one thing I was missing in my career,” he adds. “Once you have that

and learn how to work with other styles, it makes you feel like some of the weight of the job is lifted off your back.”

Pay for performance

When Sue Swanson joined SPC in 2019 to take charge of marketing operations, she saw that the company needed to add more structure to its small business culture. She was accustomed to working at 3M, a much larger company that had defined roles, responsibilities, and a regular process for employee reviews. “It was a big culture shift,” Swanson says. She was happy that Lian would be augmenting some of the HR changes Swanson started. In 2023, Lian launched the second phase of the consulting work, completing a project to document all of SPC’s processes and identify which position/person was responsible for each step. Lian deployed the RACI system to identify which roles are responsible, accountable, consulted, or informed for each task. Then Lian and SPC staff developed job descriptions for every position with clear expectations for the required level of involvement.

“Hugh is trying to transform the company with processes and personnel in place to scale up to a larger volume. We went through the process of getting buy-in and understanding what the transformation will be,” Swanson says.

Lian also helped SPC implement performance management policies and procedures. That meant introducing a mechanism for year-round performance management, compared to one-time, annual reviews. The company is in the process of instituting a formal performance management cycle that is tied to compensation. Using the plan, develop, monitor, review, and reward template, SPC started with 360-degree reviews of the office staff and team-based reviews for everyone else. Employees also reviewed themselves.

“During the individual review sessions, we found success in having key leadership and stakeholder individuals in the conversation, and we worked to keep it very proactive and positive. We were having very open and honest conversations about what employees are doing very well, and other areas where we might not have seen strong performance,” Lian says.

This activity was successful thanks to SPC leaders’ enhanced leadership and communication skills that they developed during Lian’s first session. Then the group

would ask individuals about their goals, what they liked and wanted to continue doing, and what they might like to do differently. “Through that we got a full list of feedback that we were able to gather and put some action toward,” she adds.

The review system allowed company leaders to give positive feedback where it was due and address any nagging performance issues. SPC provided constructive feedback, gave employees opportunities to address it, and asked how company leaders could help them improve. Though those conversations can be difficult, Lian says, they provide employees with clearly defined expectations for roles and performance.

For this year, employees set personal goals and a goal tied to team or organizational success. Now SPC has started conducting quarterly reviews that track progress toward meeting those objectives. At the end of the year, the company will have more data to evaluate and assess employees’ performances.

“We wanted to make the process as easy as possible,” Lian says. “It gets down to three

questions: What did you achieve? What do you need to do next? And what do you want to develop? We can see how they did to plan and if we need to make adjustments or add new goals and objectives.”

Another change involved pay structure. Lian completed market analyses on every position to determine compensation ranges, with Burhans seeking to continue offering generous pay and benefits. Using the new performance review system, SPC now has a consistent way to provide salary adjustments and communicate them to employees.

These developments have been positive, Thornburgh says. He sees benefits from having more ways to measure the company’s and employees’ performance through metrics, such as on-time delivery, quality, or productivity. This gives SPC more insight into why a department might be struggling or thriving. “It helps make each individual and department more accountable,” he says. “I think it will help get everybody moving in the same direction, toward the same goals. It’s giving us a greater understanding of the whole.”

Burhans agrees, finding it effective

to define standards, then assess people against those metrics. It’s allowed teams to self-manage, problem-solve, and hold each other accountable. “If you can’t communicate what your expectations are, you will never be able to measure them,” he says. “That has helped us.”

These days, Lian notices a marked difference in the atmosphere at SPC.

“When manufacturers are producing really well, there is a hum. Now when I walk in, I hear that hum more consistently. People communicate better and there are different lines of communication open between the two buildings. They are working much smarter now and they are more engaged, and engagement is related to retention. That retention really helps with the culture of being open and honest and transparent.”

Customers have taken notice, too. Swanson attributes much of this success to employees understanding how they can impact quality and timeliness to meet customer demand. She adds, “It’s putting some validity to what we’re doing, how we’re doing, and that we’re serious about growing.”

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Future Vision

Building a Pipeline

Northern Tool + Equipment’s Tools for the TradesTM program revs up high school students’ interest in hands-on careers.

By Suzy Frisch

Suresh Krishna, CEO

The excitement was palpable when the Lakeville North High School students got their rat rod go-kart engine running for the first time. The teenagers cheered, highfived, and perhaps even shed a few tears of joy. Months of challenging work in their Manufacturing, Metals, & Welding class to design, fabricate, and assemble a made-from-scratch vehicle resulted in the revving, proving they were heading in the right direction.

The students are competing with a Minneapolis Public Schools team based at Roosevelt High School to deliver a running, drivable go-kart by the end of the school year. The test drivers of these machines? None other than NASCAR superstar Richard Petty and renowned motorcyle builder Billy Lane.

Kevin Baas, a teacher in the STEM

Tools for the Trades also brings in professional tradespeople or Northern Tool employees to share their knowledge with teachers and students.

Engineering and Innovation department at Lakeville North, says that his students are so pumped to work on their go-kart that he can barely take attendance before they race into the shop. “As a teacher, this is a win-win,” Baas says. “They want to work on it immediately. They are learning tools and fabrication and engineering, and they are learning real world skills that will make them successful.”

Fueling the competition are the professional-grade, spanking new tools that students are using to build their gokart, plus a NorthStar engine, all of which came from Northern Tool + Equipment’s Tools for the TradesTM high school program launched in 2021 in honor of the company’s 40th anniversary. Tools for the Trades gives back to the communities where it has retail stores and inspires more youth to pursue trades-based careers.

“Our mission is to honor and serve people who do the tough jobs. Think

about the people in the trades tackling tough jobs every day — we want to pay tribute to them,” says Suresh Krishna, CEO of Burnsville-based Northern Tool. “We looked around and decided that the best way to do that is to build the next generation of tradespeople.”

Addressing a shortage

A host of industries contend with a deficit of skilled tradespeople, with more young people gravitating lately toward four-year degrees. The need for people to fill jobs in sectors like manufacturing, HVAC, plumbing, construction, and automotive has been a pressing challenge in Minnesota and across the country for years. Retail staff at Northern Tool’s 140 stores hear repeatedly from customers that they are looking for employees — do they know anyone?

An idea took shape to connect with nearby high schools and donate tools to their career and technical education (CTE)

professional-grade tools and equipment.”

Northern Tool formed a nonprofit within its corporate foundation to expand giving in the 24 states where it has stores. Tools for the Trades now donates between $5,000 to $20,000 of equipment to each school, often leveraging relationships with vendors or other businesses to make the more sizable contributions.

And it’s not just about the donation of goods, Krishna says. Tools for the Trades also brings in professional tradespeople or Northern Tool employees to share their knowledge with teachers and students. They often conduct master classes in welding or metalworking, share day-inthe-life information, and provide outside opportunities like job shadowing.

“We go in and work with teachers based on the curriculum they provide and what students need,” Krishna says. “Many CTE programs work with outdated equipment. We want to provide students

Kevin Baas, a teacher in the STEM Engineering and Innovation department at Lakeville North, says that his students are so pumped to work on their go-kart that he can barely take attendance before they race into the shop.

classes, says Darcy Betlach, director of experiential marketing at Northern Tool. “Our customers are people who work with their hands for a living, and we’ve heard from so many folks that they are really struggling to get people in the pipeline to learn their trade,” Betlach says. “As we heard that over and over, the idea formed. Maybe we can encourage schools not to shut shop classes by providing

with the opportunity to work with the latest equipment and provide opportunities so they can be better informed about their career choices.”

Welding has been growing in popularity in recent years, prompting Tools for the Trades to often donate items like welders, welding gloves, jackets, hoods, consumables — anything that will enable more students to weld at the same time.

At automotive-focused programs, it might donate air compressors, sanders, grinders, and pneumatic tools to expand the number of students learning how to do mechanical repairs or restorative body work.

Tools + support

Tools for the Trades contributes to about 10 schools a year, focusing on underserved communities as much as possible. It finds out what would be needed most, determines what it will donate, and then reaches out to vendors to see if they’d like to join the effort. Finally, Betlach gets to work to publicize the gift, and in select locations, holds a showcase with celebrities like Petty and Lane to draw press attention to career and technical education.

“They bring their clout to the table and donate their time to drive awareness of the critical issue at hand, which is the skilled labor gap,” Betlach says. “We create B-roll that we can share with the media to drive awareness for CTE and get these communities excited about

“Class ends and they want to stay. They want to come down with passes during other classes. We can’t get rid of them,” jokes teacher Luther Kominski.

having their kids try shop classes.”

Even after the cameras turn off, the support continues. Northern Tool then connects teachers with one of its retail or wholesale teams, providing a preferred account that allows schools to purchase consumables or other equipment at deep discounts, Betlach says. A customer service rep helps them with all the details like handling procurement through their school district.

Getting an email from Tools for the Trades asking if the teachers would like to receive donations of new equipment was a happy surprise at both schools. CTE classes are expensive to run, and it’s often a key target for budget cuts, Baas says. Minneapolis automotive teachers Zac Humphrey and Luther Kominski note

that it’s common to run short of funding for consumables and updated tools. This causes a backlog of students waiting to get their hands on tools during class because there just aren’t enough to go around.

Both schools received a bounty from Tools for the Trades. Roosevelt’s new gear includes personal safety equipment for the entire classroom, six tool kits, an English wheel for metal shaping, tools and air compressors from Ingersoll Rand, and more. “It’s really freed up the wait in class having all of these tools,” Humphrey says. “They are in better condition and better quality and there are more available, so you don’t have students sitting around waiting to do the work they need to do to complete the class.”

Enthusiasm for the rat rod build-off has been off the charts in Minneapolis, too. Students love the opportunity to consult via video with their mentor Lane, asking questions and bouncing around ideas. Some team members even asked their teachers if they could come in during spring break to work on the go-kart. “Class ends and they want to stay. They want to come down with passes during other classes. We can’t get rid of them,” jokes Kominski.

The automotive program at Roosevelt has between 80-180 students from across the district, depending on what courses are being offered. Students learn numerous skills while absorbing the message that not everybody needs to go to a four-year university. Programs like Tools for the Trades and the rat rod build-off hit that lesson home even stronger. “They are

seeing that you can make a living wage, and that there are plenty of jobs for people out there who are interested in the trades,” Humphrey says. “I think the kids are coming to realize that this is a viable option to have a successful life after high school.”

Overall, Humphrey and Kominski have seen excitement growing among students and their parents about the handson learning at Roosevelt High. Automotive students start with basics like fluid maintenance and then advance to working on steering, suspension, brakes, electrical systems, and engines and transmissions. Many branch into specialties like power sports engines, lawn mowers, and other advanced automotive work like collision repair and custom paint for vehicles.

“I think the stigma of the trades as something to fall back on or just for someone who is not high achieving is starting to dwindle,” Kominski says. “In all of our trades, the technology has advanced just like any other facet of life,” opening doors for people who like gaming or information technology to work on vehicles filled with computer modules. “Now parents are excited that their kids are interested in these classes.”

Wider paths to the trades

Getting more youth interested in skilled trades jobs is vital to communities across Minnesota. As Enterprise Minnesota President and CEO Bob Kill meets with manufacturers in cities big and small, he hears that hiring skilled and unskilled labor is still their most-pressing concern — though the pressure has eased a bit postpandemic. “Community by community, it’s the number one issue,” Kill says. “It’s being able to find people with the right kinds of skills or the right kinds of aptitude to train them to help them grow their business.”

Tools for the Trades and other initiatives to interest people in hands-on careers are effective because they offer skills development and experiential learning. The benefit of companies like Northern Tool contributing to workforce development is that they can make a broader impact by targeting numerous communities at once. “What I like about a program like Tools for the Trades is they are putting money into it with professional-grade tools and instruction, and they are creating

Mentor Billy Lane (right) works with a student at Roosevelt High School.

enthusiasm and success stories,” Kill says. “And that just breeds more success stories.”

It is also no secret that the program benefits Northern Tool as well. Broadening the overall population of professional tradespeople and serious do-it-yourselfers — who also associate the company with high-quality tools and a propensity for giving back — can only help expand its markets and customer base as it continues to grow.

And with Krishna at the helm, the company has big plans for growth. A board member since 2014 who became CEO in 2020, Krishna is leading Northern Tool on a plan to expand its footprint and $1.5 billion in annual revenue. While the company previously opened two to three stores a year, it is now on a quicker pace of opening five to eight stores annually. In the past three years, Northern Tool opened 25 new stores, often in its sweet spot of exurban locations close to metropolitan areas.

Other vehicles for growth include Northern Tool’s manufacturing wing that makes private label equipment and other products. It has 12 brands, such as NorthStar engines (the brand powering the rat rod go-karts), generators, and pressure washers, as well as Strongway jacks and lifts,

understands the challenges facing fellow manufacturers and the constant need for talented employees, Krishna says. “There are about 5 million jobs today that are trade-related or associated with trades that are not filled because there isn’t enough of a pipeline of students coming through with the right kind of training,” he adds. “This is our contribution to help

to entice more students to pursue these careers.

“This effort helps high school kids focus on trades and shows so it’s not just a secondary thought — it can be a primary thought and career path,” Kotula says. “If you’re not using the proper equipment, it can reduce your interest in doing an activity. We want to provide quality tools to get kids interested in doing it.”

“There are about 5 million jobs today that are trade-related or associated with trades that are not filled because there isn’t enough of a pipeline of students coming through with the right kind of training.”

–Suresh Krishna, CEO, Northern Tool + Equipment

Roughneck fuel pumps, and Klutch power tools. Its subsidiary, Great Northern Equipment (GNE), has grown into the largest Honda engine distributor in the country. GNE recently added distribution of Northern Tool’s manufactured products to other channels, including rental companies and independent retailers.

As a manufacturer, Northern Tool

communities have a pipeline of folks who do the tough jobs because they are the ones building the country.”

A program like Tools for the Trades is a natural fit for the company because giving back has always been part of its DNA, says Ryan Kotula, who co-owns Northern Tool with his brother, Wade. Their father, Don Kotula, grew up on the Iron Range working at his family’s scrap metal company. He started Northern Tool out of his home selling log splitters, hydraulic tools, and other parts, opening the first store in Burnsville in 1981.

The company has been an avid supporter of trades-based education, donating equipment to technical schools and community colleges for years. Tools for the Trades puts a new spin on those efforts by bringing other manufacturers onboard and focusing on high school students, Kotula says. Acknowledging that paths to the trades — industrial arts courses — just aren’t as available or funded as they used to be, the company wanted to do its part

The Kotula brothers believe that their father would have championed Tools for the Trades. He was a generous man who always looked out for other people, whether it was giving someone a job or helping them make connections. “He’d say, ‘We can’t help everyone, but we can help someone. And if everybody helped somebody, then things will get better,’” Kotula says. “We can’t solve all of the problems at once, but we can help other people get a leg up. Sometimes that means getting tools in the hands of kids and getting them interested in the trades, and that can change their whole career path.”

In social media interviews with some of the Lakeville and Minneapolis students, the encouragement to consider handson careers has been effective. A Minneapolis student talks about planning to go to trade school to focus on automotive, saying that “I like doing this so much that I want to do it for my job. I’m hoping that later on it will help me get into a more stable job, and a fun one at that.”

Another student mentions that she came to Lakeville North as a senior because of its CTE classes, not knowing about the rat rod competition. Calling it “the coolest thing ever,” she is grateful for the opportunity to get her feet wet in welding and explore automotive.

It’s been a joy for teachers Baas, Kominski, and Humphrey to watch their students get completely engrossed in building the go-karts. “You can read a book about rebuilding an engine and get a general idea of how to do it. But unless you use the tools and have done the hands-on aspect of it, you will never get that same experience,” Humphrey says.

“Tools for the Trades makes it easier for students to get their hands dirty and learn the topics we want to teach them,” he adds. “Northern Tool did an awesome job for us by providing tools and equipment that were on our wish list for years.”

By Mary Lahr Schier

FROM LINE TO LEADER

Gauthier’s Mike Jensen guides his company with empathy, analytics, and a drive to keep learning.

In 2007, Mike Jensen had a chance to buy into Gauthier Industries, the Rochester-based custom metal fabricator where he’d worked for a decade. It was a huge opportunity for the then 37 year old, and horrible timing.

“Little did we know the great recession was coming,” he says. When the economy tanked, Gauthier’s leaders faced the agonizing task of laying off 30% of its workforce of nearly 100. “It was one of the most difficult times in my career,” Jensen says.

His business partner, Terry Grendahl, remembers spending a week with Jensen and other company leaders, going through the business department by department to decide which jobs could be eliminated. All wages were frozen and company executives took a pay cut, too, to help the company get through the downturn.

Employees learned of the layoffs at an all-hands meeting the following Monday. “Everybody knew,” Grendahl says. “There just wasn’t enough work to go around.” But after the news had been delivered, Jensen’s biggest concern was that no one get injured on the job that day. He asked supervisors to watch out for workers who might be emotionally distraught and let people take a break or go home if they needed to. Everyone worked safely, and Gauthier struggled through the recession but came out of it strong. Today it’s back up to 82 employees and sales of $15 million annually. “We endured very low sales months,” Jensen recalls, “but we never lost profitability.”

Empathy for employees — Jensen started his career at Gauthier on the paint line — coupled with an analytical approach, an amiable disposition, and a clear sense of a leader’s role have been hallmarks of Jensen’s career at Gauthier, a nearly 80-year-old custom metal fabricator. This combination of skills and personality, coupled with a drive to learn, has made Jensen a leader in manufacturing statewide and poised Gauthier for growth into its ninth decade.

The temp

If you’re getting a plant tour from Mike Jensen, be sure to bring your track shoes. Jensen can whip through the 100,000-square-foot plant where he’s worked since the mid-1990s in record time. He shows where the company’s

semi-truck loads up every morning for product deliveries to the Twin Cities. During a swing past the laser cutting area, he proudly describes the purposefully small area set aside for product that did not meet quality requirements. And then he moves to the new screen-printing machine that offers expanded services to Gauthier’s 250 clients, making parts for everything from golf carts to combines to large compressor housings. He lingers awhile to explain the

Jensen grew up as friends with Gauthier’s son and was intrigued by the offer to run the paint line for a three-month period. While Jensen had a full-time opportunity at a company 30 miles away, he took the temp job instead, thinking it had more potential, even though it was for less salary.

The paint line operated in a separate building and struggled with everything from long lead times to excessive rework. “They asked me to improve on some

powder-coating process. This is where he started at Gauthier, as a temp.

Jensen’s father died when he was only 18. “I was forced to grow up quickly and become a leader at a young age,” he says, “to help my mom, to be the oldest brother who would help others.” A desire to be close to family brought Jensen back to Rochester after college at St. Cloud State University, where he got an industrial engineering degree and aviation minor. He spent a few years as a supervisor at UPS and then reconnected with Tom Gauthier at a Rochester job fair. Tom’s father, Emil, founded the company in 1946 initially to manufacture the “Rochester Plastic Needle,” a breakthrough in the administration of intravenous fluids. In the 1960s, it was the first firm to manufacture a home hemodialysis machine. It moved into custom metal fabrication in the late 20th century. Currently a full-service job shop, it does metal fabrication, including tool and die, welding, machining, silk screening, powder coating, and assembly.

Jensen says that joining one of Enterprise Minnesota’s Peer Councils “was singlehandedly the most important thing I’ve done in my career.”

difficult things,” Jensen says. So, he began by working on the line with employees to understand where the bottlenecks and pain points were as well as the challenges the employees faced.

“I had to earn their respect,” he says. “We worked on these issues and had some good success with buy-in from employees.”

A few years later, Jensen was production manager when he and Grendahl, then the engineering manager, were charged with addressing one of the company’s biggest barriers to growth: very long lead times throughout the company. Many projects took up to six weeks from order to product out the door. One factor in the slow work times was actually an over-emphasis on how many pieces machine operators finished per hour, what they called “making the rate,” Grendahl says. Employees neglected things like sharpening tooling and organizing pieces in order to make the rate. Jensen decided to add some indirect help by putting a supervisor in charge of organizing the tooling, sharpening it, and

pulling tools for the next job so it’s ready to go. “We kept the machines running, reduced set up time, and had less gap time between items,” Jensen says. Those changes significantly improved lead times. Today, Gauthier can turn repeat orders around in two weeks, and new business in about three.

“I’ve learned that we have to take a very transparent approach with our employees,” Jensen says. “What we talk about in our staff meetings has to make it to the supervisors, has to make it to the employees, so they know what’s going on. There’s nothing to hide.”

Taking a team approach has also led to greater employee retention, he says, a significant accomplishment in a town where Mayo Clinic, Minnesota’s largest employer, has 14 times the number of jobs as the second largest employer in town.

The youngest guy in the room Jensen, who has a 51% stake in the business, is the fourth owner of Gauthier. He and Grendahl bought the business from Dave Kocer, who had bought it from the Gauthier family. Today, Kocer sits on its board of directors. Having Grendahl as a partner felt necessary to Jensen.

“I needed Terry to be part of it,” he says. “It would have been difficult if I had this all to myself.” Grendahl attributes the success of their on-going partnership to

One of Jensen’s mantras is: “If you bring me a problem, please bring me a solution as well. I’ll tell you if I agree with it or not, but please bring me a solution.”

having complementary skill sets. Jensen gets people; Grendahl digs numbers. “He’s very even tempered,” says Grendahl. “He’s always looking for everyone’s input before decisions are made.”

As a young owner and executive, Jensen knew what he didn’t know. “I had the skills,” he recalls, “but I needed more.” To get that, he joined an Enterprise Minnesota regional Peer Council for company owners. The southeast Minnesota group meets monthly for peer-to-peer discussions, plant tours, and occasional speakers.

“It was single-handedly the most important thing I’ve done in my career,”

Jensen says. “The people in the Peer Council had years of experience. When I first got there, I did a lot of listening. I didn’t have a lot of input for others because I was listening so much.”

As confidential forums, the Peer Councils enable executives to exchange information and ideas as well as present problems to others who occupy the same position you do, says Bob Kill, president and CEO of Enterprise Minnesota.

“The corner office can be a solitary place,” says Kurt Bear, an Enterprise Minnesota business development consultant. Working with fellow owners, Jensen began to understand more deeply the issues relating to personnel, labor, banking relationships, and all the factors that can help or hinder a business.

Finding the right fit for your company in areas like law, accounting, and insurance was among the issues Jensen took home with him. “I came into this company with all these prerequisites in place,” Jensen says. “We had a bank. We had accountants. We had insurance companies that covered us for health, property, and casualty. I had to decide whether it was the right choice to keep everything in place.”

Peer Council meetings present opportunities for guest speakers, including insurance brokers on occasion, which is when Jensen began shopping the company’s insurance — something that had not been done in years — and discovered they had been overpaying. Now they shop insurance annually. Eventually, they changed banks and accountants, too. “There are certain types of services that work better with small businesses than large ones,” he says. “Big accounting firms don’t always work well with small businesses, and we had a big accounting

firm and bank.” They found another accounting firm and smaller bank that better suited Gauthier’s size and interests, saving them money and getting them more tailored advice.

“I didn’t change everything,” Jensen says, “but I certainly wanted to look at what we could do to save some money.”

As an employee profit-sharing company, Gauthier’s employees “understand that if they do their job efficiently and with quality, there will be something there for them at the end,” he says. “Whatever we can do on this side of the wall to help, we’re going to do.”

To ensure they hire and retain good employees, Gauthier relies on a multipronged approach. For five consecutive years, from 2013-2017, the company was named a Best Place to Work in the region by Workforce Development, a nonprofit agency in southeast Minnesota. Gauthier works through agencies to recruit new employees. “That way we can measure things like attendance and work ethic,” says Jensen, “and if everything works out, we’ll on-board them in four to five months.”

A program with high schools in Rochester and nearby Byron, where Jensen lives, exposes students to career opportunities in the company. Student interns get paid to do simple assembly or packaging two hours a day for four days a week or part time during the summer. Several have joined the company after high school. Current employees are crosstrained as much as possible. “Working here, you don’t become somebody who has only one skill,” Jensen says. “They have flexibility, and in a job shop you need to have that. It’s essential to connect our youth with manufacturing early in their development. They may see it as an

Left to right: Mike Jensen, president; Jerry Putzier, machinist; Doug Gilbertson, tooling supervisor; and Ken Palmer, tool maker.

“For a customer quality audit, we’re told they can fast forward through numerous audit sections once you are certified,” Jensen says.

opportunity someday.”

One of Jensen’s mantras is: “If you bring me a problem, please bring me a solution as well. I’ll tell you if I agree with it or not, but please bring me a solution.”

“Every single person here is important to the company,” Jensen adds. The company shows appreciation by recognizing employee birthdays and work anniversaries along with distributing profitsharing checks at the company Christmas party. “I encourage employees to improve and expand their capabilities so they can move up in the company. Ideally, we want to promote from within.”

Shifting sales strategy

Gauthier has worked with Enterprise Minnesota on lean manufacturing and leadership essentials as well as attaining ISO 9001 registration, which makes bidding on projects easier because the certification attests to a commitment to quality. “For a customer quality audit, we’re told they can fast forward through numerous audit sections once you are certified,” Jensen says.

Prior to the COVID pandemic, the company made a dramatic shift in its approach to sales. The company had been working with independent manufacturers’ sales representatives, and needed to rethink its sales strategy due to stagnancy and lack of growth. “It was almost like succession planning,” says Steve Haarstad, the Enterprise Minnesota business growth consultant who worked with Gauthier.

“We needed to do something differently, and it was time for change,” Jensen says, particularly after one of the company’s largest customers underwent internal changes that led to a 60% drop in orders.

After considering contracts, territories,

overall plan, and types of customers to pursue, the company decided to take a new approach and hire its own sales director, first to manage the reps and eventually to work on his own to expand the company’s customer base. Before that, Jensen had managed much of sales himself. “He’s not threatened by delegating work to others,” Haarstad says.

“This was another idea that came out of the Peer Council,” Jensen says, and it’s led to Gauthier adding customers in commercial agriculture, UTV, and air purifier markets.

A respected voice

“I’ve always been impressed with how thoughtful he is,” says Kill of Jensen, who served on Enterprise Minnesota’s board for seven years, including as board chair, and has been an advocate for manufacturing with the state Legislature. “Mike thinks before he speaks, regardless of what you ask,” Kill says. “If you ask him to help with something, he won’t say yes right away. He first asks what you’re trying to accomplish and frames an answer around that. He asks good questions.”

“He’s really grown into being a true leader,” Kill adds, citing Jensen’s willingness to extend his term on the board during the pandemic and his advocacy for the state’s Small Business Grant at the Legislature in 2023. The program gives small manufacturers with 35 employees or fewer a partial rebate for participating in services to grow their business. Gauthier is too large to benefit from the program, but Jensen saw it as key to the future of manufacturing in the state.

“Like everybody, I struggle with the regulations and laws we have to live by today,” Jensen says. “I like to give legislators my perspective. What they do with it, that’s up to them.”

“Mike has been a respected voice for the industry,” Kill says. “He thinks bigger than his role at Gauthier.”

“Our employees are the key assets of our business,” Jensen says. “We want to see the company grow and employees prosper as a result. I believe in surrounding ourselves with good people and keeping a positive culture. You can throw anything at this group — there’s not much they can’t handle.”

Engaged Employees

Unlocking the Benefits of Continuous Improvement

Empowering manufacturing employees to solve problems makes good days even better.

By Greg Hunsaker

When I talk with clients about how they can begin or enhance their continuous improvement (CI) efforts, I always ask them to think about how their workday usually starts. Is it focused on customer needs, or is it centered on fighting fires?

For those facing the firefighting scenario on most, or even many days, there’s a reason –— and a solution. If managers and supervisors have become the problem solvers for issues on the manufacturing floor, it’s probably because the value-add employees are not engaged or empowered to identify and solve issues on the spot. It might also mean those employees are tolerating or using Band-Aids for problems that, if they were addressed, could boost efficiency.

When leaders shift responsibility and authority for problem solving and process improvements to employees, everyone in the company can work

It’s also critical to keep employees up to date on issues that directly and immediately impact the manufacturing floor.

toward making all the good days even better. It frees managers to work on the company and not in the company; it transforms punch-in, punchout employees into the drivers of continuous improvement. For the manufacturer, that means higher retention, improved quality, and an edge over competitors.

Empowering production employees in this way is straightforward, but requires thoughtful, stepby-step implementation. Assessing engagement levels, boosting communication, and developing proper goals and measures form the foundation of this approach to continuous improvement. This groundwork helps employees identify the waste in processes that might prevent them from reaching their goals. Finally, they can give them the authority to brainstorm and attempt problem-solving measures to eliminate waste, improve processes, and boost productivity.

Now is the time

Employee-driven continuous improvement can help attract and retain employees, as well as ensure customer satisfaction by delivering quality products on time and within budgeted costs. Once employees are genuinely engaged as

problem solvers, supervisors aren’t putting out fires every day. Instead, they can direct their attention to the company’s growth.

At the same time, engaged employees have much higher retention rates, which limits the need for costly training of new hires. Quality improves when the workforce has lower turnover because the company can more effectively standardize processes.

Assess employee engagement

Engaged employees are the key to implementing specific CI steps to reduce waste and improve processes. As a starting point, they should determine how well employees are connected to the company’s mission, vision, and values.

Leaders often spend a lot of time communicating corporate values to their teams. Even if employees cannot repeat the company’s mission, vision, and values exactly, the key is that they are truly driven to meet customers’ needs. Those needs are easily defined: Did customers get what they ordered, on time, and was the quality what was promised? That baseline gives employees a strong enough connection to the mission to dive into continuous improvement.

The other component of engagement is how

Greg Hunsaker is a business growth consultant at Enterprise Minnesota who has a strong record of helping manufacturers transform their operations and build cultures of continuous improvement. His 20 years of experience as a manager and supervisor leading production, assembly, and lean initiatives make him a valuable resource to help manufacturers eliminate waste, reduce lead times, and boost productivity. Prior to joining Enterprise Minnesota, Greg served as the continuous improvement and learning manager for Entegris in Chaska.

employees are treated. Do they have a sense of belonging? Do they believe their ideas are valued? Do they feel like they’re part of a team? An atmosphere of belonging helps employees feel trust when they raise issues about waste and process improvement.

Next, determine if employees know specific company goals. Do production employees know, for example, if the company is trying to boost market share by 10%? Do they know the company’s overall growth goal? Their knowledge of key objectives is a clear sign of engagement, and it will be important as leaders connect individuals and their specific goals to those of the entire company.

Communicate big and small issues

It’s also critical to keep employees up to date on issues that directly and immediately impact the manufacturing floor. I often hear from the value-add people, “It would have been great if they had told us about this huge order coming,” or “I wish I had known that we had some supply issues that could hold us up.”

Quick daily meetings about such matters can make a huge difference in engaging employees and improving their days. I often recommend a “first five” gathering at the beginning of each day. It should take no more than five minutes to outline upcoming challenges: a quality issue with some material that should be monitored; someone will be out the next week on

vacation; several orders at once might lead to some overtime next week.

Before sending employees off to their work areas, managers can cap off that update with a “high five” acknowledgment of what they did well. It’s not long or involved, but it’s the kind of communication that makes everyone feel connected, and it limits surprises.

Measure right

With a foundation of engagement and communication, manufacturers can develop and post specific goals and metrics surrounding those goals. Often though, leaders miss the mark on those measures. I often visit manufacturing companies in which management has posted metrics, but they don’t have goals related to them. Companies might have a board with data

Hold a DOWNTIME Scavenger Hunt

One way to boost the value of having employees observe is to ask them to consider the three versions of a process: what they think it is, what it really is, and what they want it to be. Observing a manufacturing process can uncover what is really happening on the floor, which is often not what you want it to be, or even what you think it is. Employees often devise workarounds to solve problems because they get frustrated that no one is improving the process. The problem is that these little fixes are neither efficient nor standardized and can affect quality and consistency. If someone is out sick or on vacation, those extra steps might be skipped. Some work areas might use a workaround and others might not. Observing those processes in action helps employees and leaders see the whole picture.

I give manufacturers a useful tool — with the acronym DOWNTIME — to help employees see issues in their areas. Each of the letters stands for a different category of waste that limits the effectiveness of the process. It’s a concise listing of potential wastes and really helps those new to the process get a quick start. DOWNTIME represents Defects, Overproduction, Waiting, Non-Utilized Talent, Transportation, Inventory, Motion, and Extra Processing. Explain the eight wastes to your people and engage them by having them go on a scavenger hunt to see how many they can find in their processes.

Once employees are genuinely engaged as problem solvers, supervisors aren’t putting out fires every day. Instead, they can direct their attention to the company’s growth.

on quality, cost, delivery, and safety, but the metrics are at a level that people in production don’t know what they can do to affect any of that.

If on-time shipping is a goal, the floor employee can’t control if the shipping department is short-staffed or if they ran out of cardboard boxes and had to substitute something else that took a long time to fabricate. Instead, leaders should develop goals that the employees do have control over.

Employees will better relate to metrics that are localized to just one department or one work center rather than overall ontime shipping. Call it schedule attainment. If an employee has three work orders at the beginning of the day and gets all three done, it was a productive day.

Good metrics can fuel the next step in the CI journey. If employees know where they stand for the metrics they can affect, they can tie their own goal to the company’s strategic metric of increasing market share, for example. When they are consistently ahead at their own work centers, the company can bring more work in, maybe even capture some of the competition’s work.

Teach employees to find waste

All of these steps work together to help employees identify waste, the key component of employee-driven problem solving.

I was on a manufacturing floor recently, helping a company through this process. Our first step in identifying waste was to have the employees observe. One group just watched another group running the machine centers. Half the team was on the project, and the other half was continuing with their day. We just stood there and

watched what everyone else was doing. A key takeaway from the exercise was realizing how much time they spent walking. They had to keep going back to a computer to check engineering drawings or confirm dimensions on the parts. It was a 75-foot walk each time, and standing back to watch really drove home how much time they were wasting.

It turns out they had the infrastructure to move the computer to the workstation and cut out all that walking time. They figured they spent about 30 minutes a day walking, and there are four workstations, so that change could free up two hours a day.

Problem solving in action

Employees also noticed other reasons they were walking so much and offered ideas to cut down that waste as well.

After each work order was completed, for example, someone walked to the supervisor for another assignment. Instead, they suggested keeping all work orders for the day at their stations to eliminate that wasted time.

They also found that once they started a job, they spent a lot of time walking to and from the tool crib to get the right tools. Someone suggested assigning an employee

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I often visit manufacturing companies in which management has posted metrics, but they don’t have goals related to them.

— but not a highly-paid machinist — to serve as a runner to get those tools, freeing up their time to complete jobs. They also set up a tool cart with all the standard tools needed for most jobs. They kept that right next to the workstation. For unusual tools, specific to only some projects, the tool runner could step in.

Company leaders were pleasantly surprised by how engaged and excited the employees were when given the chance to offer input on improving processes. In fact, they generated so many ideas that they needed a process to test solutions. I recommend using the four-step process of plan, do, check, and adjust. Through brainstorming the team can develop a plan. I always suggest they come up with at least

empowering people to identify wastes and make changes, C.A.V.E. people can be your best advocates.

than the process used before, or either of the other solutions, then they will move to step four, adjust, to see if they can keep improving it.

Another advantage to heading to the manufacturing floor to observe, brainstorm, and try new processes is that it spreads excitement. In the example I shared, other groups of employees were eager to get in on the action. They were watching what was going on and thinking about what improvements they could make in their own work areas.

There was genuine excitement about the process, and though we were taking it slowly and using the four-step process, we made our project very visible to make sure the enthusiasm carried throughout the whole facility.

Engagement really catches on when everyone wants to be a part of this process. How great would it be for people to come to work excited, knowing that if they have an idea for a good change, they can make it? That they have the power to make a good day an even better day? It’s all within reach if you take the right steps.

The Value of Sharing Their Story

Spectro Alloys shows how manufacturers can benefit by offering a public glimpse inside their companies.

For nearly 50 years, Spectro Alloys operated under the public radar. The Rosemount company today employs 150 workers who deploy an array of sophisticated technology to recycle millions of pounds of aluminum each year, but leaders stayed quiet about the company’s great jobs and positive environmental impact.

In 2020, Spectro Alloys President Luke Palen decided it was time to give the community a closer look at the company. With a few simple steps, Spectro started spreading the word about its work.

Spectro beefed up its company website with information about its operations and impact and circulated

In 2020, Spectro Alloys President Luke Palen decided it was time to give the community a closer look at the company. With a few simple steps, Spectro started spreading the word about its work.

news about the company via an annual letter to 12,000 employees, community leaders, elected officials, and regulators.

Local and state leaders took note, realizing what a gem they have in their own backyard. That culminated in widespread public and financial support for the company’s $71 million expansion, scheduled to be completed in 2025. Minnesota’s Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) offered low-interest financing as well as $1.3 million in incentives for the project.

enough energy to power 200,000 homes each year. Reduced carbon dioxide emissions are the equivalent of taking 80,000 cars off the road. And these benefits come from Spectro’s current operation. The expansion will add the capacity and technology for recycling consumer scrap (including beverage cans), opening new markets, and creating 50 additional jobs. Palen says current employees can advance their careers if they take advantage of Spectro’s leadership and training programs. Spectro has a long track record of providing great jobs. The company offers competitive salaries, profit sharing, tuition reimbursement, and ongoing training programs. Greg Palen, Luke’s father, who in 1989 bought the scrap metal company that became the recycling giant, points out that many employees are related — there are fathers, sons, and cousins on the payroll. There’s no stronger endorsement of a positive work environment than recommending it to family.

I attended the March groundbreaking for the 90,000-square-foot facility, which included speeches by Gov. Tim Walz and Rosemount Mayor Jeff Weisensel. But behind the glitz of the formal event, I was struck to hear privately from Spectro employees how joyful they are — about their jobs, their company, and the meaningful work they do. And who wouldn’t be?

Spectro uses cutting-edge technology to transform items headed for landfills into the aluminum used in new cars, appliances, lawn mowers, light fixtures, and other products. Significant investments in pollution control systems limit the impact on the air and water around the facility. Because aluminum recycling uses 95% less energy and releases 95% less carbon dioxide than traditional aluminum production, Spectro estimates it saves

Spectro also annually contributes tens of thousands of dollars to area charities, including a donation to the United Way of Hastings that directs funds for mental health issues, fentanyl poisoning, and student hunger.

I, for one, am thrilled that Palen has been more assertive about promoting his company. Spectro has a long history of protecting the environment, providing great jobs, and donating to its community. The company’s public reputation has grown exponentially, which is great for the company, and frankly, all manufacturers.

Many people simply drive by the manufacturing facilities in their communities with little curiosity about what goes on inside. One of our missions at Enterprise Minnesota is to help shed light on those operations. Spectro offers a great example of how to do that.

Lynn Shelton is vice president of marketing and organizational development.

GROWING COMPANIES ENHANCING COMMUNITIES

Granite Partners is a private investment and holding company founded in 2002 in St. Cloud, Minnesota, with a mission to grow companies and create value for all stakeholders. We advance a culture of trust, innovation, and excellence as essential to 100-year sustainability, and we aspire to world-class wellbeing for everyone in the Granite community.