Manufacturing:
Building a
Stronger
Economy When choosing a home base for a manufacturing business, the positives are plentiful here in Douglas County. by Emily Mulligan, photos by Steven Hertzog
Brushed concrete floors, glossy and sparkling clean. Immaculate stainless steel surfaces. LED numbers displayed in red and green on electronic gauges. The whir of air purifiers overhead. Is it a hospital? A commercial kitchen? No, it’s a typical modern manufacturing facility. Gone are the days that most manufacturing jobs entail dusty, grimy workplaces. Now, when you enter a manufacturing business, you are more likely to see pristine machinery and high-tech robotics—even in the simplest of operations. This isn’t your grandparents’ industry anymore. “We’ve struggled against the perception of manufacturing as dirty and repetitive. This isn’t ‘Laverne & Shirley.’ These are highly technical, clean environments, because so much of manufacturing is automated,” says Tiffany Stovall, president and CEO of Kansas Manufacturing Solutions. Believe it or not, Kansas ranks 12th in the nation for the percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) from man22
ufacturing, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis and Kansas Manufacturing Solutions 2021 annual report. There are almost 174,000 manufacturing jobs in Kansas, including about 5,000 in Douglas County, according to the same report. The average manufacturing job in Kansas pays $59,650 per year, much above the average non-manufacturing salary of $48,000 to $49,000 per year, Stovall says. Most of Kansas’ manufacturing jobs are centered in metropolitan areas, and Douglas County would not typically qualify as its own metropolitan area. Yet, we are home to many longtime, successful manufacturing operations, and we add more every year. “Douglas County is a company town, as in the University,
