Special Section
Interactive Feature
Turn the pages of our "virtual online magazine."
Click here to read
Need Help? For a quick tutorial on the virtual magazine, click here.
Sponsored by:
This special section was created for Southeastern Institute of Manufacturing and Technology by Journal Communications Inc.
Visit us online by
clicking here.
A New Era in Manufacturing
Southeastern Institute supports high-tech businesses and entrepreneurs.
Jack Roach, director of the Southeastern Institute of Manufacturing and Technology in Florence, stands in front of a high-tech EMCO Computer Numerical Control machine, which is used to shape precision industrial parts.
Florence-Darlington Technical College just took a giant step forward in its mission.
With the August 2007 opening of its separate new venture, the Southeastern Institute of Manufacturing and Technology, the college will help usher in a new, 21st-century manufacturing era – not just for South Carolina, but for the entire South.
It will do that, according to Florence-Darlington Technical College President Charles Gould, through a series of new business services, advanced manufacturing resources and management assistance ventures, all directed at the most cutting-edge frontiers of the American manufacturing economy.
The Southeastern Institute is not so much an educational endeavor as it is a support base for high-tech businesses and entrepreneurs who need help – or speed – moving from concept to market.
“We’re going to do more here than assist with workforce training, which is our traditional role,” Gould explains. “We’re also going to provide businesses with services they urgently need to move forward.”
The newly opened institute will have different departments that can:
* Provide firms with rapid prototyping services, capable of reducing the lead time to get product designs into the hands of potential buyers for evaluation.
* Develop manufacturing plans for firms that are just moving beyond the research and development stage of their product.
* Give businesses access to advanced product planning and marketing resources that use digital virtual-reality visioning and training tools.
* Assist firms in creating automated production lines.
* Help firms hire and train workers to bring their new production operations on line.
If there is any question about whether such advanced business services are necessary in the Southeast, consider this: To finance it all, the college turned to the public bond market in hopes of raising $25 million. The entire bond issue was snapped up by investors in just 40 minutes.
“Everyone knows the plight of American manufacturing,” Gould says. “There is a feeling in this country that we have not been supporting manufacturing the way we should or used to. We’re going to do something about it, and people are responding to that.”
Gould and his colleagues have studied the direction of manufacturing in general and concluded that a number of clear trends are under way.
“The research we did indicated that we are not losing manufacturing, as many people believe – we are reinventing it. And that transition is what the institute will serve,” Gould adds.
In the newly emerging manufacturing model, he says, there will be fewer employees in the typical production operation. But they will be more highly skilled than in the past. That will require more advanced training and also more factory automation.
Because of the increased automation, the cost of future start-ups will be higher, the group concluded. And bigger capital investment requirements will, in turn, create higher expectations for investors. Schedules will be more sensitive as investors wait for products to reach the market. For that reason, there will be less margin for error or setbacks, as often occur when product redesigns send engineers back for prototype changes.
The factories themselves will be smaller in the future, Gould adds. They will operate leaner, with more efficient production lines and logistics systems.
“In the end,” Gould notes, “the outcome will be economic development. As we help people around us launch manufacturing, manufacturers will flourish, which generates economic growth across our region.”
