By Keith Gushard
While the number of manufacturing jobs at the local, state and national levels continues to trend lower, officials in the tooling and machining industry remain upbeat — and a new survey shows they have reason to be.
Shops that have survived have invested in new technologies that increase productivity while using fewer workers and diversifying their customer base, according to both industry officials and a new survey of manufacturers by the Pennsylv-ania Industrial Resource Centers.
The survey found two-thirds of Pennsylvania manufacturers are in a stronger competitive position than they were in 2003, according to the centers. It found that in the past five years 64 percent of manufacturers have increased profits and 44 percent have introduced new products or have gotten into new markets with existing products.
The new state survey mirrors results of a local tooling and machining industry study done by Steve Onyeiwu, an assistant professor of economics at Alleg-heny Col-lege.
Ony-eiwu surveyed 157 local shops in 2004 and found 25 had folded in a three-year period.
His study then found that a lack of working capital, poor business management skills, a lack of customer diversification, and a lack of competency in providing quality, reliable products quickly were problems within the local tooling industry. Onyeiwu updated his findings in August 2007 and found many firms had expanded their customer base and diversified their manufacturing activities in the past few years.
“They’ve moved from the era of relying on just one customer or doing just mold making,” he said.
“Our customer list is much larger than it used to be,” said Dennis Frampton, president of C&J; Industries of Meadville, a 260-employee custom plastics contract manufacturer and product design company.
“We had 20 to 25 customers about five years ago, now we have 40 to 45 customers,” said Frampton, who also is president of the northwestern Pennsylvania chapter of the National Tooling and Machining Association, an industry trade group. “We’re doing less per customer, but we have more customers and are more diversified.”
Most of Crawford County’s manufacturing jobs are in the tooling and machining industry, supplying equipment and parts to major manufacturers.
Manufacturing is important to the county since there is a heavier reliance on it here than in other parts of Pennsylvania and the country. About 20 percent of the jobs in the county are related to manufacturing, compared to 12 percent for the state and 11 percent nationally.
Crawford County lost an estimated 1,000 manufacturing jobs since the recession of 2000-01. Nationally, more than 3 million manufacturing jobs have been lost since 2000, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
And the trend is continuing, with the number of manufacturing jobs still declining.
Crawford County had 7,700 manufacturing jobs in December 2007, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry. That’s down some 100 from the 7,800 in December 2006.
Pennsylvania had 655,300 manufacturing jobs in December 2007 — down 12,400 from the 667,700 in December 2006, according to the department. Nationally, there were 13.782 million manufacturing jobs in December, down 255,000 from the 14.037 million in December 2006, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Despite all the losses, unemployment rates locally, at the state level and nationally remain around 5 percent — a jobless rate that economists say indicates full employment since there are always some workers in transition.
Crawford County’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 5.3 percent in December while Pennsylva-nia’s rate was 4.7 percent and it was 5.0 percent for the nation.
Scott Hanaway, president of Tech Tool & Molded Plastics, another Meadville tooling firm, and a past president of the NTMA, said there is business for area tooling firms, but it depends on whom their customers are.
“There is opportunity out there,” he said. “Aerospace, agricultural equipment and oil field services are doing well.”
Despite an expected slowdown in the economy this year, Frampton and Hanaway still see growth in manufacturing.
That’s because some of the tooling and machining firms’ customers that sent work overseas to China and other countries are returning that work to U.S. firms.
“They realize they’re not getting the delivery times or quality of work they want,” said Frampton. “We’ve seen some customers go over(seas) and come back two or three times.”
“I think we’ll see 2 percent growth,” he added. “It’s not as robust as it had been, but there still will be growth (in 2008).”
Hanaway expects to see growth around 5 percent overall in the industry and between 5 percent and 10 percent for his firm because of his diversified customer base.
Brian Deane, president of NuTec Tooling Systems of Meadville, a maker of automated equipment for larger manufacturers, expects to see continued growth of up to 5 percent this year.
However, he does worry about the possibility of a recession “but only because we’ll talk ourselves into it.”
“There is a lot of negative press (nationally) about a recession,” he said. “If we start to buy into it, it can happen.”
There also will be opportunity for new workers in the industry in the next decade.
“In the next 10 years we expect a lot of people (in the tooling industry) to retire,” said Frampton.
At his own company, about 60 percent of its management staff will retire within the next decade, he noted.
Jerry Knight, executive director of Precision Manufa-cturing Institute of Meadville, an industrial education center and teaching laboratory primarily for the region’s tooling and machining industry, expects as many as 400 skilled job openings a year in northwestern Pennsylvania in the next few years. PMI offers advanced tooling and machining training to new or currently employed workers in the tooling and machining trade as well as other industrial training. It boasts a 98.5 percent job placement
“With retirements looming, there aren’t enough workers to fill the positions — but they have to be skilled workers,” said Knight. “We have companies stopping in requesting to hire workers.”
PMI trains about 700 students a year — either new workers or those already employed in the tooling and machining or other manufacturing industries.
Keith Gushard can be reached at 724-6370 or by e-mail at kgushard@meadvilletribune.com.
