Chicago’s New Direction: Leading the Race to the Top in Global High-Performance Manufacturing

by Dan Swinney, Executive Director, Chicago Manufacturing Renaissance Council

The Chicago Manufacturing Renaissance Council’s Skill Standards committee meets at Winzeler Gear Company. The committee aims to promote comprehensive standards for manufacturing training.

For years, the media has largely portrayed the decline of manufacturing and the resulting increase in poverty and distressed urban communities as inevitable. No doubt, America’s once-robust manufacturing economy has suffered greatly as a result of globalization. Emerging technologies in India and China and the steady stream of jobs moving overseas have many people convinced – some manufacturers among them – that there is little that can be done to redirect manufacturing’s downward slide.

But in Chicago, the voice of a unique public-private partnership is rising above the manufacturing death knell to spur action, educational reform and innovative business practices, with the goal of making Chicago a world-class center for high value-added production. The Chicago Manufacturing Renaissance Council, created in July 2005, is a federation of labor, business, government, education and community-based agencies that has embraced the challenge of leading the race to the top in global, high-performance manufacturing.

Chicago, like many other U.S. cities challenged by deindustrialization, has seen heavy job losses since the 1980s (approximately 200,000) and hordes of manufacturing companies go belly-up (about 4,000 out of 7,000). Predominately black, inner-city communities were the hardest hit by swift and widespread plant closures.Many are still reeling from the losses in the form of increased crime, poverty and staggeringly high unemployment rates.

By bringing together all the stakeholders that hold sway over economic development, job creation and the rebuilding of blighted communities, the Council is poised to develop long-term, “high road” solutions to help manufacturing companies:

• become more innovative in production;
• reinvest in equipment and in their workforce;
• improve the educational institutions that produce the next generation of workers; and
• ensure that government and labor support the sustainability and growth of manufacturing companies.

What has become clear in recent years is that these companies do not have the capacity to solve their workforce challenges alone.

The Council’s first major victory came in November 2006, when it won approval from the Chicago Board of Education to open a new school focused on manufacturing, called Austin Polytechnical Academy. The Council also is spearheading an assessment of Chicago’s community college system in light of best international practices, and working on a research and marketing initiative to promote the use of the National Institute of Metalworking Skill Standards by local companies and schools. In 2007, the Council aims to create a network of manufacturers that will allow small companies to compete more effectively in the global economy.

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