The State of Manufacturing
If manufacturers must stand together in the face of an uncertain economy, it helps to know what we’re standing for.
BY TOM MASON
Just about the time the post office is delivering this magazine to your office, Enterprise Minnesota will have begun an ambitious, relevant and important research project on behalf of Minnesota’s manufacturers.
Over a three-week period in November and December, researchers from a prestigious Washington, D.C., public-opinion research company will conduct 400 to 500 in-depth phone interviews with manufacturing executives across Minnesota for a survey research project called The State of Manufacturing.
Manufacturers are surveyed to death, but this is different. This effort will (hopefully) go beyond the mailing correspondence surveys that you are accustomed to getting. That kind of research provides significant value, but when you think about it, those surveys draw conclusions solely on a sample of folks who were thoughtful enough to fill out the form, which, as we all know well, does not constitute all manufacturers.
The pollsters will call—and keep calling—until they reach a statistically proportional number of manufacturing executives representing geographical location, size of company and type of output. I believe this will be the first time it has ever been accomplished.
In addition, Enterprise Minnesota will convene 10 informal focus groups to discuss the results, proportionally situated around the state to reflect location, size and type. Unlike the “one-way mirror” focus groups that marketers use to determine what scents to give to a bar of soap or that politicians use to hone their messages on the stump, Enterprise Minnesota’s approach will be to supplement the information from the phone surveys. A survey might say, for example, that most manufacturers anticipate coping with the effects of a worldwide recession. But an engaged focus group discussion will provide some additional anecdotal detail about how a recession will affect specific elements of a business—hiring, personnel practices, inventories or supply chain relationships, for example— and what the executives tend to do to cope with it.
This is a consequential and expensive project. And it could not have happened without serious and generous support from Minnesota’s State Colleges and Universities system, Larson-Allen, LLP, RJF Agencies and Bremer Bank. These are all companies that understand manufacturing in Minnesota or, put better, manufacturers in Minnesota.
But your help is needed. When you get a call to participate in the poll or the focus groups, please take it! This research is only as good as the data collected, and that data exists only in your heads! All Minnesotans— business communities, policymakers, local media and employees—should understand the value of manufacturing and appreciate the urgency of supporting it as the solid, job-creating engine that drives our economy. This project will provide a significant component to the broader understanding of the manufacturing industry and its importance in Minnesota.
The results will be published in the January edition of Enterprise Minnesota magazine and in a separately published, stand-alone book. Both will be available at a series of public meetings throughout the state in early January. For more information, drop me an e-mail.