Page 85 - Innovation Delaware 2019

INNOVATION BY SECTOR
PAUL MORRIS
ZACHARY LARIMORE
Partnership (DEMEP) and the Delaware Prosperity Partnership (DPP). “There’s a really good synergy going on right now with those three organizations in trying to not only grow the manufacturing base in Delaware,” Morris says, “but support it and see how we can both add manufacturers and grow the manufacturers that are currently here.”
THE NEXT GENERATION
The Delaware Manufacturing Association, an affiliate of the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce, is focused on making sure Delaware’s manufacturers don’t lose their innovative edge. To that end, it connects manufacturers to schools in the communities where they reside.
“We’ve been really trying to assist Delaware manufacturers in ... building a future workforce — a pipeline of trained individuals who can meet their demands and their needs for a steady workforce for the future,” Morris says. “We’re doing that in a couple of ways. We’re trying to really connect our members to the local K-12 educational community. For instance, if one of our manufacturers has a plant near a middle or a high school, we want to make sure that they’re connected with the principal, the counselors, the teachers — and that they are building a relationship with that school. That’s important because when the students get to working age, they have a relationship with an employer, and we think that’s a positive thing.”
The manufacturing association recently signed an agreement to have manufacturing as an activity at Junior Achievement of Delaware’s interactive JA BizTown exhibit, and the organization is in its fifth year sponsoring a high school manufacturing pathway — students in the program graduate with 600 hours of training, various credentials, and advanced standing in a DTCC college program.
STRONG SUPPORT FOR MANUFACTURERS
When it comes to training the folks already working in manufacturing in the First State, DEMEP is on call. Housed
at Delaware Tech, DEMEP specializes in helping Delaware’s smaller manufacturers stay competitive through professional hands-on assistance and expert consultation, with services
in supply chain optimization, lean manufacturing, quality management and statistical analysis.
As biopharmaceutical manufacturing continues to grow globally, Delaware is poised to maintain a prominent role.
The National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals (NIIMBL), founded in 2017 and headquartered on the University of Delaware’s STAR Campus, looks to help bring treatments to market faster and at reduced cost, while maintaining safety and efficacy. The organization does this primarily through technology and workforce-development projects. NIIMBL is funded in part through a $70 million cooperative agreement with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the U.S. Department of Commerce. Last year, NIIMBL funded its first eight projects, with a total of $14 million in investment spread among 24 of its members. ID
Atlantis Industries in Georgetown continues its 60-year work in injection-molded plastics.
All told, the First State is home to more than 550 manufacturers, and many of them are small to mid-sized businesses. Manufacturing accounts for 5.9% of the total output in the state, employing 5.7% of the workforce, according to
the National Association of Manufacturers. Total annual output from manufacturing is over $4.3 billion, and manufacturing here employs more than 25,900 people. Notably, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reports that those workers have an average annual compensation of more than $70,000.
Paul Morris, assistant vice president of workforce development at Delaware Technical Community College (DTCC) and co-chair of the Delaware Manufacturing Association, says the gears are really turning between his organization, the Delaware Manufacturing Extension
ADVANCED MATERIALS/ MANUFACTURING
by the Numbers
More than
96%
Percentage of Delaware’s global exports that comes from manufacturing
$4.36
Billion
Delaware’s total manufacturing output, in 2017
$72,962
Average annual compensation of manufacturing workers in Delaware
SOURCES: DELAWARE PROSPERITY PARTNERSHIP, U.S. BUREAU OF ECONOMIC ANALYSIS, U.S. CENSUS BUREAU, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF MANUFACTURERS
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