Enterprise Minnesota® Magazine Fall 2025 by Enterprise Minnesota

Building Design

` Renovations, Additions, New Construction

Site Improvements

Environmental Assessments We collaborate with manufacturers on . . .

` Parking, Circulation, Drainage

BRAINERD

Facility Assessments

Space Planning

Mechanical, Electrical Upgrades

Structural Enhancements

ROCHESTER

Using

Pequot

After

Bob Kill

Driven to Improve

Manufacturers share a drive to improve.

While many Minnesota manufacturers are household names, others fly under the radar — 84% of them employ fewer than 50 people, and 60% have fewer than 10 employees. Our state also enjoys a stunning variety of manufacturers operating across nearly every industry. Common to each of these successful companies is a relentless pursuit of improvement.

There’s no better showcase of that diverse base of industry and the drive to improve than this issue of Enterprise Minnesota magazine. Flip through the pages and you’ll find profiles of companies ranging from Mug Experience, a small family operation in Holdingford, to Lexington Manufacturing based in Brainerd and Coon Rapids, which is rapidly approaching its goal of $200 million in sales by 2028. Mug Experience was started by husband-and-wife team Ben and Holly Torrens to produce customized gift shop items. After running their small manufacturing firm for years, the owners decided to focus exclusively on the color-

changing mugs they design and imprint in the manufacturing building behind their house. With their small team of employees, they serve customers around the country, including Aramark, which supplies National Park gift shops, Disney, NASA, Caesars Casino, and Celestial Seasonings. As their company has grown, they have focused on improving process flow and empowering employees.

Lexington Manufacturing, a rapidly growing producer of window and door components, has OEM customers across the nation. The company’s leadership carefully cultivates a strategy that allows Lexington to grow with its customers while avoiding too much single-customer concentration. Leaders have also revamped the company’s “people development architecture” to ensure its hiring, onboarding, and training processes provide a pipeline of qualified employees to support their goals. Lexington has also embraced continuous improvement in its production processes, boosting employee engagement on a daily basis.

This issue also includes features about the people behind the success of Minnesota manufacturing, such as Laura Rusich, the general manager of Cast7, a Hibbing-based foundry, and Fred Zimmerman, who, after decades of work in manufacturing and academia, continues to offer his insights and support for the industry. Also highlighted are how four education programs, Minnesota State College Southeast in Red Wing, the SkillsUSA competition, SciTech, and the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry’s Youth Skills Training program, help prepare the next generation of skilled workers and connect them with manufacturers seeking qualified employees.

In short, this issue illustrates why Minnesota manufacturing hums along: Companies of every size are dedicated to improving their operations with support from talented professionals and educational institutions committed to preparing future workers.

Lynn K. Shelton

Editorial Director

Tom Mason

Creative Director

Scott Buchschacher

Managing Editor

Chip Tangen

Copy Editor

Catrin Wigfall

Writers

Gretchen DeSutter

Suzy Frisch

Gail Hudson

Elizabeth Millard

Robb Murray

Kate Peterson

Mary Lahr Schier

Photographers

Amy Bogart

Amy Jeanchaiyaphum

Robert Lodge

Stephen Maturen

Matthew Sperrazza

Contacts

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Bob Kill is president and CEO of Enterprise Minnesota.

THE STATE OF MANUFACTURING

Coping in Turbulent Times

Enterprise Minnesota’s impactful State of Manufacturing® survey will assess how manufacturers intend to confront an era of extreme unpredictability.

Times of uncertainty breed indecision, and Minnesota manufacturers are operating in a highly unpredictable era. Today’s manufacturers must grapple with varied challenges, from the rollercoaster of tariff policy to the impact of new statemandated benefits as well as the effects of artificial intelligence. And many say they are making decisions in a vacuum.

A key focus of the 2025 State of Manufacturing® (SOM) survey will be to gauge how executives are navigating these unsettled times. Now in its 17th year, the

Enterprise Minnesota annual survey gives both a window into how manufacturers feel about their current prospects and a longrange view of industry trends.

Enterprise Minnesota leaders are especially eager to learn manufacturers’ responses to questions about this new environment.

The poll will pair these inquiries with benchmark questions that provide a snapshot of manufacturers’ outlook on Minnesota’s business climate and their ability to operate in current conditions — and in

the coming years ahead. These benchmarks cover a spectrum of topics that commonly affect manufacturers, such as economic confidence; barriers to success like workforce challenges or health care costs; and their projected growth, profitability, and capital expenditures.

“Seeing the trends over time helps us understand the flavor of the overall industry,” says Bob Kill, president and CEO of Enterprise Minnesota. “There are a lot of concerns right now, and there has been more uncertainty overall since COVID. This year, I think we’re going to see supply chain issues and tariffs popping up and uncertainty around costs. And I think we will see some residual reactions from the new paid family and medical leave and earned sick and safe time laws in Minnesota. Last year we saw a very negative reaction to those.”

The full picture

Since its inception in 2008, the SOM has produced objective data that manufacturers, business leaders, and policymakers use to gain understanding of a vital industry in Minnesota. A critical aspect of the survey and manufacturers’ steady participation has

been SOM’s objectivity and credibility. It stems from the polling firm, Meeting Street Insights, which has been involved from day one. Founded by pollster Rob Autry, the firm capitalizes on Autry’s sterling reputation and 25-year career in political and business polling. He has conducted more than 8,000 polls and focus groups during his career, including polling for four presidents and six presidential campaigns.

Each fall, the SOM kicks off when more than 500 executives of small- and medium-sized manufacturers statewide respond to survey questions. To provide a comprehensive picture, Meeting Street Insights also conducts an overs-

Focus Groups

In September and October, Enterprise Minnesota will conduct focus groups for executives to provide subjective depth to the findings of the State of Manufacturing® poll. To register go to: www.enterpriseminnesota.org/ focus-groups

September 16

Eden Prairie

Uniting the industry

The goals of the SOM have always been to inform lawmakers, business leaders, high school and technical school educators, and providers of professional services about the biggest issues impacting this vital industry. And naturally, manufacturers themselves are a significant audience, says Lynn Shelton, vice president of marketing and organizational development at Enterprise Minnesota. Survey results give manufacturers assurance that they are not alone in facing challenges, whether they arise from federal, state, or local policies, or macroeconomic conditions.

The SOM often serves as an early warning system for decision-makers. It unearths pressures facing small and medium manufacturers that just don’t show up in big-picture data. Shelton points to the worker shortage, a trend that the survey detected long before it was a much-discussed concern hitting every corner of the state.

“The SOM brings together a variety of private-public partnerships in support of manufacturing companies in Minnesota and their employees,” Shelton says. “We have accomplished that throughout the years by building relationships, whether that’s with other industries that support manufacturers

like legal and accounting and banking, or with educators who want to feed manufacturers with future employees.”

During SOM rollout events held in November and December, stakeholders from all of these sectors come together to learn the obstacles and outlooks for Minnesota’s manufacturing industry. About 1,200 people attend annually to gather insight, expand their networks, and learn about shared challenges affecting small and medium manufacturers, Kill says.

“The State of Manufacturing makes manufacturers feel valued as great employers. It brings them together as a community who makes products that are important not only in the state but throughout the world,” Shelton says. “The survey recognizes that there are so many brethren who are their friends and potential future suppliers and maybe customers. They get to meet each other and feel part of a larger effort.”

The SOM often serves as an early warning system for decision-makers.

In addition to providing essential data and a multi-year perspective on issues facing manufacturers, the SOM supports the industry in other ways, Kill says. “It’s a really engaging service that gets a lot of people thinking more deeply about the value of manufacturing in their community,” he adds. “It brings a lot of visibility to people who don’t understand the value of manufacturing as well as they could, and it allows manufacturers to do some comparative analysis of what others are doing.”

Kill observes that the survey regularly sheds light on manufacturers’ best practices, helping inform other executives’ decision-making. For example, as leaders learn that ISO certification is becoming an engrained part of other manufacturers’ operations, they often seek to explore that opportunity for their own companies. Or they might gain insight into how similarly sized manufacturers handle recruiting, hiring, and retaining employees, and then experiment with those tactics. It’s all in service of making the Minnesota manufacturing industry as strong as possible.

Survey Rollouts

In November and December, Enterprise Minnesota will conduct survey rollout events. Manufacturers, policymakers, educators, economic development professionals, other business industry leaders, and members of the media attend to learn about the survey results in detail.

To register go to: www.enterpriseminnesota.org/ som-release

November 12

Redwood Falls

Sponsored by the Southwest Initiative Foundation

November 18

Owatonna

Sponsored by the Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation

December 2

Moorhead Sponsored by the West Central Initiative

December 4

Brainerd

PROCESSES

A Magic Wand?

Pequot Manufacturing takes a “Swiss Army Knife approach” to sharpen its ERP.

Your company has grown considerably. And without a doubt, you’ve outgrown your current ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software, too. Or, you’ve stumbled along, trying to make Excel spreadsheets, Google Sheets, QuickBooks, and bits of third-party software do the job of running your core business processes, and you can’t keep up with demand.

Is a new ERP the “magic wand” you need? Perhaps. “People think, ‘If I buy it, it’s just going to magically do what I want it to do,’” says Ryan Steinert, a business growth consultant with Enterprise Minnesota

A well-matched ERP can be a game changer, but making the wrong choice can be a nightmare. “Everybody has a little sour taste in their mouth of ERPs in the past — either the ones they’ve implemented or horror stories they’ve heard where a company puts a big investment into a new one that they’re hoping will do a lot and it just doesn’t meet their expectations up front,” Steinert says.

Ready for change

Pequot Manufacturing in Pequot Lakes is currently working with its second ERP system and is searching for another. The 44-year-old company “pretty much manufactures whatever comes in the door,” says Support Operations Director Glen Young. With 95,000 square feet of space and 225 employees, Pequot Manufacturing serves more than 30 industries in the U.S. — including sheet metal fabrication, job shop precision machining, and contract manufacturing.

Young says they’ve been forced to use a “Swiss Army Knife approach” to their ERP by constantly customizing it. He says they painted themselves into a corner whenever they wanted to make changes. “Whether it be accounting or HR or quality — you wind up having not the best of breed, but with solutions that are just ‘okay,’” he says.

In August 2024, Steinert arrived on Pequot Manufacturing’s doorstep to help

them find the right ERP. “There are hundreds of ERPs out there,” he says. “As this company continues to pursue growth with different markets and manufacturing processes, they need a system that is flexible and works for them and not against them.”

How to choose?

Before company leaders consider their options, Steinert meets multiple times with them, learning as much as he can about their business and how they want to operate. “We’ll look at their core value streams of what they’re trying to produce and all the processes that go into that,” he says.

Young says a cross-section of employees from just about every department participated in their meetings. “We let everybody speak their piece about what they wanted in an ERP system.”

Steinert’s presence forced them to slow down to determine what might benefit the company the most. “Ryan was a very neutral party,” Young says. “He was able to understand what we were looking for and guide us.”

Once the company put together a wish list of requirements, the group ranked them in importance. “The level of detail that Ryan went through and the questions he asked were really good,” Young says. “I don’t think there was anything that we missed.”

Glen Young, support operations director

Five questions companies should ask

Steinert suggests that companies ask good questions to guide the acquisition and implementation of an ERP.

1) What processes do we need to simplify and standardize?

Steinert recommends getting rid of wasteful processes. “You need to understand what your process is and how to standardize it the best way possible.”

2) What can and should we automate?

By automating tasks, your employees can work on things that would have more value to your customers than inputting data into a spreadsheet, for example.

3) What goals are the most important?

“Once you get into an ERP implementation, the water can get muddy pretty quick, and you want to hold on to what’s important to you,” Steinert says. “You don’t want to get to the end of this thing and think, ‘Wow, that didn’t really give us what we wanted.’”

4) What’s under the hood?

Don’t take what the ERP company says at face value. Ask how it works and have them prove it. Young says his company wants to know how close the system is to what they need, and what it will take to make it work for them.

5) How does this help us improve? Companies often want specialized reports of key process indicators or metrics — data that can tell them how to improve. One of the most critical

functions of an ERP is to allow data to cross each of a company’s core business entities. “I like the quote that one of the businesses we work with uses,” Steinert explains. “‘It’s my system of truth or my core truth,’ where you can always come back to it and know what’s going on.”

Ready to act

Steinert delivered a “Top 10” list of ERPs, along with details on how well each one matched Pequot Manufacturing’s ranked list of goals. “We’re not necessarily there to pick the ERP for them,” Steinert says. “From that list, they can really narrow down their choice of what would be the best system for them.”

Young says it was a great experience. “We went from a lot of people who were afraid of change — and afraid to leave a system that we put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into — to picking a system that will fill our needs much better from right out of the box.”

—Gail Hudson

Highly Esteemed

Business growth consultant Abbey Hellickson wins Enterprise Minnesota’s top award — a peer-to-peer honor — for the second time.

or Enterprise Minnesota employees, it’s the highest praise to win the organization’s Esteemed Colleague award. It means that co-workers agree that the honoree does excellent work, has their back, gets things done, and earns respect from clients and colleagues alike. The 2025 winner, Abbey Hellickson, is now the first person to receive this award two times — a testament to her abilities and achievements.

A business growth consultant, Hellickson joined Enterprise Minnesota in 2016 and won her first Esteemed Colleague award right away in 2017. It’s readily apparent

how much Hellickson cares about supporting her co-workers and helping manufacturers grow profitably, says Lynn Shelton, vice president of marketing and organizational development.

“Abbey is the quintessential person to win this award. Our Enterprise Minnesota core values are practical creativity, exceptional service, respectful interactions, and transformational growth, and she embodies all of them in an outward and exceptional way,” Shelton says. “Abbey is trustworthy internally and externally, and she is purposeful about her role. She

thrives on helping companies retain and grow their employees.”

Hellickson brings a varied background to Enterprise Minnesota that benefits her clients and contributes to their regard for her, observes President and CEO Bob Kill. She grew up on a farm in Wisconsin and continues that tradition with her husband — they raise hogs and crops in Preston.

“Abbey is the quintessential person to win this award.”

–Lynn Shelton, Enterprise Minnesota

Hellickson began her career in human resources and worked as a corporate training instructor at Fastenal in Winona. Then she spent nearly 12 years at Rochester Community and Technical College, serving as director of business and workforce education, including customized training.

“Abbey blends all of that experience together, and it gives her respect and appreciation for what it takes for small businesses to succeed,” Kill says. “I have so much personal respect and appreciation

Enterprise Minnesota’s 2025 Esteemed Colleague winner Abbey Hellickson is joined by winners of other awards. Left to right: Kurt Bear, Eric Blaha, Abbey Hellickson, Greg Hunsaker, Constance Fantin, Michele Neale, Ally Johnston, Keith Gadacz, Jim Eernisse, Amy Thimmesh, Robert Lodge, and Sandy Borstad

for what Abbey does for our organization. She is an Enterprise Minnesota leader, she does great work, she’s appreciated by all of our clients, and she’s straightforward in problem-solving situations. She is really a catalyst for making talent leadership a core offering for our clients.”

Kill notes that Hellickson also has won Enterprise Minnesota’s Above and Beyond award four times for going the extra mile for clients or colleagues. She’s a sought-after asset for any Enterprise Minnesota team when business developers are pitching their services to potential manufacturing clients. In addition, Hellickson facilitates Enterprise Minnesota’s oldest peer council, based in southern Minnesota. Kill was impressed when he saw her in action there.

“The respect these senior executives have for Abbey is just obvious. She’s worked with virtually every single one of them in a consulting role,” he says. “Outside of her service delivery, they often reached out to Abbey for her thoughts on topics because of her pragmatism and thoughtfulness. She always seems to go one step further than you might need to move something forward.”

Business development consultant Kurt Bear works closely with Hellickson. As the winner of the 2024 Esteemed Colleague award, Bear had the opportunity to announce Hellickson as this year’s honoree. Bear had plenty to say, having worked with her for five years and witnessed what she can do — and does — day in and day out with clients and their Enterprise Minnesota co-workers.

“I think Abbey has a genuine concern for people and particularly for the people who get the work done every day at our clients’ companies. She understands the importance of leadership in an organization and particularly manufacturing organizations,” Bear says, noting that Hellickson often shares business acumen that she learned from her family’s business and other work experiences.

When consulting with business owners, Hellickson is especially adept at using her human resources background to help them address employees’ concerning behaviors. “She is an effective person for fixing those problems. The other thing I appreciate about Abbey is her willingness to serve clients and move forward even with a small group of participants,” Bear says. “She has an extraordinary attitude and willingness to

work with others and have respectful and difficult conversations when necessary.”

Hellickson thoroughly enjoys her leadership and talent development role. She likes working closely with clients and manufacturing leaders, doing executive coaching, creating customized leadership series, and helping grow Enterprise Minnesota’s service offerings in talent development.

Being one of the longest serving employees in talent and leadership development, Hellickson has institutional knowledge that she gladly shares when asked. And she isn’t shy about challenging her co-workers or advocating for her

“I think Abbey has a genuine concern for people and particularly for the people who get the work done every day at our clients’ companies.”

–Kurt Bear, Enterprise Minnesota

peers with Enterprise Minnesota leaders. She does it all with the base acknowl edgement that consulting and talent development can be difficult.

“I do try to coach and mentor and sup port my colleagues when they are dealing with some tough times,” Hellickson says. “I appreciate working with my clients and love the diversity of my days. I get to interact with fabulous people, and they all care about their employees and want the best for them.”

Hellickson was very surprised to win the Esteemed Colleague award again, and she greatly appreciates the recogni tion from her colleagues. She hopes it’s a reflection of how rewarding she finds her work with peers and clients.

“I just truly love what I do, and I hope that everyone loves what they do, too. That’s my purpose,” Hellickson says. “When I work with leaders, my ultimate goal is to help them be successful in their jobs. Being a leader is so hard and helping them find their way as a leader is what drives me. I enjoy watching the growth and development of my clients and watching them be successful.”

Suzy Frisch

Four Questions INNOVATIONS

Fred Zimmerman Insights from a manufacturing icon.

Fred Zimmerman’s legendary career in manufacturing includes stints at IBM, Control Data, and National Computer Systems. He has worked in engineering, management, and executive positions. A professor emeritus in engineering at the University of St. Thomas, Zimmerman is one of Minnesota manufacturing’s strongest and most vocal supporters. At nearly 90 years old, he continues to give presentations and serve as a resource to the media on issues surrounding manufacturing and the economy.

Why is manufacturing so important to Minnesota’s economy?

Dave Beal, a former business editor at the Twin Cities Pioneer Press, and I wrote a book a few years ago called, Manufacturing Works. We looked at all 3,142 counties in the U.S., and we found what we called “Hinterland Hotspots” — counties that didn’t have big cities and weren’t even near an interstate. If they had a solid manufacturing base, they were real pockets of prosperity. In our classifications, we also identified those big cities that had lost manufacturing — places like Detroit. We called those “Sliding Goliaths.” The most significant factor related to community pros-

Our industrial economy is the heart of all the nation’s wealth.

perity was not business climate, not taxes, and not public policy. It was the quality and competitiveness of major manufacturing companies operating in those communities that mattered. The Hinterland Hotspots were much more prosperous than the Sliding Goliaths. Our industrial economy is the heart of all the nation’s wealth. It doesn’t come from people building web pages; that’s minuscule in terms of the dollar impact. The wealth comes from large, capable manufacturing companies. But the list is shrinking. At the end of the Second World War, almost all major products of almost any field — appliances or aircraft or cars— were manufactured in the United States. At that time, we had about 35% of our non-farm employment in manufacturing. Now we have maybe nine. The service economy is important to us, but it generates very few exports.

What’s leading to the decline in manufacturing?

The first thing that happened is we have all this overhead. Somebody’s got to pay for the accountants and the lobbyists and the advertisers and all these other things, and it makes the companies less competitive.

There’s also a problem with management. Somebody can run a company into the ground and take it into bankruptcy and still be running it. In Europe if you do something like that, you’re out of a job. A friend of mine was head of a

The companies that seem to do well are those that improve quality at every step.

machine tool company in Germany, and they had something like three losing years. He was out of a job.

Many of the CEOs of the German companies are also quite technical. Many of them are engineers. I’m not advocating that all executives are engineers — you do need a mix — but they have expertise in something. The company 3M used to be that way too; they had four sector vice presidents, and all of them were groomed to lead. They didn’t know for sure who’d take over as the next CEO, but they all had academic backgrounds in advanced technical subjects. So that’s one issue: A good portion of the managerial core in the United States is not sufficiently schooled in what they need to know in order to run these companies

If you look at the smaller manufacturers, they can be quietly sensible and benevolent, and they will hold their employment. It isn’t that they don’t ever make across-the-board reductions and that they never have to lay people off, but it’s merit-based and it’s thought about, and it’s reserved for emergencies. But we need more thoughtful companies.

What are the biggest threats to Minnesota’s manufacturing sector?

Everyone is getting older. Within manufacturing you have good workers and good middle people. There’s authority, power, and influence. It’s never distributed by rank in companies. It’s

distributed among people who know something and have certain skills, and they have influence. And among those ranks, most of them are old. The average welder in the United States is something like 60 years old, and you have all these aging experts who are close to retirement, and there are not enough people coming up the pipeline.

There is a misalignment of opportunities for young people that contributes to this problem. When I did some teaching at St. Cloud State University, some of the students were potentially good hires, but a high percentage of them were finance majors when companies really needed engineers. There are top rated manufacturing companies in that community that are crying for good employees, but few people apply. Instead, these promising young people will go out to the crowded overhead fields, which are usually lower paid with longer hours.

What are the most important lessons you’ve learned from your decades in manufacturing?

Get good people and treat them well. Employees flock to the companies that treat them right. I saw that when I was working in Moline, Ill. for IBM. The attitude of the town, if there was hiring to be done, was that they all flocked to John Deere. Deere took the most capable people. Then the next group went to Case. And if anybody was leftover, they would go to International Harvester.

Successful companies also get their employees involved in the process. I was on the board of Winnebago, the motorhome manufacturer, for a long time, and they had a suggestion program. The minimum award was $25 for almost anything that anybody suggested. But some of the awards were quite substantial. One guy came up with the idea of these cutouts for where the windows are, that’s good material. And they use those for the floor of the closets. Importantly, the CEO gave out these awards.

Be innovative, but don’t follow every fad. The companies that seem to do well are those that improve quality at every step. They worry about whether every stage in the manufacturing process is well done. The management of successful companies pays attention to lots of things, little things all the time.

U.S. manufacturing at a crossroads: Can it address the tech gap?

Check out our free reporting exploring how current policies are affecting U.S.-based manufacturing and the priorities of consumers.

The ‘Big Hairy Goal’

Using a focus on people and processes, Lexington Manufacturing is on track to achieve a 10-year goal to more than double the size of the company.

BY MARY LAHR SCHIER

Mike Dillon, president of Brainerd- and Coon Rapidsbased Lexington Manufacturing, recalls the strategic planning session in which the OEM component manufacturer’s leaders realized just how big the company could grow. It was late 2018 and Lexington had annual sales of about $75 million. A dozen of the company’s leaders had camped out at a northern Minnesota resort to project sales targets for the next five and 10 years.

More than 35 years old and family owned, Lexington had a solid and growing business providing window components to a wide range of top window manufacturers as well as door components to premier commercial door brands around the country. As Lexington grew, the company developed very strong partnerships with several large OEM manufacturers. “We wanted to continue growing with them while not having any one of them exceed our comfort level for single customer concentration,” Dillon says. “We also never want to say no to our customers, so not growing with them is not an option.” Using those parameters, Dillon’s team calculated that the potential growth of well-balanced relationships could be substantial — some $200 million over 10 years.

degree in forest products management, he didn’t know anything about CNC, window components, or the business. After a year, he left Lexington for another job.

“It was a greener pastures thing,” he says, “but I decided the other side of that fence was not greener.” He was hired back in Lexington’s purchasing department one year later. When the company opened a

Mike

good match.

“Watkins is a very closely held family company,” Dillon says. “They have a similar approach to how the Dimkes ran the company — it was people first with longterm growth.”

Execution and metrics

“They knew where they were going and what they needed to do. Now they’re ready for their next big jump.”

and Jeff Morin, vice president of operations

So far, the math is on track. With sales of over $120 million in 2024, Lexington leaders believe they can hit what they call the “big hairy goal” in the next three years through a combination of disciplined HR strategies, improved processes, and prudential acquisitions.

The biggest bottleneck is people, Dillon says. “We have to get people in the business, teach them what to do, how to be leaders, and develop their technical skills.”

His passion for helping employees build skills and grow their careers is rooted in his own career path. Dillon joined Lexington right after college as a CNC operator at the Coon Rapids plant. While he had a

–Dawn Loberg, Enterprise Minnesota

plant in Brainerd in 1998 to make door components, he volunteered to help open it. Over the next 20 years, he went from plant manager to general manager. In 2016, when company owners Bob and John Dimke, nearing retirement, prepared the company for sale, they promoted Dillon to president. Coincidentally, they finalized the sale to Georgia-based Watkins Associated Industries during the strategy session where the $200 million growth plan was hatched. The sale to Watkins in early 2019 proved a

The pandemic hit a year after the sale to Watkins. “We experienced a pause on the business,” Dillon says of 2020, “but then it was like someone put gas on the fire and we could barely hold on for two and a half years.” All those home offices and cabins people wanted to build needed doors and windows. Lexington could barely keep up and would have easily hit $200 million in sales had that pace continued. Amid the busyness, Dillon’s team kept an eye on their long-term goal. Beginning in 2018, they adopted the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) to focus on quarter-after-quarter, year-after-year process improvement and longterm goals. The company also sought help with continuous improvement projects (it’s currently ISO ready) and began requiring higher-level managers to participate in professional development, such as peer groups. “Having a more disciplined approach to execution was the first thing we had to do, and that took a lot of practice,” he says.

“They have done so much groundwork,” says Dawn Loberg, a business development consultant with Enterprise Minnesota, who has worked with the company extensively. “They knew where they were going and what they needed to do. Now they’re ready for their next big jump.”

A key element to that growth has been a significant investment in improving what Dillon calls the people development architecture. Not that long ago, only about 40% of new hires stayed on the job longer than 90 days, a situation Dillon found frustrating and costly. To turn that around, the

Dillon, president,

company revamped its hiring, on-boarding, and training processes, says Pat Chen, vice president of human resources.

“The employees who get to three months on the job are much more likely to stay for a year,” Chen says. “If they get to one year, they tend to stay for many years.”

They tapped Sandy Borstad, an Enterprise Minnesota business growth consultant, to help improve their on-boarding process and training programs. “Their dedication to employees has been a big investment,” she says.

Employee retention starts with the job interview, Chen says. “Working on the shop floor isn’t for everyone,” he says. “We want to give a really accurate description of the job so there are no surprises if they get hired.” If the job involves being on your feet all day, dealing with loud noises, or moving heavy pallets around, the applicant will know that ahead of time. Once hired, employees face an on-boarding that is more interactive than just watching a video. The company developed training protocols for how to operate each piece of equipment, and supervisors work closely with new hires. It creates greater engagement, Chen says, designed to give new hires a positive experience as they join the Lexington team, especially in the first two weeks. It all worked. Today, 90-day retention is above 70%.

“Employee retention starts with the job interview.”

–Pat Chen, vice president of human resources, Lexington Manufacturing

The company has also introduced regular one-on-one meetings (weekly for office employees, monthly for production workers) with their supervisors for all employees. “Employees know their jobs,” Chen says. “We want them to have a chance to talk with their supervisor to express any issues or concerns.”

Metrics have also played a big role in continuous improvement projects. Jeff Morin, vice president of operations, joined Lexington three years ago and is responsible for all plant performance, including two facilities in Coon Rapids, a new plant in Ramsey, and a large one in Brainerd. In total, the company has 300,000 square feet of manufacturing space. Morin had experience working with Enterprise Minnesota for continuous improvement at a previous employer and was eager to bring more lean systems to Lexington.

Each of the plants has a different core competency and different challenges. In Brainerd, for example, it’s turning 4-by21-foot panels into various door components including the door core, stiles, and rails with almost zero waste. They use laminated strand lumber (LSL), an engineered wood that doesn’t warp, to cut the door cores, then frame the cores with strips of hardwood. It’s a fast-paced, highvolume environment with 35 truckloads of wood and other materials delivered to the plant every week.

The Coon Rapids work centers focus on precision profile wrapping, using veneer or vinyl, overlaying onto various substrates predominantly in the residential window market. They also have the ability to paint and CNC those components, adding value to Lexington’s customer base. While Brainerd serves the commercial market, Coon Rapids’ products go mostly to residential products. Being in both aspects of the building industry gives the company the ability to withstand market ups and downs.

The company will open its newest plant in Covington, Ga., in 2026. Initially, the plant will do profile wrapping of window components but will be able to expand into other areas as business grows. The 65,000-square-foot plant was built near a facility owned by one of Lexington’s partners but will enable the company to serve other customers in the southeastern United States as well, Dillon says. Rising freight expenses make it worthwhile to have a plant near high-growth areas. “We

have a known partner that’s driving us there,” Dillon says. “We know from our current customers that there is quite a bit of demand there.”

Get problems out of the way

As the business has grown, Lexington has built continuous improvement into its operations. It has conducted lean leader training at all of its plants, including the offices. “It’s not about making anyone work harder,” Morin says. “It’s about getting things that cause problems out of the way.”

For instance, a work center in Coon Rapids has improved the long lead times involved in changing over the machines from one profile wrapped component to another, a complicated process that would take three or more hours to get the line ready to run a different component. “There are a lot of variables,” Morin says, such as the thickness of the materials, the overlays, temperature, and humidity. “All of those things play into it.”

By focusing on documentation, organization, control, and identification of variables, as well as the basics of how the process should work, they reduced setup time to under an hour on average. Efficiency on that line has gone from 60% to close to 100% over two 10-hour shifts a day, Morin says.

As part of continuous improvement efforts, safety, quality, delivery, and cost are tracked for each workstation on results boards with daily team meetings to assess areas for improvement. Senior leaders of the company visit each work center

weekly to assess progress and connect with employees.

“The teams often feel like they are not successful if they are not green across the board,” Morin says. “Red on the board tells all of us in the organization that we have an opportunity to do better. It’s not saying you didn’t do your job today.”

Sometimes continuous improvement has involved refining the metrics used to measure results and discovering unexpected ways to improve. For instance, Lexington’s delivery to its customers is nearly 100% on time. But when the metric was changed to look not just at on-time delivery to the customer but at the on-time percentage from one work center to another in a multi-

Lexington improved the machine availability for its wrap areas from 42 to 65% in 90 days.

“That’s unheard of.”

–Ally Johnston, Enterprise Minnesota

step process, they discovered the on-time percentage within the production process was closer to 60 or 70%. “That meant the guy behind you had to work harder to meet our customer’s deadline,” Morin says. “It has big effects even though we were still on time to the customer.”

They looked at their growth from a holistic standpoint. “They knew that to reach

their goals they needed to invest in their people, processes, and their planning,” Loberg says.

To help that process, Lexington has engaged Enterprise Minnesota over four years. They learned lean strategies and how to implement them. They conducted six continuous improvement Kaizen events. They learned and applied value stream mapping skills for the manufacturing floor as well as for new product development. Employees participated in lean leadership and coaching sessions and the company developed a new corporate training program.

As a benefit, Lexington improved the machine availability for its wrap areas from 42 to 65% in 90 days. “That’s unheard of,” says Ally Johnston, the Enterprise Minnesota consultant who helped them achieve that goal. “The team worked really hard to increase capacity and growth.”

The team also decreased downtime in its Brainerd facility by 25% (70 minutes per shift).

Their work was exceptional, says Eric Blaha, one of Enterprise Minnesota’s value stream mapping specialists. “The result of decreasing downtime is to increase capacity, without having to buy additional equipment.”

In the course of mapping the process and schedule, they also discovered a gap in one step in the process. “We had three extra days of lead time, and we didn’t know it,” he says. “That’s awesome.” The project led to changes not only in production, but in how scheduling is handled.

How far can you grow?

The company is looking for both defensive and offensive acquisitions to get to its $200 million magic number. These could include competitors, suppliers, or firms that make complementary products. “We don’t have a unique or proprietary product,” Dillon says. “Our value is turning various raw materials into a usable part for OEMs and doing it efficiently and in a high service model so they can make their products the ways they want to.”

A recent strategy planning session, “brought a lot of ‘ah-ha’ moments” for the Lexington team, says Steve Haarstad, a business growth and exit planning consultant with Enterprise Minnesota. While the company is still considering a classic acquisition of another firm, leaders expanded their thinking to include possible equipment investments, expansions of service or product lines, and even purchases of new technology. Any of those moves could boost revenue without the challenges of merging another business into Lexington’s culture.

For example, the company has added fabricating cabinet door components to its capabilities. The process of making and wrapping the doors’ components in veneers is similar to Lexington’s window business, and market analysis showed there could be room for a service-oriented vendor, Morin says.

“We’ve got the people. We’ve bought the technology, and we’ve got contacts in the market to go get sales,” Dillon says. While the company’s expertise in panel processing, laminating, and coating products is key, it’s not what sets them apart, he says. “It’s our ability to understand our customers’ needs and create a custom service and deliver on that.”

Despite “noise” about trade issues and tariffs, the company’s strong relationships with vendors and a diverse supply chain will help it weather whatever current storms arise. “We’re not going to run out of wood,” he says.

Is Lexington’s growth target aggressive? Yes, but it’s doable.

“It’s going to require our current people to expand their skills and knowledge and work sometimes outside of their comfort zone, which I think is an opportunity,” says Dillon of the growth targets. “And our people see it that way and have been responding to that. We’ve got a great workforce.”

What’s on Dillon’s mind these days, however, is that soon the company will begin the process of setting another “big hairy goal.”

Change Agent

BY ELIZABETH MILLARD

Much like the products it creates, Mug Experience embraces change and evolution — with some magic thrown in, too.

Holly and Ben Torrens, founders

At first glance, Mug Experience seems only to print logos on black mugs in a small manufacturing and office space tucked behind the founders’ house in Holdingford, Minn. Even the area surrounding the company feels modest and nondescript — there’s a cornfield across the gravel road, a stately church within walking distance, and a trampoline for the kids in the backyard. The town’s biggest claim to fame is that it’s the “gateway to Lake Wobegon,” a place that doesn’t even exist. The company doesn’t even have a sign to mark its location.

Yet the best magic tricks begin by letting the audience underestimate the simplicity of what’s really going on.

Those black mugs aren’t ho-hum corporate giveaways; they’re color-changing

marvels that reveal often incredible scenes when filled with hot water. What was once plain becomes a vista filled with the aurora borealis for an Alaskan resort, or a raging stream filled with blueberries and a whitewater-rafting bear for a tea company, or a quiet morning lake scene bringing calm to customers at a local coffee shop.

The company can print literally any image on a mug that’s designed to hide those graphics until heat radiates from inside the cup — and thanks to two passionate founders, a dedicated team, and some wisdom from business advisors, Mug Experience is poised to do the same. As the company heats up, its true colors are just beginning to show.

Finding their pumpkin

The path toward the manufacturing facility in Holdingford had numerous twists and turns before it became Mug Experience in 2021.

Ben and Holly Torrens met in a physics class at North Dakota State University, both as electrical engineering majors who graduated in 2004. After getting married, they moved to Iowa and took jobs at the same company but always planned to return to the Holdingford area, where Holly had grown up. When her sister had a baby, the couple set that plan in motion, and Ben

the enthusiasm for a kneeling sculpture he made, they crafted porcelain angel figures that could hold prayer cards. That was the idea that took off, and they started down the path of becoming a gift manufacturer.

“We were in full entrepreneurial mode because people seemed to like what we were making,” Ben says. “The underlying idea behind everything was to encourage and inspire people. When we were doing engineer work, we both felt disconnected, like we weren’t affecting anyone directly. You send out a project, but you don’t have the sense that someone is going to feel joy.

landed at a ballistics design firm in the Twin Cities, designing large-scale parachutes for planes and rockets, while Holly did engineering contract work from home.

In 2008, the ballistics firm was struggling in the midst of the housing crash and subsequent recession, so they asked for volunteers before doing layoffs. Since Ben had been yearning to start his own business, he stepped up. It seemed like a solid idea — until Holly got laid off three days later.

“We’d been writing down all these ideas of directions we could go with different businesses, and then suddenly we were both out of work,” Holly says. “It was a catalyst for us saying, well, now let’s try every idea and see what sticks.”

What resulted was a flurry of endeavors covering everything from web design to gift shop items. Ben enjoyed welding and had created sculptures for family celebrations — like two people holding a baby for when Holly’s nephew was born. Based on

So, we were trying to pivot toward that, but we just had so much going on.”

Then, the pair had a new idea to create color-changing mugs. They had their first designs ready just in time to help Holly’s grandmother celebrate a milestone birthday — they selected one for her with a night sky when the mug is cool and a sunrise when hot liquid is poured into it. The mug also featured a Saint Augustine quote: “Faith is to believe what you do not see.”

The family reaction to the changing colors was so striking that Ben and Holly knew they were on to something.

“We really got to witness the emotion of seeing the mug change, and that’s just what we wanted,” Holly recalls. “We wanted everyone to have that feeling.” After a year that was productive but resulted in negative profitability, Ben reached out to Eric Sparrow, owner of Milkhouse Candle in Iowa, for advice — then drove to his facility the next day. Sparrow shared some wisdom

Annette Grebinoski, Mug Experience

and recommended a book, The Pumpkin Plan, centering on business growth.

Written by Mike Michalowicz, the book uses the analogy of a pumpkin vine to advise entrepreneurs about focus. To grow a prize-winning pumpkin, you can’t let every single pumpkin try to thrive; the more you prune and become selective, the more energy will flow to the one that’s chosen.

The reaction to that first mug — and realizing that 80% of their revenue came from that product line — made the pumpkin idea compelling. That led to Ben and Holly finally pruning all those ideas down to one winner. “We loved all our other vines and pumpkins, but we realized we’d never have success spreading ourselves out like that,” Ben says. “It was really difficult to give up the other projects but also a relief to have a single focus that could take us to the next step, which was establishing a business and seeing growth. We had to start fertilizing the pumpkin.”

Creating better flow

After pruning all other product offerings, that freed up space in their manufacturing and production facility, which allowed them to put full focus on the color-changing mugs. A year later, they implemented a system that allowed clients to customize the mugs. That option took off, causing the company to develop new design tools and artwork applications.

“Ben and Holly understand that continuous improvement starts with people, and that’s why they invest so heavily in their employees.”

–Dawn Loberg, Enterprise Minnesota

Continuously improving printing and automation tools, they decided to purchase a very large printer for customized boxes, but while the machine provided much higher quality, the production speed was significantly reduced. They found themselves unable to deliver on production expectations, which is what brought them to meet with Dawn Loberg and Ryan Steinert, two consultants from Enterprise Minnesota.

That’s when they discovered their streamlined processes weren’t so efficient after all. And the huge, expensive, space-consuming printer? Not worth the investment.

“Ryan simply showed us how often we touched a mug in the process from printing to shipping, and it was 47 times,” Ben says. “He also detailed how people moved around the work floor during the day, and it looked like spaghetti. There was just no flow at all.”

Because of that, they cut a hole in a wall and created a production loop that meant mugs were handled far fewer times in the process, and that also solved the issue of employee movement. At every step of the way, the duo was eager to implement suggestions because they saw changes almost immediately.

“Ben and Holly are electrical engineers who are very familiar with continuous improvement,” Loberg says. “They were not trained in manufacturing processes, but they’re like sponges; they’re very open-minded and willing to try anything, so they learned so much from Ryan.”

Although the two owners made significant changes to their workflow and equipment, they also looked at more modest shifts they could implement as well, and that was another major ingredient for their success, according to Steinert.

“They focused on consistent, small changes they could do every day,” he says. “A lot of manufacturers get caught up in wanting to buy improvement through large equipment, software, or automation, and they fail to realize the full, expected results. The owners and employees at Mug Experience have become really good at making small improvements to their processes that yield large results.”

Collaboration as a growth driver

Another differentiator for Mug Experience is buy-in from team members. Even with a small employee group, empowerment isn’t always a given, but Ben and Holly recognize the benefits of supporting employee needs. Notably, there isn’t a small break room or just a table off in a corner with a mini-fridge available — instead, the couple bought a small, cabin-like house that was relocated onto the property as the employee hangout. It boasts an upstairs library, comfy seats, plenty of snacks, and a view of the woods.

They’ve also implemented a process that formalizes employee feedback, which has gone a long way toward prompting ideas that get put into action.

“Each employee is encouraged to contribute ideas, work on special projects, and take full ownership of their position and the business success,” Steinert says. “They win together.”

The company displays its core values on a poster in the middle of the production floor: balance and well-being; innovation and growth; collaboration; enthusiasm and excellence; positive impact. Next to that is a board filled with notes that call out specific employees who have made contributions to one of these values that week.

Employees are encouraged to share their concerns and improvement ideas, and there’s also an anonymous feedback system along with quarterly surveys. When the team decides there’s an idea that might be worth implementing, they move with remarkable speed, according to Steinert.

“When there are ideas that just make sense, the team moves forward right away,” he says. “They have a bunch of pilot projects running all the time that may not be perfect but are put in place and being

Sara Grebinoski, Mug Experience

tested. They are constantly in the ‘plan, do, check, act’ cycle of improvement. For example, during the facility layout project, the team came up with an optimal layout option that required walls to be knocked down, electrical and ducting to be moved, and their entire flow of production to be rearranged. They picked a couple days and just did it all.”

Small ideas are just as important as large ones, Ben says. For example, finished boxes were once put on the lower shelf of a cart, which required bending down to retrieve them. Having this happen occasionally isn’t much of a productivity killer, but when this happens many times a day, it can slow down workflow and increase the risk of overuse injuries. An employee suggested creating special hooks on the carts by using the 3D printer to create what they needed. Three employees worked on different design ideas before a winner was chosen, and it was implemented within hours of being suggested. The result is exactly what was needed: much less bending and time saved.

“Ben and Holly understand that continuous improvement starts with people,

and that’s why they invest so heavily in their employees,” Loberg says. “That’s a bit rare in such a small company, but it’s why they’re growing and making smart decisions.” Their openness to applying the concepts they learned from Steinert and employees’ ideas had immediate business results, she adds. By streamlining workflow, they avoided the cost of a new building while increasing their revenue by 50% within the current facility.

“There is no doubt that they will continue investing in their people and processes to create a sound foundation for future growth,” Loberg says.

Looking ahead

Although Mug Experience started as a B2B enterprise and still has that as its customer base, the refinement of existing technology has led them to explore moving into the B2C arena as well. Right now, they’re beta testing a way for an individual to come onto their site and upload a photo that can be turned into a single mug.

“We weren’t able to do that before because we had inconsistent output and limited production capability, so that

meant we could only do larger orders,” Ben says. “Then, after working with Enterprise Minnesota, we were able to solve those issues in a meaningful way and that gave us the confidence not only to work with bigger accounts but also to grow into the B2C space.”

One of those larger accounts, for example, is Aramark — they use Mug Experience to create mugs that go into National Park gift shops and awarded them “2024 item of the year.” Other customers include Disney, NASA, Caesars Casino, and Celestial Seasonings, as well as smaller gift shops and resorts around the country. Already, one wall of the production space is stacked high with mugs waiting to be applied with custom designs. Adding individual orders to this already bustling space will be quite a trick, they believe, but one worth trying.

“This should be a wild adventure, but we’ve never shied away from taking the next step,” Ben says. “We are growing that pumpkin, but more than that, we’re still connected to that original mission of making something that people feel excited about, that brings them joy. That feels like magic.”

GROWING A NICHE

On a Good Note

After five decades of teaching instrument repair, Minnesota State College Southeast is still finding innovative ways to help students.

BY ELIZABETH MILLARD

Duane Johnson, student

When school is in session at Minnesota State College Southeast (known as Southeast) in Red Wing, the common areas are filled with music, and you never know which instruments will be joining — students start jam sessions that might include trombones and guitars, violins, and clarinets.

The lively tunes fill the hallways and offices, but this isn’t a performing arts school. Instead, the students are proving they’re learning a craft that will help performers around the country and perhaps even throughout the world: music instrument repair, a highly specialized skill that’s taught in only a few colleges.

“There are very few programs that do what we do,” says John Huth, an instructor for band instrument repair. “There’s a reason our students come from all over. We’ve established a reputation because we love what we do here, and we’re excited to keep that going well into the future.”

Tuning up

would be challenging for the schools,” says Dr. Marsha Danielson, Southeast president. The technical school offered traditional programs like nursing, fashion design, secretarial skills, auto repair, welding, and others — Southeast still maintains some of these, like welding and nursing — but needed unique programming that wasn’t offered anywhere else.

Some initial attempts didn’t pan out. The

Even after 52 years, that’s still true. There’s a band instrument repair program in Iowa and another in Seattle but even with those, Southeast is the largest, Huth says. That’s one reason classes are consistently full every session — capacity is 24 for guitar, 48 for band instruments, and 20 for violin. For example, if a student wants to sign up for fall 2025 for band instrument repair, a pop-up message appears on the website noting that there’s a waitlist.

The Southeast program is composed of three tracks: band instrument repair, guitar repair and building, and violin repair and making. Originally, however, it was just one program for guitar and violin combined, launched in 1974 when the school was under its previous name, the Red Wing Area Vocational-Technical Institute. Band instruments were added to the curriculum two years later; demand became so pronounced that violin was split off from guitar repair as its own program. This also allowed for deeper dives into the intricacies of repairing each family — guitar and violin — and permitted growth within each discipline.

At the time of its founding, the college’s director, Ed Dunn, wanted to develop a program that wasn’t offered at any other place in the Upper Midwest. That came as part of a mandate from the state of Minnesota, which was insistent that programs within vo-tech not compete with other offerings in the system.

“Basically, they didn’t want to flood the market with all these options, because there would only be so many students and that

Enrollment varies: In addition to recent high school grads, some students are retirees who enroll as a way to have a meaningful post-retirement hobby. Others are making a career pivot.

school created a program for repairing electronic music instruments, since those were just taking off in the late 1970s, but the field seemed to be too new to support a full program. Then, the college tried accordion repair, but that’s such a niche instrument that there was concern demand for repair would dwindle. However, the guitar and violin program was popular from the start, and when band instruments were added and the program was split into three, that popularity remained.

Although the school does some outreach to band directors — the ones most likely to refer students to one of the programs — that type of marketing doesn’t need to be particularly aggressive, since most people in the industry are aware of Southeast programs, thanks to its many graduates and the stature of its instructors. For example, at a national conference on musical instrument repair and manufacturing, there’s always a Southeast instructor as a key speaker.

For Greg Beckwith, a band instrument repair instructor, the history is personal: It was his father, Gene, who started that particular repair program, with 18 students. He jokes that coming to Southeast was a natural transition, since their house was usually filled with instruments in various states of repair. Seeing worktables filled with tools and parts feels like home — and even though the students haven’t grown up in that way, he often hears that they feel the same emotions of coming home when they step into the workrooms.

In terms of student mix, the three programs typically don’t attract only recent high school graduates; instead, there’s a breadth of ages and experience. For example, some students are retirees who enroll as a way to have a meaningful postretirement hobby. Others are making a career pivot, from office jobs where they once used their hands only for computer use, to selecting repair tools the way a surgeon would select just the right scalpel.

Over the past 50 years, students have come from all 50 states as well as several foreign countries, including Canada, the UK, Oman, Botswana, Thailand, Korea, Australia, and Switzerland, among others.

Greg Beckwith, a band instrument repair instructor, with student Jaden Oldham.

No matter what their origin or previous career path, being at one of the workstations in the warren of repair rooms brings out a kind of enthusiasm and passion students may not have had before.

“Like the other instructors, I love my job because you really see the students blossom while they’re here,” says Tim Reede, an instructor for the guitar repair and building program. “We have a breadth of ages and backgrounds, but they really do form a tight bond with each other through a shared appreciation for music and a desire to help musicians be able to continue to play.”

That sentiment can get even more pronounced in a second-year program that enables students to make their own guitars, ending with a showcase of their work that highlights their creativity, Reede says. For instance, some choose to make lesscommon instruments like a mandolin. It’s particularly exciting during the showcase to have professional musicians play what they’ve created, he adds. That’s just one more way that the students — all of them musicians themselves to varying degrees — are able to feel more connected to the instruments, the musicians, and the school.

Playing well together

The demand for instrument repair is steady; the college notes that the employment rate for violin repair is 100%, band instrument repair is 96%, and guitar repair is 78%.

Most graduates from the band instrument repair program move out of state, but three of them stayed to open Red Wing Music, a small storefront tucked into the old main street near the river. Run by Zoe Preuss, Jason Bystrom, and Rob Schmidtke, the shop is a jumble of parts and instruments in the process of repair, with a painting of a broken flute that Preuss painted in high school — signaling her early interest in what would become her profession. The three owners all graduated in different years, but they share a love for the school and its instructors to the point that Preuss and Bystrom serve on a school advisory committee and act as substitute instructors when needed.

While they appreciated the depth and breadth of their repair education, what they praise most is the program’s sense of community, and the excitement the instructors bring to class every day.

“There’s just a kind of zany, lively energy that’s occasionally chaotic, since you have

people playing and working with the instruments all the time,” Bystrom says. “That’s coupled with these instructors who are so committed to their students and to the work. Right from day one, you feel like you’re part of something greater, and that is so valuable.”

Bystrom is from the Red Wing area originally, and realized he wanted to do instrument repair when he was still in high school playing in the brass section of the marching band. A clarinet player agonized over a missing part just before they went on the field, and he ended up fixing the problem with a paper clip — a remedy that “wouldn’t be part of the curriculum at Southeast,” he jokes.

“It was really cool to be able to fix something in a way that let that musician get back to playing,” Bystrom recalls. “Originally, I’d wanted to be a band director, but that experience changed my path, and I’m happy about that because I didn’t realize how creative instrument repair could be. I also get to work with my hands, which is something I didn’t know I loved until I was doing it.”

For Preuss, who’s from Wisconsin, the pivot moment came after she helped her family in a house remodel, and she found she enjoyed using tools and doing repair.

She also loved art and realized while talking with a band teacher that she could combine both interests with instrument repair, since there is definitely an artistic element to the way instruments are made and fixed.

“What I loved was the community aspect at Southeast, in part because we were all band geeks,” Preuss says. “Plus, the instructors are so respectful. They talk to students like they’re competent from the very start. We love being involved because you can see the program evolving thanks to the technology they’re bringing in, and that’s advancing the field.”

Part of the community vibe comes from a shared mission, Beckwith adds. While the main focus is to take an instrument that’s not working well and allow it to play

properly again, there’s an underlying drive, too — the students don’t just fix the instruments, they also support the musicians who will use them.

“There’s really something special about working with musical instruments compared to other types of objects,” Beckwith says. “You’re aware that at the other end of this violin or guitar or saxophone, there might be a child who’s just started to play and who’s excited to improve. Or you may have a professional musician at the height of his or her art, who has an incredible bond with this instrument. We get to instill that passion for helping others into our students, and we can see that in their work.”

Focusing on the future

Although part of the program’s strength is in its reputation and foundational instruction, there’s also a significant element of innovation, as Preuss notes. In the warren of rooms at Southeast, alongside traditional hand tools that allow for gentle violin sanding or repairing a guitar neck, there’s a CAD system, a computer-aided design program that can digitally create 2D drawings and 3D models. There’s also a CNC (computer numerical control) system, used

for machining parts, as well as computercontrolled routers and laser cutters.

Particularly with 3D CAD, combined with a 3D printer — which is also available and Huth has been using for creating different instrument tools — it’s possible to modify designs easily, and to do some repairs on older instruments that might have been impossible otherwise. For example, although the Southeast program doesn’t teach instrument making in its first year, being able to put a certain instrument together is fundamental to repair, and sometimes the parts are no longer available. The 3D printer can solve that problem by creating the molds, fixtures, and other tooling to help make a part that would be impossible otherwise.

There are still many aspects of instrument repair that rely on careful, time-consuming, hand crafting — especially with a delicate instrument like a violin — but integrating tech into the program helps students become more efficient with their time, and it gives them more skills to bring into a future workplace, says Huth. For example, some students go on to work at guitar manufacturing companies, which use CAD systems frequently.

“Being able to combine working with

your hands along with these technologies is a crucial skillset, and it’s a major part of why this program is well known nationally,” says Adam Potthast, Southeast’s dean of liberal arts, sciences, and transfer.

The way the CAD systems and other technology are situated in the instruction rooms next to guitars, violins, and band instruments is a good metaphor for the overall feel of the program: Southeast creates a blend of tradition and innovation that helps students carry on the tradition of repair, while prepping them for the future of the instrument industry. Along the way, the program gives them a sense of camaraderie that lasts long after they’re no longer playing in the common areas of the Red Wing campus.

“Musical instruments and musicians are timeless; they’ll never be replaced by machines because there’s such artistry and craft involved,” Reede says. “Instrument repair is the same; there’s a craftsmanship that is aided by technology but not overwhelmed by it. This can’t be automated, and the longer you do this work, the better you get at it. That’s what we’re teaching — a skill that deepens with time and that connects you to a community.”

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Don’t Wait toAUTOMATE

Automation can give manufacturers a huge potential advantage. Here’s how to do it right.

BY KATE PETERSON

When it comes to automation, manufacturers often fall into one of two camps. Some avoid it completely and default to the status quo. They’ve always done things a certain way, and it’s worked. Why change now?

Others rush to adopt technology they feel will improve nearly every aspect of operations. This top-down approach leaves many employees feeling threatened and often falls short of promised benefits.

But there’s a third route companies can take that reliably results in a significant

“There are far too many opinion articles out there telling us that automation will replace employees. Automation is a tool employees can use to grow within the company.”

return on investment. It also promotes employee engagement and fosters a culture of continuous improvement. Developed by Eric Blaha, one of Enterprise Minnesota’s top business growth consultants, the approach is based on three C’s: communicate, carry out, and cultivate.

By offering specific guidance within each of the C’s, Blaha helps companies build an employee-centered automation strategy that also improves overall operations. He shares two stories to highlight the importance of getting the steps right.

A manufacturer Blaha worked with recently engaged their employees in the automation conversation from the beginning. The company not only experienced improvements in the areas they were focused on for the project but also noticed employees extending the improvements and suggesting ideas for other areas of production, including moving the assembly location closer to shipping, automating testing for the product, and automating programming for the product. “They turned a core process that had required six people into a core process that required three,” Blaha says. “That allowed them to bolster the workforce in a different area that was bogged with backlog.”

Another manufacturer he knows was determined to utilize robotic welding. As leaders thought through how to integrate automation in the process, they skipped the step of seeking ideas from employees. As a result, they hadn’t fully fixtured the part they were welding, leading to inconsistency in quality and an extensive rework by the operator. “Skipping the step of early engagement with employees was a costly mistake,” Blaha says. “They paid with consistent rework and excess labor.”

The good news is that developing an automation strategy based on the three C’s doesn’t add significant cost or time to the process. Communicating with employees builds engagement and trust and guides decisions on which automation efforts to pursue. Carrying out automation builds employee morale and improves work lives by offloading the least desirable tasks while boosting quality and controlling costs. And cultivating a culture of continuous improvement and automation builds momentum for ongoing positive results.

Why now?

Manufacturers have faced a steady stream of chaos since the COVID pandemic: supply chain disruptions, severe labor shortages, runaway inflation, and now tariffs and other trade barriers threaten to drive up costs and add more uncertainty. Automation helps address these challenges.

“No one can control if tariffs hit and the parts you are buying go up in price,” Blaha says. But by effectively implementing automation into their processes, manufacturers can reduce the cost of production. “Automation will help reduce the margin shrink that could occur as supply chain disruptions

and price increases due to tariffs start to take hold,” he says.

Manufacturers should also consider current and future labor supply issues when contemplating automation. While the severe labor shortages of recent years have subsided, there are currently close to seven million job openings but only five million job applicants.

“That math doesn’t work very well. The roughly two million worker gap isn’t going to be filled any time soon,” Blaha says. “Manufacturers can either continue to wrestle with the shortfall or seize the opportunity to automate to eliminate some of the persistent labor shortages that will likely continue for years.”

First things first: Communicate

Manufacturers that successfully implement automation take a systematic approach to communication. They make the company’s mission clear to employees and describe the roles employees will play in its ultimate success.

“Employees have to understand the company’s why, they have to understand how they fit into it, and they have to understand where the company is going in the future,” he says.

He emphasizes that it is important to talk about the goals of automation. Many employees may feel threatened by automation or misunderstand the reasons a manufacturer is embracing it. “There are far too many opinion articles out there telling us that automation will replace employees,” Blaha

Eric Blaha, business growth consultant, Enterprise Minnesota

says. “Automation is meant to be a tool that can help improve an employee’s work life. It can decrease physicality with things like lift-assist devices or transport devices, which reduce the effort that employees have to put into the work they’re doing every day,” Blaha says.

“Automation is a tool employees can use to grow within the company,” he says.

Once employees understand the goals, Blaha says leaders can focus on the other key aspect of communication: discovering opportunities for automation. “A lot of the challenge is in seeing opportunity and getting our employees to see it too,” Blaha says.

Blaha illustrates the key paths to identifying automation opportunities with a Venn diagram. Blaha labels the first circle as “learning to see.” He breaks manufactur-

activities a customer is unwilling to pay for and doesn’t meet their needs, or those not done right the first time.

Value add can be a good target for automation, but often some of the best opportunities come from the non-value add necessary functions. “These are the things that we do to run the business, but they add no value to the customer, like cleaning, paperwork, inspection,” he says. “They reduce tasks that people don’t enjoy doing and they do a better job at completing tasks for us.”

He describes how one company placed a super high-speed fan on the inside of a machine center to keep the windows completely free of oil. “It eliminated the need for people to clean those windows off because it was keeping them clean at all times, and it improved the operator’s ability to see what was happening inside of that machine center,” he says. “None of the operators liked cleaning the windows. They loved that implementation.”

“What are the jobs that people hate the most? Typically those jobs are highly manual, highly physical, very difficult, and filled with opportunities for automation.”

ing operations into three segments: those that add value; those that don’t add value but are necessary; and those that don’t add value and amount to waste.

“Value add” includes anything a customer is willing to pay for. “Non-value add necessary” activities are required, but don’t meet the customer’s needs, including cleaning, inspecting, paperwork, and data collection. “Non-value add waste” includes

Blaha warns that as manufacturers seek opportunities for automation, they need to be mindful of those activities that fall into the non-value add waste area, such as waiting, overproduction, and defects. Manufacturers don’t want them embedded in their processes and customers are not willing to pay for them. Blaha urges companies to identify such waste before automating. “Once we automate the waste into the process, it becomes much more difficult to get it out,” he says.

He offers the example of a 20,000-square-foot facility where it could be tempting to automate transportation between processes at opposite ends of the building using autonomous guided robots (AGRs). “You might spend $100,000 on AGRs to transport material back and forth between the two locations. But if you looked at the process, you might understand that you didn’t need to have that transportation,” he says. “Make sure you lean the process out and eliminate as much of the waste as possible before starting to think about automation.”

Blaha’s second circle of automation opportunities involves polling employees.

Identifying Opportunities: Poll Employees

• What tasks are the least desirable?

• Understand why

• How can we automate these jobs to improve the employee’s life?

• Make a list

• Do something

Outcomes of Transparent Communication

“What tasks drive them crazy? What jobs do they hate the most? Typically those jobs are highly manual, highly physical, very difficult, and filled with opportunities for automation,” Blaha says.

The third circle embraces data analytics like ROI and time to payback. Blaha emphasizes that employers can put hard numbers on the value of automation by anticipating savings from eliminating waste and defects and increasing production.

“Many companies are thinking about two-, three-, or four-year paybacks. Those are the larger, more expensive projects,” Blaha says. “But when I think about automation, especially early in the journey, I want things to pay off sooner. There are way too many opportunities that will pay you in one year to skip over them for a fiveyear payback.”

Take action: Carry out

The culture of sharing goals and seeking input should continue in the carry out steps of automation. “This is where we excite, engage, and execute,” Blaha says.

He urges companies to act quickly. “If we get our employees excited and get their ideas and thoughts, but we don’t start doing things, we’ll lose that excitement,” he says.

“It’s critical that we just get started. I also believe that shorter cycles increase engagement. You want to win right away,” he says. “You want to put some numbers

Identifying Opportunities

Identify Profit Driving Operations

• Monitor Value-Add Time

• Identify Patterns

• Communicate with Operators

• Identifying Opportunities: Data Analytics

on the scoreboard at the start so that people know where we’re going. That gets them excited.”

Early successes build momentum, he says. “We need to start moving now because a little bit better tomorrow is better than nothing for six months.”

Blaha suggests a value stream map will help identify tasks with the greatest quick win potential. One example of automation inside a process is scanning. Inventory management historically has been manual, tracked on a spreadsheet or a tally note. A simple route to automate that task is barcoding.

He also encourages companies to consider detection. Most of the time, inspection doesn’t add value. On a rare occasion, a customer might pay for the inspection of their products, but typically inspection falls into the non-value add necessary category. “We might leak test a tank, for example. If that’s something we need, then automating that task is a great opportunity,” he says.

Blaha adds that during

the carry out phase, leaders always want to keep lean thinking at the forefront. Sometimes trying to become more efficient by automating a step creates a more costly issue because it disrupts workflow. “We may have gone from a 10-second cycle time to eight-second cycle time, but we added 20 cents per part in transportation costs,” he says. “I never want to lose sight of how the product should flow.”

Another critical tenet of Blaha’s carry out phase is that trying is more important than talking. He encourages companies to conduct “try storms.” Similar to brainstorming, try storming involves coming up with ideas and simulating them on a small scale. “This is one of the best ways for us to understand when an automation effort will pay off,” he says.

Blaha offers the example of simulating what automated transportation between process steps would look like. A company could put labor in place temporarily to conduct a time study to understand it better. “When we get these ideas, we want to try them. We want to make sure that we’re not just talking about what might work in the future,” he says.

He adds three more pieces of advice for this stage of automation. First, finishing is more important than starting. Improving is more important than perfection. And, moving through this stage, leaders never want to forget about employees’ perceptions. “We always want to make sure that automation is an aid to the employee. It is not the centerpiece. If it becomes the centerpiece, people will disengage,” Blaha says.

Build momentum: Cultivate

Blaha’s third “C” in automation — celebrating success — weaves an automation mindset into the fabric of the company. “It’s critical for us to share the success,

share the growth, and share the data,” he says. “That gets employees excited and motivated to seek more opportunities for automation.”

“If we increased our production by 20% and we reduced our downtime by 10% through automation solutions our employees helped us put in place, we need to celebrate that with them,” he says.

Companies should solicit reactions to the process, Blaha says. “That’s where we get some of our best improvements, because continuous improvement and automation are iterative processes. We’re not just going to implement it and be done. We want to make sure that we can keep improving and we can keep implementing those future automation steps.”

“We’re not just going to implement it and be done. We want to make sure that we can keep improving and we can keep implementing those future automation steps.”

Blaha emphasizes that employees need to understand that the changes not only benefit the company but also benefit them. Companies can take concrete steps to illustrate that. “We can create some unique job titles: robot technician or robot specialist. We can give them the training they need to understand and engage them in growing themselves with our company,” Blaha says.

He also points out that as a company automates, it increases capacity. “As we gain capacity, it’s going to be critical for us to fill that capacity,” he says. That’s when momentum begins to build, Blaha says.

“As we’re automating, we’re going to develop our people. As we develop our people, we have the opportunity to invest in our facilities,” he says. “Tie those facilities improvements back so that people understand that this is possible because they are engaged in the journey. When they see how it benefits them too, it’ll be easier to keep this moving in the future.”

PERSONALITIES

Home on the Range

As general manager of Cast7, Laura Rusich is forging a reputation in northern Minnesota’s manufacturing scene.

BY ELIZABETH MILLARD

PEOPLE

lthough she didn’t grow up in Minnesota and came to manufacturing by an unconventional route, Laura Rusich is making a strong impression on the Iron Range. Now general manager of Hibbingbased Cast7 — which designs and produces highperformance castings for iron ore pelletizing plants — Rusich draws on her deep experience in financial services, her grasp of manufacturing systems, and her expertise in optimization to help the company grow responsibly, with a focus on ethics and environmental stewardship.

Laura Rusich, general manager

From agriculture to accounting practices

Rusich grew up on a family farm in Kansas, with a mother who’s a nurse and a father who’s a farmer. She didn’t consider taking over the family business, but she was intrigued by the conversations she heard when her dad would take her along to discussions with bankers and other farmers, where they talked about business deals.

“As I got older, I realized the importance and the nuances of all these business relationships, and how they intersected,” she says. “I could see how one transaction would impact other aspects of the business. That felt very analytical to me, and it was appealing because that’s the way my mind works. That’s what led me to choose accounting as a profession.”

Rusich received her bachelor’s degree in accounting from Kansas State University in 1992 and then became a CPA, joining KPMG in the audit division right after graduating. The company is a global organization of independent service firms that provide audit, tax, and advisory services. Working on the audit side, she was immediately exposed to the business practices of numerous industries including health care, banking, and manufacturing. After six years in the Kansas City office, Rusich took an assignment in Zurich, Switzerland for a year and a half to work on a project for Credit Suisse.

The combination of seeing the inner workings of different companies and navigating another country’s culture expanded her knowledge of business transactions and connections, and how people interact in various says, she says.

“When you’re addressing so many industries, you get to work with a variety of people and learn from them,” she adds. “You certainly realize that every industry has unique challenges and advantages, and there are some commonalities but there are also many rules — spoken and unspoken — to specific industries. That’s the kind of understanding that I feel created foundational awareness for me, that I was open to learning about how each industry operated, and how it could be optimized.”

After Zurich, Rusich joined the KPMG Minneapolis office as a senior manager in the commercial practice, where she was

involved in all aspects of audit activities, including staffing, SEC filings, billing, fee negotiation, and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. She focused on venture capital, including both medical technology startups and traditional manufacturing companies. Rusich also met her husband at that time, and in 2007 he suggested moving to Hibbing, where he grew up, and where they

In Hibbing, she established a reputation as a thoughtful, analytical thinker who could apply growth-oriented business practices to numerous industries.

could raise their two young children.

After 15 years in public accounting, she moved to northern Minnesota and wasn’t sure what her career pivot would be.

After all, the majority of her career was auditing large, publicly-traded companies and those weren’t exactly in abundance in Hibbing. To get an understanding of the area and use her skillset, she began doing contract accounting and auditing work for a number of local companies, including

auditing the city of Hibbing and doing consulting for nearby colleges. She also worked for the Virginia Eveleth Economic Development Authority, where she oversaw the public board, provided marketing services, and negotiated lease contracts.

“We had low-cost commercial facilities, and you could get a favorable rate if you were a company needing economic development assistance, which was a way to draw more business to the area,” Rusich says. “Through that experience, I got to know numerous contacts in the Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation, a state economic development agency.”

She also established a reputation as a thoughtful, analytical thinker who could apply growth-oriented business practices to numerous industries. Along with raising children in the area, she did consulting work for a breadth of companies, which helped her get a foothold in Hibbing and became an important aspect of her personal and professional success.

“People always say it’s hard to meet people in the Iron Range, but honestly, I have to say that it’s how you go into it,” she says. “If you’re outgoing and you work hard at meeting people, you’ll establish those relationships. I did draw on my experience in Zurich, where I didn’t know anyone and didn’t speak the language. I think if you can make friends in a place like that, you can fit in anywhere. Also, through all the contract and consulting work I did, I ended up making a significant number of connections in the business community, and that came into play for my next step.”

Small town, big connection

The next pivot for Rusich illustrates the value of getting to know your neighbors. In trying to find land to build a home, she and her husband discovered it was difficult to find lots within the city for construction. But they did locate a parcel that someone was holding for development, so they hired a contractor. It turned out that the contractor was also working on a lake home for the person who owned the house right next to the couple’s new property — Tim Bungarden, president and CEO of Cast Corporation, a machine shop, castings, tooling, and pattern company.

“Not only were our lots next to each

other and we had the same builder, but his younger son was often at events with our kids, so we all ended up talking to each other quite a bit and getting to know one another,” she says.

Those conversations turned toward what Bungarden needed at Cast, which was a CFO who could handle a breadth of duties, such as overseeing debt and equity financing packages, pricing analysis, product cost setting, financial reporting, audit support, and process improvement in reporting systems. Rusich checked all the boxes. She came on initially as a contract CFO in January 2012, just when

follow, and that can be intimidating for many founders, because you’re building it as you go,” she says. “Fortunately, I had so many years of public accounting and working in different industries, so I had a type of foundation and knowledge in place that made it enjoyable, not overwhelming.”

At the end of 2021, the company looked to establish a broader sales reach in order to keep progressing. That’s what led to the next stage of carving the foundry out as a separate business. With the newly established LLC, the business was renamed Cast7. Bungarden transitioned away as a

Rusich found the entrepreneurial atmosphere to be invigorating.

Bungarden was looking to build a foundry, and over time her position evolved into Rusich’s current role as general manager.

“As he was heading toward fulfilling that long-term dream of a foundry, I was along from the beginning, as he got all of the loans and financing put in place,” she says. “He’d been operating Cast as a machine and pattern shop for about 20 years, and this was a big new venture. I was there through the whole construction and startup of that facility, and over the years, I saw it develop and get more of the local mines as customers. As that happened, we went through an evolutionary growth stage.”

Rusich found the entrepreneurial atmosphere to be invigorating. Although Cast was an established brand, the new venture had the feel of a startup, which she found fun — but only because she had the background to handle that.

“A startup is challenging because there’s no roadmap, there’s nothing to

different management structure was being put in place, and Rusich was tapped first as a senior finance manager to support the local management team, providing strategic and tactical business support.

In May 2023, Cast7 promoted her to general manager, which came with considerable oversight in terms of financial management, operational leadership, HR, and other functions. Rusich’s duties are both broad and deep; she does everything from ensuring compliance with financial regulations to implementing operational plans that foster a culture of continuous improvement. The company continues to expand in terms of product offerings, market reach, and employee numbers. When she joined, there were about 20 employees, and now it’s at nearly 50, she says.

From 2022 into 2023, Cast7 invested an additional $3 million into capital equipment to expand into additional product lines for area mines, resulting in larger orders and a broader market reach.

Looking forward

It’s not just the duties and her role that have changed since her KPMG days, she adds. Being at Cast7 has also resulted in a deeper emotional investment in her work, and the outcome that happens as a result.

“When it’s a small town and you know all your coworkers, you feel a lot more attachment to it,” Rusich says. “You even know people who are using the products in the local mines. That’s a huge shift.”

Moving from a purely financial role to general manager also caused a notable change in how she views her work, Rusich adds. She notes that taking on that larger role has actually made her better at financial functions because she’s involved in every facet of the operation, from production to sales.

“That makes me stronger in finance because when I go to put the financials together, I know everything that’s going on,” she says. “Before, I would get the

At the end of 2021, the company looked to establish a broader sales reach in order to keep progressing.

That’s what led to the next stage of carving the foundry out as a separate business. With the newly established LLC, the business was renamed Cast7.

information from Tim, but naturally it wasn’t as detailed as what I have now. Also, I have a much better understanding now of all operations, so that makes it more interesting.”

Another enjoyable aspect for Rusich is seeing Bungarden’s vision not only come to fruition but thrive. Cast created the first new foundry permitted in the state of Minnesota in over 40 years, she says, and the industry has an unfortunate reputation as being “dirty” in its operations. To create a foundry that goes against that prevailing perspective has been deeply satisfying, she notes.

“It was very important to Tim to have a clean, bright, environmentally-friendly foundry with open airflow and processes that would keep our employees healthy, and

we were all on board with that mission,” she says. “We’re very proud to have that, so it’s cleaner and safer for everyone.”

Another challenge is that the foundry industry has historically been more male-dominated, and with Rusich stepping into her leadership role — and with more women joining Cast7 as production operators — that’s slowly changing. “Having a diversity of perspectives helps contribute to a company’s success, including ours,” she says.

In terms of her own perspective, Rusich

feels that her entire professional history — stretching way back to those farmfocused influences growing up in Kansas and continuing through KPMG and then her work in Hibbing — has contributed to what she’s doing now. Building Cast7’s foundry business from the ground up has helped her understand how to cost out products, for example, and her time in public accounting has given her insight into the nuances of financial reporting.

“Having been in the venture capital practice at KPMG, I was a good fit for

working with a startup-type of company, and what I’ve learned since then has been so valuable,” she says. “I’d like to see the company continue to succeed and grow locally as well as nationally and internationally. That’s a big goal for a little northern Minnesota company. We have a great product line and great people who are really hardworking. What I love about my work is that I stay connected to customers and employees, and I take pride in building a product that makes a difference, especially for those in the Iron Range.”

F BY DOING Learning

BY GRETCHEN DESUTTER

Minnesota’s Department of Labor and Industry uses its Youth Skills Training program to give students a real-world look at future opportunities in manufacturing.

or many high school students, the path to deciding what’s next after graduation can be difficult. To help juniors and seniors broaden their perspective and gain more visibility to manufacturing career opportunities, Minnesota school districts are partnering with businesses, chambers of commerce, and technical colleges to create early learning and immersive manufacturing experiences through Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs.

School districts work with the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry Youth Skills Training (YST) program to develop classroom instruction, offer safety training, certifications, and industry-recognized credentials, and paid work experience/internships in high-growth and high-demand occupations. Grants of up to $100,000 over a two-year period are available through application; however, grant funding is not mandatory to operate a YST program.

“YST is a framework that is adaptable to community, school, and business needs across the state,” says Jo Daggett, YST program manager. “Through the YST

YST Since 2017

• 123,229 students provided with industry exposure

• 57,486 students have completed industry-related classes

• 4,722 students have earned an industry-related credential

• 1,303 students have participated in a paid work experience

program, our team works to support the development of partnerships between schools, industry employers, and communities in responsive and meaningful ways that create long-term stability and a positive impact.”

Programs vary across the state based on area manufacturing businesses and student interest. Here are some examples of how the program helps students.

ISD 761: Owatonna

While the school district works with many businesses, their biggest programs are with two companies: Climate by Design International (CDI), which designs and manufactures air handling units and dehumidifiers, and Wenger Corporation, which provides innovative products for music and theater education and performing arts venues.

Tom Peterson, owner of Climate by Design, remembers having a work experience program when he was in high school and offered to get the ball going with their company, says Brian Coleman, a career navigator with the district. Today, CDI maintains about 15 students annually.

YST businesses support the district by participating in high-school career fairs, job shadowing, and a unique signing day experience for students who decide to transition from an internship to full-time employee after graduation, explains Coleman. Students and their families tour the facility, then sign their first employment contract and receive a special welcome.

Coleman and Missy Koch, also a career navigator, see that students in the program are their best recruiters for the business,

Students at Monticello High School

supporting other students to pursue work opportunities because they share what they are working on and why they enjoy it.

ISD 831: Forest Lake

By creating a flexible YST framework, many area manufacturing businesses can offer students in the Forest Lake Area Schools unique manufacturing career insight.

“Not all businesses participating in our [CTE/YST] programs are able to provide paid student internships and yet they still want to support students as they explore career opportunities, including manufacturing,” says Molly Bonnett, a college and career coordinator with the district.

“We created an a la carte framework, which might mean a business comes in and talks to the students at a career fair, hosts a field trip tour at their business, or provides a single day job shadowing opportunity.”

Through a YST grant, Forest Lake expanded their CTE and offers career exploration courses and created a coordinator position that supports business relationships, lines up student internships, and supports students from resume writing and interviewing through on-the-job meetings with supervisors.

“I really enjoy seeing these students develop and find their paths through shadowing and internships,” says Mike Miron, a career and technical education coordinator with the district. “We had a student graduate in 2023 who did a job shadow in the auto body business and realized it wasn’t a good fit for him. He wasn’t really an AP science/ math guy, but through a CAD course he realized he enjoyed drafting and started to think engineering might be a career path. While completing his internship at Velocity, a contract manufacturing and injection molding company, they placed him with the engineers and gave him some drafting work. He proved himself and found his path. He went on to complete a two-year track at Dunwoody [College] and was just offered a full-time position at Velocity as an engineer.”

ISD 31: Bemidji

The Bemidji school district has created many lasting community and business relationships for their students in a variety of career areas including manufacturing.

“The field trips and internships help our students understand there

are in-demand and high-paying manufacturing jobs and career growth opportunities that will enable them to stay in this area, build a career, and have the lifestyle they enjoy outside of the Twin Cities,” says Jenny Fraley, school counselor and Bemidji career academics coordinator. In addition to internships, Fraley values student interaction with non-parental adults who encourage them and share new perspectives. “It’s a great way to boost their confidence and introduce them to life in the working world, with guidance,” she says.

“Our kids sometimes fail to grasp how their classroom work relates to the real world,” says Jason Stanoch, principal. “We had a student who just hadn’t found his career path, and he shared with his internship mentor that he didn’t think he would graduate. The mentor pulled out a job application and showed him the first question was about graduating from high school. That mentor and other co-workers encouraged the student to complete his degree, and he did.”

ISD 11: Anoka-Hennepin

Anoka-Hennepin, Minnesota’s largest school district, uses the YST program to explode oldschool myths about careers in manufacturing.

“Our students quickly realize through our field trips that manufacturing businesses are unique, and there are high-growth and high-paying jobs in these businesses,” says Carter Gerlach, Anoka-Hennepin’s trade and industry internship coordinator.

Participating in shadowing days and internships also helps students find that at times the job just isn’t what they thought it would be, or that this just isn’t their passion. These opportunities offer growth and learning that are equally welcomed by the employer and the students.

Today’s student can more fully experience real-life work environments that past child labor laws would have prohibited. To ensure students are working safely, OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) certifications are offered through many schools and employers and become another differentiator on their student-toadult resume.

ISD 728: Elk River

The Youth Skills Training grants have helped ISD 728 pay salary costs associated with its work-based learning teacher position within its CTE internship program, which helps students earn high school credits, learn about labor laws, safety on the job, and how to navigate the world of work — such as getting along with coworkers, taking time off, being on time and prepared, and proper cell phone use. The YST program has the support of industry credentials from OSHA 10, DOT Inspection, and other courses. “I am grateful for the YST grants for helping our district implement stronger career pathways and the CTE internship program — students and the community will benefit!” says Amy Lord, a program coordinator.

“We truly support students as they explore diverse career paths, identify their strengths, and build essential employability and technical skills,” continues Lord. “Internships are invaluable. They boost student confidence, foster valuable mentor relationships,

Left to right: Jo Daggett, YST program manager, Nimo Samatar, YST program consultant, and Faye Blough, YST program specialist

Forest Lake Area High School students at the University of Minnesota's 2024 Inspire Conference.

TOP STEM CITY Minnesota Insurify.com

1 Hour North of Minneapolis/St. Paul

120,000+ people in St. Cloud MSA labor force - mn deed

Shovel-Ready Certified Sites ranging from 2.5 to 79-acres

Named one of the “Fastest Growing US Cities” - nerdwallet

Home to the unique Integrated Science and Engineering Laboratory Facility at St. Cloud State University used by global market leaders such as 3M

NEW state-of-the-art Advanced Manufacturing Center at St. Cloud Technical and Community College

More than 2x the national average of CNC machining jobs, over 400 resident industrial engineers, and over 300 regional manufacturers

and provide real-world experience that helps students determine the necessary certifications or education for their future success. While some students may discover that a particular internship isn’t the right fit, others will find their niche. Some may not have even known these jobs existed in their communities prior to this program.”

ISD 22: Detroit Lakes

In 2016, Detroit Lakes established an academy model to expose students to high-demand and high-paying jobs in the area. They have added a program in plant

sciences and greenhouse management that supports a strong student interest to work at Bergen’s Greenhouses, one of the largest local manufacturers.

“This is the 15th year of our program, and it has taken some time to get it up and running,” says Vern Schnathorst, teacher and school-to-work program coordinator. “Through Bergen’s and other local businesses, we are offering our high school students unmatched opportunities to grow a manufacturing-based career right here in the Detroit Lakes area.”

ISD 882: Monticello

The Monticello school district has about 16 businesses that provide internships, but budget challenges have kept some

Brock Swiers, a student at Detroit Lakes High School

companies from taking on paid interns.

The district also offers internships and a variety of career exploration opportunities through high school courses, as well as the Wright Technical Center, the last of its kind in the state of Minnesota. Their state grant enables Monticello to provide career opportunities in health care, teach CPR/first-aid certification courses, a CAN course, and a couple of CIS medial related courses. This has diversified their internship opportunities in health care, manufacturing, and other industries.

The Wright Technical Center provides career, technical, and alternative education for students across eight schools in Wright County. Located in Buffalo, the school offers experiential and individualized learning opportunities for students on a variety of career paths from health care to automotive and manufacturing.

“Prior to the CTE program, students couldn’t work in many positions due to child labor laws. Now, high school juniors and seniors can experience handson opportunities with safety guards in place,” says Rebecca Kounkel, Monticello High School career pathways coordinator/YST internship coordinator.

“Through our CTE offerings, we are able to provide early career exposure in a variety of opportunities with support on every level from writing the resume, applying, interviewing, and safety certifications to learning how to speak to your boss, when to take breaks, and how to work with a difficult co-worker.”

Pathways to the future

“Mainstreet in rural to urban communities is strengthened by manufacturing,” says Bob Kill, president and CEO of Enterprise Minnesota. “In Minnesota, 11% of the workforce is in manufacturing, which drives 14-14.5% of the state’s payroll. And we can all see that the economic strength of our communities and businesses is dependent on students’ understanding that Minnesota manufacturing offers strong, diverse career opportunities in manufacturing and pathways to the future.”

Today schools, technical colleges, chambers of commerce, and the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry are creating early and enticing opportunities for students to learn about a variety of high-paying, high-need, and high-growth career opportunities in manufacturing.

Pipeline in Doubt

SciTech employee matchmaking efforts look for solutions amid budget threats.

BY ROBB MURRAY

Eric Blaha grew up on a hobby farm in bucolic Verndale, Minn. And while he’ll probably always have farming in his blood, he knew by the time he graduated that he was born to be an engineer.

He also knew that, in addition to his studies at North Dakota State University, he’d need practical experience. He worried, though, that he’d need to travel to a bigger city to get that experience — something he wasn’t quite keen on.

So, he started looking around for internship opportunities, hoping to find something close to home. That’s when he found a program called SciTech, a nonprofit that acts as a pipeline between college STEM majors looking for internship experience and small businesses that need and want extra help. SciTech connected Blaha with Kit Masters, a manufacturer of fan clutches in Perham, a 40-minute drive from Verndale.

“I thought I had to work in a big city to be an engineer,” he admits. “SciTech showed me that small towns offer real career opportunities. It gave me valuable insights and showed me industries I hadn’t considered.”

Since its inception in 2011, SciTech has done for 3,400 college students exactly what it did for Blaha. But now all that work in lining up students with opportunities may come to an end.

SciTech’s operating budget came largely from a state grant. And while it lobbied this year for another two-year allotment of about $1 million, their request was unexpectedly denied, leaving the program’s future uncertain.

The program works by offering wage reimbursement grants. This allows manufacturers to add top-tier STEM talent at a reduced cost, and an inside track at hiring the students as full-time employees upon graduation. Using a streamlined application process that vets all applicants, SciTech has placed students with manufacturers in 150 cities across the state.

“We’re not just an IT program,” says Piper Cleaveland, SciTech’s program director. “We work across multiple industries — from manufacturing and medical devices to solar technology and beyond.”

The program’s reach extends beyond simple job placement, creating pathways for meaningful career development and local talent retention.

LaValley Industries, Cleaveland says, is a prime example. A student intern there

helped design a massive industrial crane attachment, moving from computer-aided design to actually building the prototype during subsequent internships. Such experiences demonstrate the program’s tangible impact on both students and businesses.

The current funding crisis threatens to dismantle this successful model. With the program’s future uncertain, SciTech is exploring creative solutions. Potential strategies include finding a new organizational home, potentially with a chamber of commerce or workforce development organization, and potentially scaling back operations.

Currently operating with just one fulltime staff member and supported by the Minnesota Technology Association, SciTech placed 255 students last year and is on track to place 325 this year. Cleaveland says the potential loss of SciTech could significantly impact Minnesota’s ability to retain and develop local STEM talent.

The funding shift reflects broader changes in workforce development funding. Cleaveland says legislators are moving away from direct appropriations, preferring competitive grant models and focusing more on early-stage education initiatives. This approach, she says, potentially overlooks the critical role programs like SciTech play in connecting college students with meaningful professional opportunities.

For businesses like Pequot Manufacturing, which has consistently utilized SciTech’s services, the potential program closure represents a significant disruption to their talent acquisition strategies.

Glen Young, director of support operations at Pequot Manufacturing, says internships there are more than just summer jobs — they’re critical pathways to developing the next generation of skilled manufacturing professionals. With 220 employees and a commitment to nurturing local talent, the company has leveraged the SciTech program to create meaningful learning experiences for engineering and technical students.

“We try to offer opportunities first to local kids who have been scholarship recipients,” says Young. “We don’t just look at interns as cheap help but consciously expose them to different manufacturing disciplines.”

The internship model at Pequot is strategic and comprehensive. Engineering students typically spend their first year on the shop floor, gaining hands-on experience across various manufactur-

ing processes. In subsequent years, they work directly with engineering, R&D, and automation teams.

Particularly on the machining side, Young says Pequot internships function almost like an apprenticeship. First-year students learn basic skills like part handling, while second-year participants tackle more complex tasks. For technical school students, this approach has been remarkably effective, with Young noting that on the machining side, “it would be rare that the machining interns didn’t stay with us, whereas the engineering interns might work for someone who may outsource their projects to us.”

The SciTech program’s cost-sharing model has been crucial in making these internships viable. By offsetting wage expenses, companies like Pequot can take on more students than their budget might typically allow.

“With the SciTech approach of sharing the cost, we might take on more interns than we would otherwise,” says Young.

Dawn Loberg, a business development consultant for Enterprise Minnesota, says losing a successful school-to-business pipeline such as SciTech is regrettable.

SkillsUSA: Forging career paths in technical education

For Lori Kloos, whether her students won or lost at the recent SkillsUSA national competition is irrelevant. What matters is that months ago, when given the chance to participate in a potentially life-changing opportunity, they signed up.

“They’ve already won by showing initiative and committing their time to SkillsUSA,” says Kloos, president of St. Cloud Technical & Community College (SCTCC).

In June, a group of SCTCC students headed to Atlanta for the national SkillsUSA competition, an event where students compete in everything from electrical construction, automotive service, and autobody collision repair to heating ventilation, air conditioning, and other trade skills. Students first compete at the local level and then move on to the state competition for the chance to compete at nationals. SCTCC had six students qualify for nationals both last year and again this year. But for Kloos, the true value is not in the rankings but in the journey and personal growth students experience.

“In this era, it’s hard to find good, qualified workers,” Loberg says. “It seems counterproductive for the state to not fund a program that works with people in the trade schools to help them go into manufacturing and really see what it’s like to create that partnership between the student, the government, and the manufacturer. We keep

preaching that manufacturers really should partner with technical schools, and then we cut this program?”

Cleaveland hasn’t given up hope just yet. She says SciTech is looking for ways to continue what they consider a valuable program, especially for small- and mediumsized manufacturers.

Kloos says the benefits extend far beyond competition day. Students gain exposure to national industry standards, meet peers from across the country, and experience professional environments that prepare them for future workplace challenges. For many participants, the experience becomes a pivotal moment in their professional development.

Faculty play a crucial role in this success. Dedicated instructors invest significant time mentoring and preparing students. Their commitment transforms technical education from mere “skill training” into a holistic personal and professional development experience.

Kloos says the fact that SCTCC provides students an opportunity to participate is one of a handful of reasons the college is seeing enrollment growth. It’s one more reason many more high schoolers are giving stronger consideration to pursuing technical careers upon graduation.

“With a 99% job placement rate and annual tuition around

“We have a couple of maybes,” she says. “So, we’ll see what happens. We’re keeping our fingers crossed.”

Hopefully, the success stories of students who used their SciTech opportunity to launch their careers can sway some of those maybes.

Blaha is a perfect example. He parlayed

$6,300, the value proposition is clear,” Kloos says. “Some of our programs frequently have waiting lists.”

As four-year college costs rise and job markets evolve, technical education offers a compelling alternative. Students can quickly acquire marketable skills, enter high-demand fields, and start promising careers with minimal student debt. According to the Education Data Initiative, the average cost of college tuition and fees at public four-year institutions rose 141% over the last 20 years, an average annual increase of 7%.

Kloos says that what makes SkillsUSA particularly powerful is its ability to provide real-world experience. SCTCC students don’t just learn theoretical skills — they demonstrate them in competitive environments that help them build portfolios and, most importantly, confidence. The competition becomes a launching pad for future careers.

For Kloos, the most rewarding aspect is witnessing students’ personal transformations.

his experience at Kit Masters, where he learned valuable tools that helped him land his next job. After several years of employment by manufacturers, he eventually landed a job as a consultant for Enterprise Minnesota, a place where he can use his experience and practical knowledge to help other manufacturers maximize efficiency and profitability.

“SciTech broadened my horizons to what was out there for different manufacturers and different places of work,” he says. “I wanted to try and live at home for another year, save some money on rent and living expenses. And because of SciTech, I was able to do that.”

Continuous Improvement for All

Our manufacturing clients rave about the benefits of value stream mapping, so we applied it to our magazine and now we understand the enthusiasm.

The timeline for producing this magazine has grown over the years, and little disruptions can sometimes turn into significant logjams. Hoping to address those challenges, we asked one of our top continuous improvement consultants, Eric Blaha, to lead our team through a two-day value stream mapping (VSM) exercise. The results were eye-opening and inspiring. I wasn’t sure how well the exercise would go. Many of our writers and editors doubted how a process designed for manufacturing would benefit a creative endeavor. We had our own C.A.V.E. (citizen against virtually everything) man, while others expressed uncertain expectations.

But Blaha has developed extraordinary

skills as he’s taken dozens of companies through VSM in recent years, and he deftly led our crew and engaged the skeptics. He helped us produce a list of every step it takes to produce an issue of the magazine, from story conception to delivering copies to the post office for distribution. That list provides a summary look at the “current state” process.

Next, he had us identify each step in the magazine production process as value add, non-value add but necessary, or waste. During those initial discussions, if we had questions or suggestions for change, Blaha added them to a list he called the “parking lot” that he assured us we would revisit later. It was a great way to keep us moving forward without forgetting legitimate suggestions or concerns.

On day two, we focused on either eliminating or modifying steps, particularly those in the non-value add but necessary category, which Blaha says are often the most fruitful areas for improvement. We also revisited our “parking lot” issues, incorporating many into the revised process. Finally, he guided the group to develop a list of action items and gave each one an owner and a deadline to ensure continued momentum.

The exercise produced mind-blowing results. By the middle of the first day, everyone in the room, including our C.A.V.E. man, was on board. By removing or revising certain steps in our production process, we anticipate saving up to 43 days. Just as important, as we revise the process, we’ll reduce frustration, eliminate duplicate work, and produce a higher quality product. We’ll also alleviate the bottlenecks that cause tension and rushed work.

One of the key aspects of the process is that most of the changes we suggested and

will adopt are fairly incremental. Blaha says focusing on small improvements that can happen quickly leads to compounded gains. “We make those micro improvements, and we do it over time, and that one or two percent can become really, really big numbers quickly,” he says.

He also urged us to focus on process rather than people. Since the same people won’t always be around, he wanted us to create a process to get something done rather than create one around people’s skills.

Blaha emphasized that trying is more important than talking. “If we sit here and talk about the process and the potential improvements we think we can make, but we never do anything with it, we’re not going

Many of our writers and editors doubted how a process designed for manufacturing would benefit a creative endeavor.

to get anywhere,” he says. That’s why he assigned action items to specific people and included firm due dates. That accountability will be critical as we move forward.

The exercise was valuable for our team for the same reason it can be a game changer for manufacturers. Through Blaha’s expert and objective leadership, we stepped outside the crucible of producing the magazine and described and evaluated the role of every task in the production cycle. That allowed us to develop a vision of an improved process and a plan to get there. And it turned us all into VSM cheerleaders.

Lynn Shelton is vice president of marketing and organizational development.

GROWING COMPANIES ENHANCING COMMUNITIES

Granite Partners is a private investment and long-term holding company founded in 2002 in St. Cloud, Minnesota, with a mission to grow companies and create value for all stakeholders. We advance a culture of trust, innovation, and excellence as essential to 100-year sustainability, and we aspire to world-class wellbeing for everyone in the Granite community.