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Welcome to my blog post related to our taping on our show about what manufacturing looks like today. I sure appreciate your support of WNIT, Public Television (PBS), and our show!
If you are not familiar with the show, we hope you’ll make plans to join us each week as we bring you stories about the people, companies and communitiesdriving economic growth in our region! If you want to take a look at some of our previous shows, their available at www.wnit.org/economicoutlook.
I’ve shared with you a couple of times, I worked manufacturing when I was younger, it was dark and dirty, not a great work environment. It helped motivate me to go to college. But manufacturing has changed a lot since them, as manufacturers have realized that to attract new workers the environment must be different.
My hope this week was to give some insight into what it looks like today in a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility. One of the best examples of that in our region is C&S Machine in Niles, MI. They built their new facility in 2017. Many people describe Google as having the coolest, most state-of-the-art offices. People have described C&S as like “google” of manufacturers. And yes, it’s right here in our region.
C&S President Dominick Saratore and Brooke Kostielney, the Director of Marketing and Company Culture joined me to help me understand more. C& S is a 2nd generation family business, started by Dominick’s father. They work primarily in the aerospace and medical industries, industries that require some of the most precise machining in the world.
Dominick gave us some great insight on the company, on family businesses, and a look into what the future holds. Brooke never dreamed of working in manufacturing, but finds herself in a great career at one of the top companies in our region. Both shared some great insight on their workforce, how they find them, keep them, and advance them.
Big thanks to my Co-Host George. We’ve got him putting some serious miles on the van this fall, we’ve got him traveling everywhere. Here we wanted to make sure you saw the great spot we talked about in the studio.
There are a lot of great stories like the C&S story. I simply wanted to know more about them so that you can better understand some of the really high tech work happening in our area.
Your feedback is valuable, feel free to reach out anytime (jrea@sbrchamber.com) with comments, compliments, criticisms, story ideas. I’ll do my best to get back you as soon as possible. Also, follow-us on facebook, Twitter (Jeff_Rea), or at WWW.WNIT.org/economicoutlook for all the latest info on the show. Enjoy the show!