John Storm is the kind of businessman who gives me hope about American manufacturing. Storm grew up on a farm in Indiana. He developed an interest in engineering as a boy when his dad took apart a tractor engine and asked him to reassemble it. The tractor engine resulted in a metallurgical engineering degree from Purdue University, followed by a ten-year stint at as an engineer at General Motors.

At GM, Storm came up with the idea to quickly harden metal parts using electricity versus the old fashioned way of baking the parts in an oven. GM passed on the idea, but GM's loss was Storm's gain. He patented the system and for the past 20 years has been charging GM, Chrysler, and Ford to do the work for them. He's also sold them equipment to do the work themselves at plants in the U.S. and abroad.

Storm has a big-picture view of manufacturing and the auto industry. He doesn't believe in reinventing the wheel. He looks for ways to improve existing technologies or develop new ones. Outside of Storm's Indianapolis office hang more than two dozen patents that he's received over the past twenty years. He was granted the latest one March 19th for a piston that he thinks will improve the efficiency of biofuel engines.

Storm is not only a creative business man, he's a cautious one too. He says his business has very little debt and he began cutting expenses last year when he saw signs that the domestic auto industry was headed for a downturn.

Since that industry makes up roughly 60% of Storm's business, he is concerned about the bankruptcies and GM and Chrysler. But he's confident his business will endure. He's been branching out to other industries. And, if the domestic companies can't use his ideas, the transplants might.

Maybe GM should have kept John Storm around!