Hi, I'm Jeff Rea, your host for Economic Outlook.

Welcome to our program.

We're back in the studio today for another great show.

We hope you make plans to join us each week as we discuss the region's most important economic development initiatives with a panel of experts.

A group of diverse public private, nonprofit leaders in Southwest Michigan have come together to identify and advocate for transformational initiatives in Berrien County.

They'll help drive community and economic growth and improve the quality of life.

You'll hear firsthand from a couple of those key leaders from that effort and hear about the progress they're making coming up on economic outlook.

Leaders in Berrien County have learned the power of collective impact as they work together to drive economic growth and improve quality of life in southwest Michigan.

Today, we're taking a closer look at those transformational efforts with John Proos, the executive director of the Southwest Michigan Strategic Leadership Council, and Todd Gustafson, the chief executive officer of Kinexus Guys, Welcome.

Thanks for being here today to be here.

Thanks.

Todd, you're an old pro.

We appreciate you coming back.

John.

We're going to break you in today, your first time with us here.

So looking for a great discussion.

You guys are both doing some terrific work in southwest Michigan.

And we love a chance to just talk a little bit about it.

John we'll start with you.

So if somebody doesn't know, hasn't heard of the Strategic Leadership Council, just give us a highlight of sort of what it is.

You bet.

And first, I want to be very careful because Todd is a board member of the Strategic Leadership Council, too.

So I've got strong favorites like this.

I want to make sure that we do a really good job, right.

The Strategic Leadership Council is is the inception of the former chairman and chief executive officer of Whirlpool Corporation and then the president of Lakeland Health, which of course now is Corewell Health with many different acquisitions for for the health system in southwest Michigan.

And they recognized that a collective impact organization that aligns the many disparate, organizations and varying county coming together to see economic growth, to see an increase in wages, to see better graduation rates, to see growing economic benefit for all of the community, all of the communities in Berrien County.

How can we see a greater engagement amongst all of those disparate organizations?

And so when you pull all of those people together and all of those CEOs together, of which Todd is one, then the CEOs themselves can have a really high level talk about what kind of data are we looking at to identify success or failure, and are we beginning to move the needle in some of those areas that give us the chance to begin to see that rising tide for all of southwest Michigan's families, men, women, folks who come to the community from outside look to retire.

But what about all those other folks that are here already anyway, too, and the growth that we want to see.

So really the hope is, is that we can have that collective impact by and asking big questions about transportation, asking big questions about labor, talent, supply chain, which is what today's conversation really is intended to be.

And when we align, all of those organizations can we then do so in a way that isn't anecdotal, though that's important, but instead is data driven so that we all are speaking from the exact same set of data.

We can agree that this is truth and then we can move towards what solutions to some of those truths are and some of the the bitter pills of truth in this labor supply chain is is going to be difficult to talk about.

We're going to have to figure out ways to solve that in Southwest Michigan.

Great Todd I'm going to come your way So like I said, you've been on before so people know Kinexus but somebody who hasn't seen that before.

Tell us a little bit about what Kinexus does.. Well, thanks for having me back, Jeff.

I'm sure I drew in a lot of viewers, and that's exactly for another presentation.

They've been asking for a long time.

I finally was able to squeeze you into your busy You connects.

Kinexus group is an economic workforce and community development nonprofit that's headquartered in Benton Harbor.

We have statewide services and programs across the across Michigan.

And and I'm fortunate enough to be on the SLC and can and hopefully help that group move the region forward.

And John's maybe being a little humble, but show us a community in the country that is vibrant and thriving.

And we'll show you a community that collaborates and works together and is asking the big questions John mentioned.

And and that's what we're trying to do is move southwest Michigan first southwest Michigan forward on the some of these issues.

So great.

John, let's talk about the collaboration for a second.

So who are some of the not specific people as much, but who's at the table?

Who's part of this of this overall effort?

Sure.

There's a recognition that our local municipalities need to be at the table for what is called our best practices committee.

The chief elected officials, as well as some of the appointed officials, both at the county level and each of our of our municipalities, 39 total municipalities in Berrien County alone, if we can draw them together to work cooperatively.

For example, the Marquette Greenway of of of the trail system here in northwest Indiana, in southwest Michigan is a big success connecting the Marquette Greenway to the rest of Berrien County is a dream.

And in fact, there's a very well devised master plan to work towards that.

But you can't do a trail system in in linear parks, if you will, without being able to work from one municipality to the next.

So it's as much relationship development as anything else.

And then, of course, you can imagine all of the top employers that we have from municipalities then right into some of our largest manufacturers.

And and we have a really unique sort of situation to Berrien County has some of the highest rates of nuclear engineers, not surprising when you consider D.C. cook nuclear plant from Indiana Michigan Power And then just up north in South Haven, many of our residents in Berrien County still work at the Palisades nuclear plant, which now is owned by Holtec, in part, potentially the decommissioning or potentially restarting.

It is a big conversation.

So we're still going to be an amazing draw for that kind of talent.

That's a very high level talent.

But at the same time, all of those talented people come with the needs to have many other industries as a part of it.

So we're represented amongst about 125 different top leaders of both non-governmental organizations, not for profits and for profit organizations.

That CEO group itself then becomes the Strategic Leadership Council.

Great.

And so Todd let's maybe start to get more into some of the detail piece.

And so so you're playing the work for space.

Not a lot of help wanted signs out there.

Employers or one or two maybe talk about really the maybe the state of workforce, if you will, in southwest Michigan.

What's the picture look like today?

Let's pick a point in time and measure it moving forward.

Right.

So if we go pre-COVID to today, like anywhere in the country, we've have suffered people that have gotten dropped out of the labor force.

Right.

And have been primarily women or people of color.

And that's no different in southwest Michigan and people that don't have a high school diploma or less.

That's the group that has kind of been missing.

And that's really important to southwest Michigan, is to get them back on off the bench into the workforce because we have a declining population.

We are generally older than the state of Michigan, which is the 10th oldest state in in the country.

And our educational attainment is lower than the rest of Michigan, which is again lower than the rest of the country.

So those are really significant issues, which John is kind of alluding to that we need to recognize, acknowledge, and then what are we going to do to kind of address those issues?

So we've been grappling with that in southwest Michigan moving forward.

And so what can we do to address some of these issues is really what we're here to talk about today and kind of figure and espouse what we've been working on as a group.

John, you touched in your opening a little bit about the data and how you how you speak a little bit about, you know, why having good data is so critical to this decision making process or into, you know, kind of putting the right initiatives together.

If we can all agree on what is truth in that data And there's competing sets of data also, right?

So helping to coordinate all of that, it may not be one individual organization within the Strategic Leadership Councils collective impact organization as a whole.

They may not have the ability to to to draw all of those different disparate data points together and then create a level set of truth from there.

Very clearly, it's process oriented.

Right?

Okay.

We all agree that this is the data that we have right now, declining population and Berrien County declining number of individuals that have beyond a high school diploma or a declining number of folks who don't even have a high school diploma.

GED, what is the status right now of of our high tech industries?

Do we have it?

So once we determine what the data set is and we agree that that's truth, then you have to determine what the questions you want to ask in some ways.

And one of our colleagues has used the phrase that what do we want to be when we grow up?

I'm not sure that we know that answer yet.

Do we want to be a a tourist and hotel restaurant, sort of engagement in Berrien County.

But that would belie the fact that Berrien County also has a very strong agricultural base and background Agritourism is growing.

So there's a connectivity point.

Maybe there's a place to add to that, but then at the same time, we happen to also be not just nuclear engineers, we happen to also be well beyond the number of individuals who participate in metal forming metal stamping engagement in in the auto industry's supply chain.

So have we looked at what the age limits are going to be on that?

How long before we run through our average age population of the workers in manufacturing right now is 42 and a half in Berrien County.

So how much longer will that exist?

I mean, you know, you know this from your work around here.

There are four, three or four sectors that drive the economy and the health of it.

Right.

And as John alluded to, manufacturing is one.

Manufacturing is the largest in terms of the number of employed, the gross domestic product in this regional sales.

And so that that that has been a very healthy industry.

But they, like others, are struggling for finding talent, not just finding talent, but also upskilling the existing talent.

The other one is health care and health care.

Second, hospitality and leisure, as he's alluding to as well.

And so there's a mix of that.

So there might be some intersecting issues that we look at the data points that can drive them all the more forward not to go into the great deep weeds around this stuff.

Big picture, we've got to understand the demand and the supply and we recognize there are some gaps between those two and what can we collectively, through the colleges and the training providers in the school districts, do to make sure we're meeting the current and future demand for these industries.

And I know one of the companies we're going to highlight through here, right, is doing some really cool, unique work in there at the intersection of manufacturing and kind of the transformation from automotive to the electric vehicle and others and automation and other companies.

So it's super exciting stuff.

But if you're a region that doesn't pay attention to this, you will fall behind because it's a competition and there isn't a region in in America that isn't trying to figure this out, right?

And what I don't want to see happen is, is us to fail to recognize that what happens in northeast Indiana and in southwest Michigan is interdependent upon each other.

If you use the phrase moving chairs around on the Titanic.

Right.

Well, instead of it being quite so devastating, instead, I don't think we want to see just simply poaching across the state line.

We're in competition every day, but poaching across the state line doesn't grow.

The pie doesn't grow.

The opportunity for us to attract new and and diverse industries that can help to augment what we already have is really solid industries in southwest Michigan.

If we simply lose all of that talent across the border or someplace else, it's no value to anybody.

At the end of the day, one of one of our one of our superintendents in public schools made the statement that, oh, yeah, we found our teachers.

We just took him from another district.

Right now, that's that's an insufficient response to what I think is a really big problem, which is how can we be recognizing where we need to put the right kind of talent and the right kind of training in place to be an attractive place.

At the end of the day, our economic developers like Cornerstone Alliance and Rob Cleveland can very quickly then respond to that and say, Hey, you, Corporation X, you're looking for this kind of talent we already have identified and are in the process of spinning up that talent right now through our community colleges, through our universities, through our attraction and retention tools.

And then you put a dashboard to that so that we can all look to that target and say, are we meeting that target?

Do we do we get the 30 different nuclear engineers we need to have in Southwest Michigan?

And and you know, from your work that that's one of the first questions that these companies ask, especially when they're expanding or relocating to a places.

Can I find the people I need to work on?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

So, guys, we're going to hold this conversation for a second, take a quick time out.

We're going out into the field.

We're going to go take a look at one of those companies that you mentioned that's doing some great things in Southwest Michigan, George Lepeniotis my co-host is out there.

George, let me toss it to you.

Thanks, Jeff.

I'm in Bridgman, Michigan, my very own hometown, so I'm always excited and eager to come back.

I'm joined today by Steve Jackson, COO of Eagle Technologies.

Steve, thanks for being with us.

You're welcome, Steve.

We are standing on the balcony overlooking your plant.

And I know this is your conference room in your office center.

But before we get to what's going on behind us, let's talk a little bit about you and Eagle Technologies.

What is Eagle Technologies?

Eagle Technologies is a automation integrator for factory floor applications.

We build basically automated systems to replace manual labor in the factory setting.

Got it.

And so when we see pictures of modern day assembly lines with robotic arms and automatically moving parts, that's where you guys, it's us.

All right.

Well, that's a great thing.

Let's talk a little bit about the history, because I, being from Bridgman, understand the history of the manufacturing base that is called that's kind of fertile in this area.

But but Eagle didn't necessarily end up here by accident, didn't it?

We started as the Eagle came out of the the early Welden Corporation days, Welden was sold to Bosch, then sold to another company, and eventually Eagle bought it.

And it became the factory that you see today.

Yeah.

And Weldon was one of the early pioneers in this automation industry back even before computers necessarily were the the automation and the movements were still mechanically controlled?

That's correct, Yeah.

And so speaking of that computer that changed the industry, if I if I understand your history, as you progress now and you find yourself in tiny Bridgman, Michigan, I note in the studio, Jeff and the guests are talking a little bit more about the challenges that you have with your workforce.

How is it that you staff a facility in building such massive automation systems for some of the world's largest companies?

Well, staffing is a challenge.

However, we're fortunate here in southwest Michigan to have a rich history of toolmaking and machining that came back goes back to probably immigration to the area.

We are able to recruit and educate some of the local high school graduates and people looking for a career to be machinists or pneumatics assemblers, mechanical assemblers or electricians.

Okay.

I affectionately used to refer to them as the kids that love to play with Legos and Erector sets, right?

But nowadays it's even more advanced than that.

So as as you're looking to these young people who are who are potentially interested in the career, what is their path?

How do they go about learning the trade or looking into this as an opportunity for their career?

Through some of the community colleges, we have what's called a pre apprenticeship program where they get a chance to explore three or four different disciplines within what we're looking for and then make a decision on the path that they want to go, whether it's a mechanical assembler or a pneumatics assembler or an electrician or be a machinist.

Got it.

And how long would that program generally take and what does it involve for a young person who might be interested in pursuing that path?

It's a four year program.

There is obviously the Hanson Center at Lake Michigan College is one of the areas that we get our our participants educated and then they go to work during the day, go take class in the evenings, and then we have a summer program that gets it's a ten week program that I think eliminates a year's worth of content so they can accelerate by getting into that program.

And I take it the sooner they accelerated, the sooner they get done with the program, the sooner they can get full time employment and the wages, the salaries that these people are making.

It's pretty impressive, isn't it?

It is.

However, they are full time employees, usually illegal prior to finishing the apprenticeship.

We hire them full time.

They're paid full wage, they're paid.

They get full benefits as if they're an employee and we pay for their school and their study activities.

So that's quite the opportunity for many.

You talked about the Eagle Hanson, the Hanson technology Center, that traces its roots back to Merlin Hanson, one of the pioneers of the industry, founder of Weld.

And how is that center set up and the what is your involvement with it?

Have you does it really train these young people to do what they're doing here?

It does.

It is more of the bricks and mortar schooling that they take.

They take classes in machine tool, they take classes in pneumatics to take classes in electronics and electrical assembly.

They basically educate them while we're giving them the on the job training at any given time.

How many of these apprentices are here at Eagle?

We have a few.

A little over 30 apprentices active right now.

We just had a nice graduating class and every year we bring in a graduating class anywhere from two years ago was one of our largest 21 and every year we recruit out of the high schools and, and people that are looking to start a career later in life.

Well, that's awesome.

Well, thanks for your time today.

Thanks for showing us around.

It's really impressive.

What can happen in such a small community and especially when you get creative with your resources, right?

Yes, it was my pleasure, George.

Thank you.

Jeff, back to you in the studio.

I'm sure you can talk more about some of the programs that exist to help the businesses in and around our entire community solve one of their biggest challenges, getting people to join the group.

George, thank you.

Appreciate that.

Inside look, Todd, you're right.

What a great, great spot to visit there.

And I'm glad we had a chance to highlight it for for our viewers.

John, you come back your way.

So so think about, you know, this work, this collective impact, your focus on a lot of things.

What was the catalyst to get this work going?

So it was a few years ago that the the question about housing kind of erupted at the board level.

And I neglected to mention that that Jeff is also one of our board members.

Exactly right.

So we appreciate your engagement and the extra work that you put in for the Strategic Leadership Council.

But what's interesting and unique was we didn't come at the question about housing from an analysis perspective right out of the gate, we asked the question, what are the what is the data that we're using?

And does that data give us some idea of really where the problems are?

We found, for example, that they're in this in the data set itself is that some of our obsolete housing was so obsolete that it is completely unusable.

But folks are living in homes like that, right?

It's probably no different in South Bend, Elkhart, Laporte, Michigan City.

This is pretty traditional in the Midwest, right?

That we see a lot of obsolete housing.

But what we didn't have was an understanding that that it is pervasive in almost all of our communities now.

We've got a little better understanding that led to a series of questions.

The questions then led to answers like, Hey, can we do some more density?

Can we change some of the regulations at the municipal level to allow for that which then led to, well, can we repeat this tool?

Can we continue to repeat it so that we have updated information?

We're in the process of doing that right now at the Strategic Leadership Council.

So that we begin to see how the the COVID impact has has influenced the housing market.

We believe there's been a lot of new people that have moved in from the Chicagoland area.

But do we know that that's true?

So it's from there, then we lead to the next question.

Well, we know we need lots of new housing, right?

If we need lots of new housing, how are we going to get there?

Which led to this question about the data set around supply demand in the labor force is going to be who's going to build it?

Who's going to build it?

Yeah.

Do we have enough plumbers, electricians and carpenters, all aging industries?

Yeah.

How in the world can we answer that question if we haven't backed up one more step and said, who is going to actually help to build our housing?

So if we know that that's the case, it requires, I think, a broader view of the entire market segment itself, not just the housing or manufacturing side of it, but manufacturing, housing.

Who do we want to be in Berrien County when it comes down to agriculture, agritourism, tourism, industries that surround it, service industries and so forth?

And that really led to this question of labor supply chain and where do we fit in that cross-section of demand and supply.

So Todd let's come your way, because this is your space that you play in every day in our last 4 minutes or so.

So talk about the the tools or the information that that you're pulling together.

How are how do we get the people we need to to solve John's problem there?

And you have about 60 seconds to answer it.

All right.

I'll just go big picture, right?

Talk about the sectors as you're talking about construction or if you talk about manufacturing and you break it down into subsections of those sectors.

Right.

So for manufacturing, what are the subsectors of importance?

Right.

An electrical equipment appliance and component manufacturing, That's tier one.

What's tier two?

Plastics and rubber products.

Manufacturing was tier three.

Primary metal manufacturing.

Okay.

And you break it.

How what is the what is the existing need from employers and what is their projected need?

Right.

So if you're talking about in manufacturing trends, transferring to electric vehicle manufacturers, do you have the existing skill sets on your team now?

And if not, what do you need in the future?

That's the same for the construction industry, right?

And that's that's pretty static.

So the matter of the fact here is we don't have enough people that are working in construction to be able to build the houses.

So what do we do to recruit people interested in those occupations?

Where do they go to get trained?

Who's helping offset the costs for that training?

And and most importantly, at the end of the day, are they getting a job in who's hiring them?

So it's it's aligning all those, which is what John is referring to.

And you can replicate that in any of these sectors.

Construction and housing happens to be one of those transportation and infrastructure could be another one as well for Southwest Michigan and of course, manufacturing, health care and so forth.

Right.

And we've just heard, too, Jeff, the the huge amount of money is that are coming in in infrastructure.

Yeah.

But the mismatch right now for the number of people available to do those jobs.

Right.

So we're going to see a lot of orange barrels over the decade ahead.

But do we have folks that are actually on the job site to do that in an efficient manner?

And ultimately, what does it do?

It drives up the overall cost for the product itself because you now have an inflated cost structure to be able to produce the same amount of value in the infrastructure improvement.

We just have a lot of work to do to understand what our labor supply chain supply demand issues are.

Yeah, so so John, maybe I'll give you last word that last minute or so.

Talk a little bit about just some what's next, some of the key milestones that that we as a community should should be watching for in the work that happens.

So the key milestones for us at the Strategic Leadership Council is is first to get the data sets underway.

This has been approved at the board level.

You both have been aware of it and we know that this is something that's really, really important.

After that, it's it's a matter then of the subcommittees of all of the different individuals at the community level, understanding the data and agreeing first on this as truth in the most the most difficult part of that will be projecting the demand.

Yes, you can have an anecdotal conversation with an employer and get some general data out of it, but it has to be it has to be more rigorous than just that.

Sure.

That's exactly right.

And then once we start to determine what those answers are, what some of the solutions to it are, we can then start to hold accountability for some of the training, some of the educational opportunities, some of the attraction and talent retention sort of tools that might exist at the economic developer level.

Once you start to put those out on a dashboard of success or failure, we can start to look at progress being made on a quarterly biannual basis in our in our strategic leadership summits that will give us a chance to work together towards solving these problems.

It's some terrific work, guys.

Thank you so much for giving us a snapshot of it today.

We'll be watching with success and look forward to being participating in that discussion as well, to be sure to.

Thank you.

That's it for our show today.

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