Production and distribution of City Club forums and ideastream public media are made possible by PNC and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland, Inc.. Hello and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to creating conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

It's Friday, July 19th.

And I'm Mark Ross, retired partner of CWC and proud member of the city Club Board of Directors.

I am incredibly excited to be here today for two primary reasons.

First, today is the first Friday forum following my election yesterday to be the next president of the City Club Board of Directors.

I am humbled and honored to follow a legacy of leaders who've had this privilege, including including the amazing Kristen and Adams and before her, Robin Minter Smyers.

And I'm sure you would all agree those are two really tough act to follow.

Second, I joined a number of those in this room recently on a leadership trip to Berlin, led by Mary Ann Crossley and the Cleveland Leadership Center.

It was on this trip that I got to know today's speaker, Ethan Karp, on a more personal level.

As so often happens on trips like this, deep friendships are developed.

And as evidenced by the number of Berlin alumni here in this room, go off script a second to say Congratulations, Maryann, I understand this is your last day with the leadership Center.

Thank you for your leadership, and thank you for being here today.

I will get to Dr. Karp's impressive background in a minute.

But from a personal perspective, I have to say, after spending time with him in Berlin, he is brilliant, funny and is committed to the success of this region as anyone, and I'm thrilled to be able to introduce him today.

So if you dial back about four years, we're still in the midst of COVID, and I think we can all recall what happened to the manufacturing industry as factories were shuttered and the global supply chain all but stopped in many places.

And since then, we've had wars, adding to the chaos, acceleration of the tech sector and AI capabilities growing, making some believe before long, manufacturing will be entirely done by robots.

So how is manufacturing doing today?

Well, Dr. Ethan Karp will shed some light on this important question.

Ethan is president and CEO of Magnit, also known as Northeast Ohio's Manufacturing and Growth Network, which he has led since 2013.

He's a former consultant with McKinsey and CO joined Magnit in 2013 and leads their work across the region to support manufacturers of all sizes, creating opportunities for growth, economic inclusion and workforce training.

Ethan writes for Forbes and serves on a number of boards in Greater Cleveland.

He received his undergraduate degree from my own alma mater, Miami University, and earned his master's and Ph.D. in chemical biology related fields at a small school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which I believe they call Harvard.

If you have any questions for our speaker, you can text them to 3305415794.

That's 3305415794.

And the city club staff will try and work it in the second half of the program.

Members and friends of the City Club please join me in welcoming my friend Ethan Karp.

Thank you, Mark.

That was a beautiful, beautiful introduction.

Greatly, greatly appreciate it.

So I was walking downtown the other day and I thought it was so cool to see Superman being filmed right in public square.

The man of steel in a steel city.

And it got me thinking, what are the unlikely similarities between manufacturing and Superman?

First of all, we think about you just hear me out about this, right?

So Superman's origin story written right here in Cleveland begins with a baby boy being sent to Earth by his desperate parents from a dying planet.

The journey symbolizes the birth of hope and potential.

Much like Cleveland's rise in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when it became the hub for iron, steel and auto manufacturing and those early Superman movies, we see our hero discovering his powers and beginning to use them for the greater good.

Similarly, the emerging manufacturing sector discovered its strengths, leading to a booming economy, growth and prosperity.

We were the industrial engine that drove America for decades.

However, just as Superman battled formidable foes, so did we.

In the seventies and eighties, the villains of offshoring, recession, the collapse of big steel brought manufacturing to its knees.

A cloud of doom settled over the industry.

Jobs vanished.

Factories closed.

And Northeast Ohio became the unwilling poster child for the death of the middle class.

It was an existential crisis, much like Superman's, as he battled the villain Doomsday, and ended up dying in the arms of Lois Lane.

This actually, it's kind of funny.

This actually made national news when it happened in the comics.

Even heroes and industries with immense power are vulnerable.

But just as Superman found a way to rise again, so did we.

Superman came back by being sort of reborn in his alien built Fortress of Solitude.

We kind of had to do it the old fashioned way.

We can call it the Cleveland Way, you know, with grit, ingenuity, with hard work on the factory floor.

Manufacturing may not always feel like a superhero movie, but both include plot twists, immense challenges and heroes who triumph against all odds.

But here's the big difference.

Superman's movie ends in about 2 hours.

Manufacturing is a never ending epic, constantly being rewritten.

So what's our story now?

What's happening in 2024?

And the question I get most often is manufacturing.

I certainly know why everybody would ask this question.

Last time I delivered a keynote on this stage, it was literally weeks before the pandemic hit.

I stood here and I made the case why we have earned the right to hope.

We've been through a lot since then, and manufacturing has been at the heart of it.

It's been an absolute rollercoaster.

And I'm proud to say that that hope was well founded because we've met every single challenge.

First, COVID turns the world upside down.

But as everything fell apart, our industry came together.

As the country went into lockdown, we went to work.

Ohio manufacturers pivoted to make protective equipment for frontline heroes.

We built new supply chains.

We innovated new products, and we made 50 million, 50 million pieces of PPE.

Together, we saved lives.

We saved jobs, and we helped the country reopen.

And when it did reopen, our industry roared back to life.

In March of 2021, factory activity reached its highest levels in 37 years.

But then the roller coaster, you know, as they do, dipped again when the online shopping that fueled that recovery broke.

The global supply chain manufacturers were paralyzed, unable to get product out the door.

On top of this, a talent time bomb detonated manufac Schering has had a talent shortage for years.

But COVID pushed us over the cliff.

In August of 21 more Americans.

And you all lived through this.

You all remember this.

Quit their jobs than in any other month in history.

4.3 million people in northeast Ohio we had and still do have more than 10,000 manufacturing jobs that we can't fill with people.

But incredibly, against all of these odds, manufacturing output continued to grow, surpassing pre-pandemic levels.

Then war broke out and supply chains further were pushed into chaos, again, highlighting the vulnerabilities of offshore manufacturing.

At that moment, against the backdrop of all of that uncertainty, 150 champions of Northeast Ohio came together to create a blueprint for the future of manufacturing.

It's a powerful roadmap to help us lead the world in smart manufacturing if we focus on four things talent, technology, innovation and leadership.

Over the past three years, we've been steadily advancing this blueprint, and it's working.

We've created 10,000 new advanced manufacturing jobs.

We've laid the groundwork for a vibrant innovation ecosystem with millions of new dollars of investment and 7% of all manufacturing revenue coming from those new products.

We've rapidly expanded the region's industry 4.0 capabilities by 80%.

Investing in things like robots, automation, virtual reality and AI.

And we're changing the face of manufacturing leadership with 80% more people of color in supervisor and management roles.

So to answer your question, is manufacturing okay?

Yes, it is.

We're in the midst of a challenging but incredibly powerful transformation from the Rust Belt to the technology belt.

And despite all the ups and downs, manufacturing is still a powerhouse.

It delivers 270,000 jobs to the local economy, each one of those supporting another four.

That's a million jobs in northeast Ohio.

It drives half of our regional economy.

In fact, if our manufacturing GRP was a country, it would sit just behind the entire economies of Hungary and Ukraine.

Our economy is manufacturing, and manufacturing is our economy.

But sadly, there's always a bottom.

Here's the reality check.

I knew I couldn't get up here and just spin a Pollyanna story.

Our no B.S.

manufacturers would not have that.

And it got me thinking about the funny thing about living in our technology era, right?

The more it almost feels like the more technology we have and use, the more binary our thinking becomes.

And the state of manufacturing is definitely not binary.

Two opposing things are true at the same time.

Northeast Ohio manufacturing in northeast Ohio is great and it's also not great enough.

We've made amazing progress in smart manufacturing, but immense challenges remain.

We made a giant leap forward in industry 4.0 at the last in the last three years.

But that's tempered by the fact that we started from a really low adoption rate.

Even with 80% increase, 72% of manufacturers in northeast Ohio are still not using these new technologies on their shop floor.

We've created 10,000 new jobs in the past three years, but our industry still employs far fewer people than it did 50 years ago.

Seven out of ten people who would have been working in the seventies in manufacturing no longer are today.

This means fewer families are sharing the wealth of the industry.

Manufacturing is growing, and we have never made as much stuff as we make today.

But we're still not growing fast enough to catch China or as fast as stateside cities like Columbus.

Manufacturing startups have more funding available here than ever before, but still, 70% of our manufacturers tell us that innovation is not one of their top priorities.

To state the blindingly obvious, that is a big problem.

If we don't innovate, we die.

These challenges are very real.

But everybody loves an underdog story.

David Rocky The 2016 Cavs triumph, against All Odds, reminds us that we're infinitely capable when we refuse to limit ourselves and our aspirations.

So what's limiting us?

What's holding us back?

What's our kryptonite?

The thing that cripples us and cut us off at our knees.

It's something that lives in each one of us.

It's our mindset, the myths and beliefs that drag our region down and our industry down.

The myths that stop us from doing the hard work as companies and as a region.

I know.

I know.

Just having a positive mindset doesn't manifest things.

We still have to do the work.

But our mindset keeps us from digging into manufacturing as the main event, not as a sideshow, not the ghost of the past that lingers on, but as the best and the right competitive advantage to fuel our future.

These myths were forged in the steel collapse of decades ago, but they still live in our collective unconscious.

There are five main myths I hear every day.

I'm going to debunk them one by one.

Here we go.

Myth number one A.I.

and robots are going to take all of the manufacture ring jobs immediate.

No, on this one.

Actually, the reverse is true.

Technology is going to save the jobs in our industry.

We have 20,000 vacant manufacturing jobs right now.

10,000 of them are perennially open.

We simply can't find the people to fill them.

And this is a national demographic problem.

.75, there are .75 people available to work for every one job in the United States.

There are 10,000 baby boomers retiring every day.

This isn't getting any better.

The talent shortage is here to stay.

We just have to continually manage it.

Like productivity are quality and AI robots.

Cobots.

Those are robots that work with people.

We'll find that gap.

And so we'll fill that gap.

So production lines don't grind to a halt so that we don't lose more factories.

In fact, we just did a survey to confirm this.

80% of local manufacturers was flat out.

They are using industry 4.0 to improve their productivity and safety, not replace workers.

Since the Model T automation has been symbiotic with manufacturing progress, automation is the reason that today we make more product than ever before with 70% fewer people.

This transformation was awful for workers, but it's why it's us, the consumers.

We are the ones that wanted and continue to want the things that automation makes cheaper and in larger variety.

Automation has already come for our manufacturing jobs so we can stop worrying about it.

What's happening now with industry 4.0 is different.

It's making the jobs that we have left and the ones we're creating better, safer and more high tech.

I'm going to share a clip from an interview I recently did with the president of Wage Lock.

They're a global manufacturer, 10,000 strong, located their headquarters in solid.

Cobots make sense.

They work side by side with our associates now and then where they don't.

We still try to build in automation.

We really like automation to get rid of.

We call it the dull, the dirty and the dangerous, right?

Those kinds of jobs are not for people.

Those are for robots.

People are for things without judgment and thinking and, you know, that kind of work.

And so we can free our experienced people up now to do fewer dull, dangerous or dirty jobs.

And then our team members can do other things.

They can operate more machines, they can do more setups.

They can do just the kinds of things that really experience.

Judgment is what we're paying for and what I think people derive the most value out of their work.

And so we look at automation and as a freedom tool for our associates, it frees them up to do higher value work and work that off.

Frankly, you feel more proud about doing.

I love when Jim Cavalli says a freedom tool.

I just love that instead of being afraid of AI and robots, we need to embrace them like suede lap cars and we need to do it fast.

I remember that stat from earlier.

Only 28% of manufacturers in northeast Ohio are currently using industry 4.0.

Every day we fall further behind.

In 2022, China installed more robots than the rest of the world combined.

I want to let that one sink in.

2022 China installed more manufacturing robots than the rest of the world combined.

We are in a high tech arms race, and if we don't catch up, we will lose everything.

Now on to myth number two.

Manufacturing jobs are dead, end jobs that we're pushing all our black and brown kids into.

This one hurts when I hear it.

There's nothing dead end about most manufacturing jobs.

There's an enormous opportunity.

These are jobs with strong careers progression that don't require an expensive four year degree.

Many companies will train you for free and whatever job you want.

It's true.

Not all manufacturing jobs are high tech, clean and sparkly.

Some jobs are boring and repetitive, but so are some jobs at Amazon and Target.

It's true all manufacturing jobs don't start at high wages, but the average salary is still $70,000 and overall wages are getting much more competitive.

Locally, entry level salaries have gone up an average of 18% over the last two years.

This is great.

And we also know they need to continue going higher.

Manufacturing has always been a social elevator, lifting people from poverty to prosperity.

But historically, it's white males who have benefited most from this.

Our industry is over 80% white and over 70% male.

Our factories should look more like our communities.

We don't push anybody into manufacturing.

We simply try to ensure the opportunities of manufacturing are open to everyone.

But there are barriers.

Many of them historic, systemic, race based and ingrained.

They include everything from lack of childcare to lack of transportation, from lack of awareness to lack of trust that manufacturing is, in fact, a great career and not one that's going to lay you off tomorrow.

But you don't have to take my word for it.

Here's a clip from Diana, a graduate of Magnit's, one of Magnit's programs, early college, early career.

We provided mentorship, transportation and removed all the barriers so she could get a job at Lincoln Electric.

To being able to provide differently for not only me, but for my family.

My mom, she's pretty happy.

And my dad, he's also happy they don't have these kind of jobs and they weren't offered these opportunities.

So they they very they are they are very happy, especially with the program, because it took me from being a dead end job to being an employee at a big time company.

Manufacturing has changed my life by opening so many doors for me in order for me to have a better future.

Manufacturing wasn't a dead end.

It changed Diana's life.

And this is something I can tell you.

We towards employment.

We hear this every single day.

Myth number three I hear this one all the time.

Manufacturing is our past, not our future.

Been there, done that.

We need something new.

Really?

Why are we so obsessed with new?

Silberman was the first superhero debuted back in 1938.

Hundreds of shiny new heroes have graced the big and small screen since then.

We have it thrown out Superman, 13 movies, 15 TV shows, thousands of comic books, Supergirl, Superboy.

I just discovered there's Superdog out there, too.

You can look it up.

Superman will never go extinct and neither will manufacture in northeast Ohio was built on manufacturing.

It's in our DNA for the past 100 years, even in the worst of times for manufacturing, it has always been the single largest driver of Northeast Ohio's economy.

We don't need a new superhero industry.

We just need to invest in the one we have.

And we can't be constrained by what we think manufacturing is.

Yes, we still make more airplane and truck parts here in Ohio than any other state.

Yes, we do.

All of the traditional things you think of, but innovation is also in our DNA.

We were the Silicon Valley of the Steel Age, and that's who we can become again.

The next medical marvel can be invented and made here.

Water can be cleaner and safer because of the things we pioneer here.

EVs can be more affordable because we make parts more efficiently.

Right here, virtually all the advances we need in the world right now involve manufacturing.

Why would we want to move away from this?

Here's Lincoln Electric's past CEO and executive chairman Chris Mapes on the opportunity he sees in front of us.

If we just get individuals around the United States and around North America to recognize that Cleveland, Ohio, has positioned itself as an advanced manufacturing region and an ability to be able to develop and be successful in implementing advanced manufacturing strategies or strategies around technologies.

That will be a huge benefit to the region long term.

And I don't see any reason why we can't accomplish that.

I see a huge opportunity for success.

And it's one of those things just like manufacture.

There's no light switch.

There's no one thing that if we could go do that, that that means it's going to happen.

It's going to take all of us continuing to be committed to committed to the blueprint, committed to the process, committed to continuing getting better, and then I believe when we stop and look at those improvements, we're going to be very happy with how far we've come.

As Chris Mapes said, there's no light switch, but there's incredible opportunity.

I challenge you all when you go look at the news and you see all the jobs and the companies that we're attracting and we're growing here, say, with incentives, 80% of those incentives go to manufacturing and manufacturing related companies right now.

Manufacturing is our future.

Now on to myth number four.

The most promising, persistent myth I hear is the one that Chris actually just mentioned.

There's a silver bullet for northeast Ohio, something just sitting outside where we can see.

If only we were San Francisco or Austin or my personal favorite, Pittsburg.

If we had done what they did when they did it, then things would be all better.

If only we focused on health I.T., tech ads and meds that would do it or the biggie.

If we'd only gotten intel, that would have saved us.

Yes, Intel is the single largest private sector investment company investment in the history of Ohio.

It's going to create a lot of jobs and it's going to do a lot of good.

But it is not a silver bullet.

Systemic change and economic development are difficult, messy and take a long time.

We need that continuous string of base hits and walks, even on issue after issue.

We need sustained energy over decades.

Think about Intel to make that deal happen.

Less Wechsler started developing the community around it 30 years ago.

The journey will outlast every single person in this room.

We must keep passing the baton.

I wasn't even born when community leaders came together to form a magnet to grow manufacturing.

And in 2024, we're celebrating our 40th anniversary.

We just keep reinventing ourselves and the industry and our impact.

Even Superman has died now and been reborn six times.

He doesn't give up, and neither should we.

Here's Kevin Johnson, a manufacturing technology leader, with his take on what inventing manufacturing should look like.

What do you say?

Go big in, especially if we think about the manufacturing that drives half of our economy.

I like to play where others aren't.

That's tough because everyone's doing smart manufacturing.

Right.

So the issue is.

Yes, that's right.

They have to be.

And in our case, how can we do it in a way that's unique to northeast Ohio?

What can we do that will allow us not just to go big, but to go big, smart, go big.

Smart means creating competitive advantage that's hard to duplicate somewhere else.

There are things we do in polymers.

They are things that we do in bio.

They are things that we do and should be doing with our fresh water.

The technology itself is going to take care of things like advanced manufacturing.

But the value of this geo is in the uniqueness of this geo, including climate, including social and cultural things that we have here.

We have a ton going for us.

The strategy he needs to tie some of this together and create opportunities to grow the pie.

As Kevin Johnson said, we need to go big and do it smartly by focusing on the things we do better than anyone else.

Our future is not one thing.

It's a unique combination of several things that no other region can steal or duplicate, things we must focus on for decades.

And finally, myth number five the last myth smiling.

Economic development agencies are going to save us.

Maybe some of you are out there be like, I've never heard anybody say that, but I can't tell you the number of times I've heard in the past 15 years.

Why isn't this organization doing that?

We didn't get this big thing because so-and-so didn't do this.

This company didn't come here because of X, Y, Z, on and on.

These organizations are important, no question.

I wouldn't be running one if I didn't think that they matter.

But it's not economic development agencies that are going to save us.

It's the way we do economic development.

No organization or campaign or government pot of gold is going to get this done.

The problems we face today are so massive, the opportunity is so complex that no one company, no single deal, no individual leader or nonprofit can do it.

That's the leadership conundrum.

The only way we can transform our economy is if we come together in powerful partnerships with bold leadership to make things happen.

That's really easy to say up here.

It's really hard to do.

Our economic development sandbox is incredibly over crowded.

There are 86 different organizations.

That's far more per capita than similar sized cities, and every one of them is doing something good.

But in the last 15 years, the failure modes of economic development, I find that there's normally three one.

We as a community chase a windmill and sometimes just invest in bad ideas too.

We don't sustain focus for long enough.

Just talked about that.

And three, we don't focus enough period, because we're doing 86 different things.

We all know this way of economic doing.

Economic development is not sustainable.

But the good news is we're already seeing positive change happening.

In the last two years.

I estimate we've seen double the number of organizations in collaborating in coalitions, alliances, clusters.

Magnet itself merged with Edge, another economic development organization last year.

Case Western and GCP and dozens of other organizations are working to unlock $160 million to make Cleveland a hub of sustainable manufacturing.

Another example Akron's polymer cluster secured $50 million to create more sustainable rubbers and plastics with a massive coalition on the workforce side, dozens of manufacturers, nonprofits and community groups created a sector partnership in Cuyahoga County to fix broken workforce systems.

That includes Nordson, one of our sponsors today.

And amazingly, over the last two years, this group has helped 1500 people get into manufacturing, mostly people of color.

They close the talent gap in Cuyahoga County by 50%, something no one else has been able to achieve.

Partnerships are where power and potential come to life.

Here's Andrew Jackson, president of Allianz International, talking about why we are exponentially stronger together.

Lead the world.

And it has to start here.

We have a corporate community, a foundation, a community, a not for profit community that's working together hand-in-hand.

And it's a coordinated effort.

And we're all on the same mission.

And I think we can pull it off.

I really do.

I think we're seeing the progress already.

The I think that the reason why we're talking right now is because we see momentum in what we're doing and where there's momentum, people want to jump on it.

What I say to people is don't let the wagon get full, because once a wagon gets for in a more seats in the wagon.

So jump on now.

Jump on now.

Andrew Jackson, love that.

That's partnership.

That's the positive mindset we need.

That's what's going to propel us forward rather than holding us back.

And there you have it.

Five Myths Busted.

I hope everything you've heard today also debunks the granddaddy of all myths manufacturing is dead.

For all you Hamilton fans out there, the death of manufacturing has been greatly exaggerated.

I'm glad there are some Hamilton fans out there.

It's true there's been a cloud of suspicion hanging over the industry since the tough times decades ago.

But it's time to let that go.

It's time to trust manufac Strang again.

Four years ago, on the eve of the pandemic, I stood here full of hope.

And today I stand here again, filled of even more hope for the future.

Despite all we've been through.

Why?

Because we survived crisis after crisis.

Because we continue to thrive.

We've proved that we have everything we need to lead in smart manufacturing.

We just need to do more of it.

But none of us can do it alone.

There's no Superman here.

Shooting just wrapped up, actually.

So there's not even a Superman out there anymore.

We are the heroes.

We need to come together.

Save our future.

And refuse to let anything hold us back.

That means it's time to flip the script on all five manufacturing myths.

So let's do that right now.

Number one, A.I.

and robots are going to keep our jobs here.

Number two, manufacturing changes lives.

Number three, manufacturing is our future and that's where we need to focus.

Number four, the only silver bullet is decades of resilience, resilience, reinvention and really hard work.

And number five, powerful partnerships will save us as Superman famously said, there's a superhero in all of us.

We just need the courage to put on the Cape.

It's time to put on the Cape.

And get to work.

What any of you thought I wasn't going to take this moment to wear a cape on this stage?

Seriously?

Now you guys all have to join me.

You're getting your capes at your tables right now.

We have a cape for everyone.

Because.

Thank you.

Because together we're together.

Together we will make manufacturing better.

And that that is what is going to make life better for every single person that lives here.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

We are about to begin the audience Q&A for our live stream and radio audience.

It's just chaos in here.

So all I can tell you.

Or for those just joining.

I'm Mark Ross, president of the City Club Board of Directors.

Today, we have been joined by Superman himself, Dr. Ethan Karp, president and CEO of Magnet.

We welcome questions for everyone city club members, guests and those joining via our live stream at City Club Dawg or Radio broadcast at 89.7 WKSU Ideastream Public Media.

If you'd like to text a question for our speaker, please text it to 3305415794.

One more time.

3305415794.

And the City Club staff will try to work it into the program.

It looks like we are ready for our first question.

Back to you, Ethan.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Sorry for not wearing the cape.

Yeah, we often hear that one of the problems with manufacturing is that we don't have a workforce that is skilled or educated enough for these manufacturing jobs.

Is that a myth?

And if it is a myth or if it isn't a myth, how do we deal with that problem?

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you for that very serious question.

I was really hoping the first one would be something like, do you like Supergirl or Superman more?

It wasn't.

So I will take this very, very important question and we're going to get a picture of everybody.

For those listening, there's a roomful of people wearing capes and it is beautiful.

It's very beautiful.

So the question is, do we have enough skilled workforce?

Here's the problem.

There's this disconnect in workforce.

If you think of workforce and I'm going to go back to one of those maps, the silver bullet.

It's most actually apparent in workforce where if we think, hey, look, if we just had the training or if we just had a person that could do X, Y, Z, everything would be fine.

The problem in workforce and the reason it's been such a persistent issue is that you actually need to solve all the problems all at once, which is, you know, like a terrible business model, right?

Like, yeah, fix everything all at once.

But in our workforce system, that's what makes us so difficult.

If somebody gets 95% of the way to a job, right, they're like almost there, but they can't get there because the public transportation takes them 3 hours.

Well, it's as if they didn't have a job in the first place, right?

I mean, they didn't, but, like, it's useless.

So we need to for every individual who each has their own of things that they need to do.

We need to actually help them have that pathway.

That's the type of stuff that we do with towards employment and with this whole community.

Workforce Development Board is another organization working on removing those barriers.

So you are right, there are people that have barriers.

They have things that they can't get to connect them to the job.

But it's not that the people don't exist, and it's not that they are incapable of learning.

Those things are getting access to this things.

It's requires everybody kind of figuring out how to connect all of them together so that they can get there and stay there.

I could go into much more depth about all of those pieces.

But yes, I believe it is a myth that that that the people just aren't out there.

Mm hmm.

Yes.

Lisa.

I want to say that for one in Cleveland, Ohio, the first paper to pen for Superman was right here.

And it took us the Cleveland Film Commission years to have Superman come here and shoot here and analogies were absolutely amazing.

And I was so thrilled to hear them because we've all been so Superman the past six weeks.

The kryptonite is the negativity.

And fortunately, we have people like in this room and people like you, Ethan, who are not going to put up with the negativity and we're going to keep moving it forward.

And hopefully everybody next July 2025 will go out and see Superman, because the economic impact that it had on Cleveland was amazing.

And so are you.

Thank you.

I will actually say something about that.

I couldn't figure out how to make it in, but at least in others from the Film Commission have informed me there's a ton of manufacturing that actually goes on on these sets, like the little glimpses in that photo in there was, I think, a PD reporter who was who was showing what was going on, but they like remade whole areas of the town.

Those are like tradespeople, like actually going out and building stuff really, really fast.

It's actually very, very cool.

And the negativity piece, too, I mean, that that obviously is kind of the thrust of what I was talking about.

But I will tell you, the way that that filters is if you look at it like for kids, for example, you think of kids and you say, you know, for a while it was negative.

Oh, that's I don't want to do that.

Right.

Think of when when do kids think big trucks are no longer fun anymore?

Right.

So, yes, there absolutely is that sort of negativity.

But after so many years of this, you know what it is, it's just total lack of awareness.

That's what we see more often.

We've had 5000 kids come to our new building where we do this manufacturing experience and they build a little electric car and they make their own paint and they see robots and it's a really fun few hours for them.

And the biggest thing we take away is people just get excited because they're like the kids do.

They say, Wow, I didn't know that this existed.

This is cool.

I'd like to do this.

We see about 60% of those kids go from manufacturing.

Now, what is that never to.

Oh, wow, I didn't know that's what this was.

So there is an awareness gap there as well as that I think is born because of years of that negativity where it just disappeared, even though these jobs are still right there.

Yes.

Next question, please.

Thank you for a great address.

And thank you for these great capes, which and I'm going to give you a classic City Club question, and I hope it's not a kryptonite question.

But like it or not, we're in an election year.

And there are two issues that I'm very curious to know if your members or your organization have addressed or have positions on and I know you're a five or three.

I don't understand that.

The first is tariffs.

And do your members talk about tariffs?

Worry about tariffs?

Are tariffs kryptonite to the manufacturing industry?

Secondly, immigration.

We have a lack of we need manufacturing jobs.

Is is a sane immigration policy a solution to that?

Thank you.

First of all, I just want everybody to know, again, listening, I handed out equal number of blue and red capes in the audience.

I appreciate your question very much.

So I'm not speaking exactly for myself, nor am I representing the the number of manufacturers magnets, mostly a service organization.

So no members we like go in and help them with new products and we help the workforce get connected, things like this.

But of course, I talk to manufacture chairs, so I'll just give you glimpses on both sides of the well, I'll give you glimpses into what I hear most often, which again does not constitute everybody's opinion on it.

So from a from a terrorist perspective, when the steel tariffs went in, some companies and you see them did exceedingly well.

And that is good for our country to have more steel production.

I'm a huge believer in reshoring.

I'm a huge believer that we need to be producing at least the stuff that we use here.

And certainly I would love to be exporting everywhere.

By the way, we do actually export everywhere.

We are the number one excuse me, number two, to China in the world and Mexico and Japan.

I mean, they are far behind us in that amount of stuff that we put out there.

Right.

So we have while China has grown it also, if you look at China, their per capita stats are really bad.

We're like three x per capita income made by manufacturing and we both roughly export the same percentage of goods.

Right.

So just a level setting on what's out there.

But I am a huge believer in bringing as much of that back.

And there are huge gaps in our supply chain which we know about even national defense, that that that are problems for us.

So when we think about the tariffs, it helps some companies.

It annoyed the crap out of some companies because they had to renegotiate everything everywhere and some companies didn't do anything for them because it's a politically created thing.

So they're looking out there and they're saying, Well, if I'm going to invest and let's be clear, we can make products as equally cheaply or expensively, whatever you want to think of it as China.

If we put in the right amount of automation, the right about automation costs a ton of money.

So you have to be able to produce product for many, many years.

And if you're relying on the cost differential of a tariff and a new president comes in, then maybe you didn't get your payback on your millions and millions of dollars.

So there's there's a tempering effect to how effective tariffs can be.

So there's positives.

There are some negatives and there are some, you know, people that are just going to wait it out until the economics actually change fundamentally.

The second piece on your immigration question, I mean, everything in here says we don't have enough people.

So I think most manufacturers would welcome, irrespective of how those policies get done, more people here to do more work in their factories, in their companies.

And I think it's just economic fact.

The more people as your population grows, your GDP goes up.

So not commenting on how immigration gets done or all those things, but I think in general there's some consensus around, yeah, having more people is a good thing.

So hopefully that answers your questions.

Yes, I we have a text question.

Yes.

Can you share a similar sized city that is getting this right?

The short answer is no.

And and the reason I can't, because I would happily beg, borrow, steal from anybody and even the ones that are that are doing things like I mentioned, Columbus.

And I'm sure somebody is wondering, well, why, why?

Why did they get into why we didn't get into all land?

Land is the issue.

And I'm engaged in economic development.

This isn't our bailiwick at Magnet, but groups like Team Neo and others, and I'm on their board.

You know, we hear what happens.

And fundamentally, a parcel of land that big was not available in the turnaround time that Intel needed it like three days.

And those parcels, they're very specific, right?

That two or three, you know, 1300 acres, it can't be near trains.

It's got to have water, it's got to have all these things without stealing the thunder of future economic development.

I know people are working and if that opportunity and hopefully there will be and likely will be more opportunities like that, we will be ready for an opportunity.

Columbus had started that five years ago.

So even though I mentioned Columbus and that's part of their acceleration, those are things that we will get behind and do.

I don't actually see any other states except or cities doing something super terribly different, except the reasons why I say the Southeast would be growing faster.

All the demographic changes, all their availability of people, all of the tax incentives they give.

Right.

There's all of these reasons why the Southeast has been for a few decades kind of kicking the Midwest.

But but those are sort of macro level things.

It's not a specific city saying, oh, you know, this is this is what we did to make it right, make us more competitive.

The thing I think that really is going to change the dynamic here is workforce.

So I highlighted it here because we hear a lot of companies when they're thinking of where to go.

That workforce equation is really, really high.

Yes.

Incentives and and where their customers are.

Those are all table stakes.

But at the end of the day, if we could put a compelling piece out there and say, look, we really know how to get your trained people in.

And by the way, there's no reason given the number of education facilities we have, the background, even the sheer number of manufacturers we have, that's an asset.

Those are people that can train other people that can pull their families and friends in.

Those are assets that we can build on making ourselves useless.

In the past, the manufacturing education capital of the United States, we can that and if we do that, that is a competitive advantage that we can sell nationwide and we can lead, even though I can't point to a specific leader right now.

Thanks.

Yes.

We have another text question.

What metrics do you use to measure manufacturing growth and our reach and success?

That's a great question.

So there's the there's the blunt one.

Manufacturing GDP.

DRP Right.

How much stuff are we actually making inflation adjusted?

The second one that goes along with that is productivity.

So how all that technology stuff, every bit of technology should mean you can have the same person making more stuff.

So that productivity curve should also go up.

A third metric we look at is if we're talking about the talent shortage, we don't want to have one.

So we want to see what is that gap between roles that should just be normally open because companies turn people and how many people are perennially open.

So we're looking at that as well.

And then fourth, we know that we are leaving talent on the table, let alone society issues that come with racial disparities and geographic disparities.

It's simply the business case for leaving talent on the table when we can't find talent by not going into our cities, by not looking at populations that we've historically not considered is a big mistake for the strategy for manufacturing.

So that's a fourth thing we look at, is how are we doing in terms of our factories having the same composition of the communities around them at the highest level?

Those are the four things.

And then we look at talent metrics and innovation adoption metrics and technology adoption metrics and even all those leadership stats I gave you, how many people are involved?

We're tracking all of that stuff.

Thanks.

Yes.

Health care is important.

Yes.

Area.

And is there any symbiosis between the health care industry and the manufacturing industry and what can be done perhaps to improve that symbiosis?

Love the question.

Love the question.

So health care people often point to and say, well, you know, it's really health care that's going to outstrip manufacturing.

And while I love our health care institutions and I love living here because I know I'll be taken care of the is the majority of our health care serves us.

It serves people that are selling outside of the region traded sectors or what they're called.

So most of the health care industry that we have benefits.

Our community, not all of it.

Right.

Of course, we have people coming in from outside the area and that boosts our economy.

That being said, when you look at the extra job creation and traded sectors, there's a piece of health I.T.

that is really, really cool.

Right.

And we should grow the crap out of that.

I didn't mean to say manufacturing is the only thing we should focus on.

Just the main event, so we should be growing that.

However, the biggest job gains probably for our region are manufacturing medtech startups.

Right?

Making the things that we invent here or there are hospitals invent here because that interplay between research and real making stuff is really important.

And the proximity.

It's harder for a Cleveland clinic to choose somebody in San Francisco to say, be my manufacturing partner.

Right.

That should be done here and we should be commercializing all of that and building the infrastructure and businesses around that.

So, yes, there's huge synergy.

We already have examples of that, but that is a big bet.

That is the type of investment and focus that we should be having for the future.

Another tax question in one of the interviews, we heard a mention of fresh water.

Can you discuss how we ensure a clean climate future since freshwater is one of our most important resources and we need to protect it?

I have a I have less to say on that just because I'm not focused on how to actually keep our water clean.

I more look at it from the standpoint of what manufacturing's role in all of this.

So first, one thing just generally about climate and manufacturing, I think there's this general sense that, oh, manufacturing, big smokestacks, etc..

I mean, you guys wouldn't even notice while this audience would many people wouldn't necessarily notice driving by a manufacturing facility.

There's no big smokestack.

It's, you know, kind of nondescript and they're not polluting.

Yes, they're big energy users.

But if we make that energy more renewable, they're going to be using that energy just as anything else.

And their climate footprint will be low.

The things in manufacturing that cause pain to the environment are the things we buy fast fashion, plastics, things like this.

So the group initiatives, be it the one that I mentioned with Case GCP or the Greater Akron Chamber and Polymers, that's why they're focused on how do we make products that are being sold and how do we do them in a way that when they're out there, they're recyclable.

So that's one big way that we need to be thinking.

And that is not just about the environment.

That's about, again, us consumers.

We want it.

They want to deliver it.

That's manufacturing innovation.

So there's a lot of energy going into that component of it.

There are still industries of steel, although I will tell you, we have the number one or near the number one most efficient steel plant, the one here in Cleveland in the entire world.

Steel is an energy producer excuse me is an energy user.

And it does involve greenhouse gases and production of them.

And that's how the world works to make steel.

So don't really have great ideas other than we need more factories like the ones that we have here.

And you can have cliffs come up here and they will tell you about their huge investments in making steel greener.

So water in particular.

What we have to gain is that A, when Intel or future companies like that come here, they need huge amounts of water.

And we have it right there.

So that's one way we can use that water.

They're not polluting that water.

It's just something that they need to be here.

The second piece that we can look at is things like the Cleveland Water Alliance.

They are trying to find technology guys that will clean water and will monitor water quality and will make, you know, lead free things, water, all of that stuff.

These are physical technologies that we will be using and deploying.

And that's a way that manufacturing is going to make a positive impact on our region.

And frankly, I bet there's a whole bunch of ways that I haven't even thought of that nobody's told me about yet around how we're going to make use of our fresh water.

These are the types of assets that Kevin Johnson is about to ask a question was referring to.

So feel free to add to that answer.

Ethan, thank you so much for your informative and energetic presentation.

I think it's really been spot on.

I do have a question oftentimes we and I have to deal with this question as myself and I have my thoughts.

So it's a question about, well, hasn't Pittsburgh been Trump?

You know, tremendously successful.

I don't remember if you and I have talked about it, but at the end of the day, you know, I have a concern.

While I appreciate Pittsburgh's success, it's been and disproportional success from my perspective and my view is we ought be better.

We ought look at what they do, look at what they've done, and figure out how to do it better.

Pittsburgh leveraged a tremendous research university and created industry around what came out of that university, etc., etc.

Great job.

The challenge that Pittsburgh has is that they create it in so doing.

Their process and their opportunity to be a tremendous growth in the wealth gap, the haves and the have nots.

We have a manufacturing base and we have a methodology that ought to say that we can create great opportunity and lift an awful lot of boats at the same time and not leave as many people behind.

What do you what are your thoughts on that?

So the Pittsburgh story, I'm just going to add one detail to that.

The Pittsburgh story is really interesting because what we see on the news is the flashy stuff.

What you don't see is whether the technologies of automation being created there are getting into the manufacturing base.

Are they making them differentially more productive, more, you know, are they leading the industry 4.0 revolution?

And the answer is unequivocally no.

So good stuff happening at the university, spin outs happening, all of which is good, all of which we should be doing here.

But it's not necessarily getting to all the people that contributes to the the haves and have nots.

And and I think that everything that we are trying to propose here do include holistic solutions to that.

We have to be thinking not just how do we create the next analogy, how does it get adopted?

We can't just be thinking, how do we grow jobs if we're not thinking of how do we connect the people that need those jobs for whom their lives will be transformed with this job in our cities or in our rural communities, how do we actually do that?

At the same time, we can't keep doing it piece by piece.

Again, I would say that's the silver bullet approach.

So not saying that that's bad.

I would love to have that reputation.

I would love to be able to then say, oh, well, now we're going to work on this thing.

I think it's a much better plan to try and figure out strategies that work on each piece of it simultaneously and iteratively.

That's just my take on how we do.

It's just a lot harder because again, it requires that focus and it's a really long time.

You even look at Pittsburgh, everybody will point say I'm a San Francisco state yet you know what this we make it sound like we manifested this and just did it.

It's actually been a long time coming please.

Hi Brenda Brown again from towards employment.

So my question to you for the manufacturers in the room and those that are streaming in reference to the workforce deficit that they're experiencing.

What would be your word of advice to them to address that specifically in reference to the barriers to employment that some of the willing workers may be experiencing that are preventing them from taking hold of the opportunities available.

Oh, I'm going to try and do this one real fast.

One, I would say take a real hard look at your front wages.

Right.

Are they competitive with Target?

Are they competitive with Amazon?

How up can you make them?

And I understand their cost pressures.

I understand their margin pressures.

But if this is as important because you can't get product out the door as your product, as your productivity or as your customers as your quality put it up there.

That's number one.

Number two, it's not all about the dollars, how you engage as a company, how you lead, how you make your people feel.

We see this in the news all the time.

That matters how people talk about your company to their friends and family.

That's a huge indicator of whether you're doing good things in the job quality sense.

The third thing to think about when you're thinking about what employers should be thinking about this is they're going to have to get their hands dirty.

And it's not about treating everybody the same.

This is probably the biggest barrier when we talk to manufacturers, they say, Well, I can't do something for this person, that you can't do that for this person.

People are different.

You can, right?

If somebody needs flexibility, figure it out.

That's how you're going to get that person.

Unreasonable flexibility.

No.

But what are the ways that you're catering to the specific backgrounds of individuals and you're creating an inclusive environment where everybody can thrive and everybody has a different background, different skills to bring.

We've got to get our hands dirty in solving it, either on our shop floor or in the community.

Thank you all again, I believe Mark is coming up to wrap us up.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And if if you're interested in more of those facts and figures in the blueprint or you want to see full reels of these interviews and people like Rebecca Leber from Lubrizol and Kari Jeras from Gojo, you can go to manufacturing success stories or Amazon or Spotify, check out the podcast.

So feel free to check those out and get inspired by the region and let's all put on those capes over to you, Mark.

All right.

Thank you, Ethan, for joining us at the City Club today.

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All my leadership, Leadership Center, friends, etc.. Up next at the City Club, Wednesday, July 24th.

We are back under the Chandelier Playhouse Square for our free outdoor summer series, talking with featured artists from the 2024 Border Light Theater Festival, which is right around the corner.

Then on July 26, we are joined by leading cybersecurity experts to discuss how we can protect corporations, school districts, health systems and municipalities from increasingly sophisticated cyber threats.

God knows.

Today was a pretty day for a lot of that.

You can learn more about these forums and others at City Club, dawg.

And that brings us to the end of today's forum.

Thank you once again to my friend Dr. Karp.

To our members and friends of the City Club, I'm Mark Ross, and this forum is now adjourned.

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