MANSFIELD — The Regional Manufacturing Coalition held its quarterly Business Before Hours meeting at the Gorman-Rupp Lecture Hall Friday.
RMC meets to celebrate and support local businesses, highlighting and discussing manufacturing in Richland and Crawford counties. The latest meeting featured four speakers who addressed the future of manufacturing and areas for growth in manufacturing.
Karen Seman, director of workforce development for Richland Community Development Group gave the first lecture about how WorkKeys, a test created through the ACT will soon be given to students in high school for employers to see how well they understand applied mathematics, locating information and reading information.
“All high school students will take these tests by 2018,” Seman said. “Based on profile of data from 200,000 occupations looking at hard and soft skills, WorkKeys can be used for hiring and promotion.”
Seman said for the high school students, the series of tests would help show what their strengths are and could help them choose a fitting career path.
Currently the tests are available in Richland County at Madison Career Center, Pioneer Career and Technology Center and North Central State College, she said.
Barrett Thomas, director of economic development, discussed business expansion. He told the audience his job was to help connect dots for people in the workforce. His speech included details about tax abatements and incentives to “spread the wealth” of a company. He also shared experiences he has had and heard about JobsOhio, a private company which gives out incentives but has recently changed its policies.
Thomas described the new policies for getting money from JobsOhio as “a gray box” because some states have black and white format when requesting funds, but with JobsOhio “nothing is black and white. Everything is gray; it’s strange,” he said.
Thomas wanted the audience to know he and RCDG have experience working with JobsOhio and he said he is happy to help those who are interested.
Jan Miller spoke next to the early-bird audience. Miller has 35 years in Richland County manufacturing, and he said he has worked with MAGNET (The Manufacturing and Growth Network) for 14 months, where he helps promote and connect manufacturers. MAGNET is a private, non-profit company helping manufacturing companies grow. Miller’s lecture was an introduction to RMC and he wanted to let those in the audience know of his services to support northeastern Ohio manufacturers.
Michael Bradley, of Richland Newhope promoted Newhope’s new business partnership, CyclePoint from SourceAmerica. CyclePoint is an e-Recycling plan that allows Richland New Hope to come and pick up surplus laptops, LCD monitors, cell phones, printers at no cost and dispose of them in an environmentally safe and secure fashion.
“Think about all the technology that is out there,” he said. “We have collected off of just two companies three tons of servers, batteries, towers and computers.”
Bradley said everything recycled is tracked.
“If you work with us, you won’t see yourself on ’60 Minutes,’” he said jokingly.
The employees of the CyclePoint have been trained, Bradley said. They are looking for RAMs and batteries and other commodities in the motherboards. The commodities are sorted and sent to a recycling plant, where Bradley said they get revenue. Richland Hope also shreds hard drives.
“We think this is a great way for new jobs and to protect the environment,” he said.
The next meeting will be at Crossroads Original Designs, May 18 at 8 a.m.
