Year: 2015

CIRAS’ first Manufacturing Leadership Program was broad, educational, and useful, according to the newly graduated Martina Bockenstedt, general manager for FarmTek and Growers Supply. “It offered everything from finance and marketing to more of the leadership skills,” she said. “I could glean something from every one of them.”

Planning is now under way for CIRAS’ next campaign to focus its industrial and economic expertise on projects for the benefit of a large Iowa manufacturing subsector. A total of 102 people from 55 organizations took part in two previous Innovations Summits arranged by CIRAS in spring 2014 and spring 2015 under a five-year effort funded by the United States Economic Development Administration’s University Center Program. The events, focused on bringing new technologies to businesses in the plastics and machinery manufacturing sectors, spawned upgrades and innovations that led to $1.5 million in new or retained sales for the participating companies and more than $184,000 in various cost savings to date.

The maker of JOLLY TIME® Pop Corn turned 100 last year, but with eyes focused as much on the future as on the past.

Keith Vorst doesn’t think outside the box so much as he thinks about the box—and how it affects everything around it. Vorst, an associate professor in Iowa State University’s Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, also is director of the university’s new Polymer and Food Protection Consortium. He has spent the last year working to build a national center for packaging research and expertise—a place where companies in Iowa and elsewhere can go to assess the design, safety, function, and value of the packaging that envelops their products.

Iowa industry leaders should be able to launch test projects early next year with a new metal 3-D printer that CIRAS has obtained to educate manufacturers about the enormous, groundbreaking possibilities of additive manufacturing technology.