It is time for our 5th annual CIRAS holiday gift list!
This year buying products made right here in Iowa carries even more significance as it supports our businesses and their employees that have kept our economy running through the pandemic. Here are just some of the great Iowa gifts you can give:
Membership in the Iowa Lean Consortium is a gift that keeps on giving, with year-round training opportunities in continuous improvement — and now, more choice in how you use your membership. Join today!
A Muscatine steel factory is on the verge of innovation after increased student involvement developed into major research at Iowa State University.
SSAB, an international steel producer, recently completed CIRAS-arranged research and filed for a patent on a new optical fiber technology for measuring the temperature of molten steel in electric arc furnaces in real time. The company also is experimenting with Ames Laboratory on ways to improve the rolled-steel alloys SSAB manufactures.
Good leadership should be purposely developed in yourself and others by building strong relationships with those on your team, an Iowa-born Army colonel told more than 200 Iowa business leaders in October.
Col. Candice Frost was the keynote speaker for this fall’s first-ever Annual Virtual Conference by the Iowa Lean Consortium. The event, customarily the largest single educational event put on by the ILC, was held online in 2020 for the first time due to COVID-19.
Mary Greeley Medical Center capped a 10-year journey in 2019 when the hospital became Iowa’s first-ever organization to receive the Malcom Baldrige National Quality Award.
It happened, in part, because Mary Greeley used Lean techniques to trim waste from hospital activities and create a more efficient, more patient-centered environment.
A Des Moines freelance writing business found financial stability in the opening months of the pandemic after CIRAS helped it pursue and obtain a government contract.
Kristi Kenyon, owner of Copywriter+, said her company was roughly three years old when she met Justin Niceswanger, a government contracting specialist with the CIRAS Procurement Technical Assistance Center (PTAC), at a networking event.
Before that, government contracting “wasn’t something that I even knew was a possibility” for writing jobs, Kenyon said.
Building a new federal courthouse in downtown Des Moines is much more complicated than signing the paperwork and pouring concrete.
“It comes with significant challenges,” said Elizabeth Campbell, director of Emerging Business Inclusion for Ryan Companies, the Minneapolis-based firm that landed the Des Moines courthouse’s three-year, $105 million contract.
One of them is the subcontracting.
An Iowa equipment manufacturer who turned a CIRAS educational event into major experiments with virtual and augmented reality soon expects to see huge dividends in lower training costs and more attentive customers.
Vermeer Manufacturing Company, a Pella-based manufacturer of industrial and agricultural equipment, formed its own three-person augmented reality team in 2017, shortly after the company attended a CIRAS educational event on the topic.
Three years later, Vermeer has created a successful virtual reality marketing tool and soon will launch a new VR program to train dealer technicians how to service and repair Vermeer equipment.
Iowa companies may be well positioned to navigate the coronavirus, but experts say they should be prepared for surprises during what is likely to be a long and unpredictable economic recovery.
Business leaders shouldn’t expect to suddenly reemerge in rosy times, they warn. Instead, plan for all contingencies, and don’t count on being able to relax anytime soon.
“I think basically what’s going to happen is that the economy is going to plug along until there’s some small interruption, and then we’ll have a setback,” said Mike O’Donnell, program director for the CIRAS Manufacturing Extension Partnership. “The looming threat is that if you’re not prepared to go through a sawtooth-type recovery, then that can be dangerous. Lack of cash flow is really dangerous as a manufacturer.”
Businesses often hear about how lucrative it is to get a “GSA Schedule” with the federal government. Here are a few tips to know if a GSA Schedule is right for you and your business, and if so, the next steps you can take.