NEWS RELEASE: Iowa Celebration of Manufacturing Day will cover all 99 Counties

• Jeff Eckhoff

AMES – An unprecedented and heavily coordinated educational campaign means Iowans throughout the state will have easy access in October to a wide variety of events touting the benefits of a career in manufacturing.
So far, more than 2,000 happenings have been scheduled across the U.S. to celebrate National Manufacturing Day on Oct. 2. Events such as factory tours and educational seminars will be held both on Friday and beyond in a bid to tout the extraordinary opportunities available in American manufacturing.

Expansion at ISU Research Park will Create Economic Development Hub

• Jeff Eckhoff

This time next year, CIRAS expects to be settling into brand new offices at the Iowa State University Research Park in a new building that will, for the first time, pull together most of Iowa State’s economic development services into a single location.

The new building, to be known as the Iowa State University Economic Development Core Facility, will anchor an area called “Hub Square”—the new main gathering space for the 400-acre research park.

WORKFORCE: In Worker Shortage, Companies Can Build Stability by Sharing

• Jeff Eckhoff

Donna Dau’s goal for each of the last three years has been to replace as few employees as possible.

But shrinking that number in the future means a lot of recruitment right now—both of new workers and of the new companies that Dau hopes will help her expand on a potentially groundbreaking way of dealing with Iowa’s looming shortage of skilled laborers.

CIRAS can help you find your Automation Answers

• Jeff Eckhoff

Iowa businesses want to know more about automation, and CIRAS is working on ways to help them.

CIRAS currently is looking to expand its automation support capabilities and could have more details available about that in the coming months.

Why Legumes?

• Jeff Eckhoff

For four decades, Dr. Wilmot Wijeratne has studied natural grain production and ways to bring the best products to consumers. He was instrumental in developing the basic technique for extracting excess oil from soybeans, and he helped create a process to do that on a large scale.

Now, Wijeratne, director of food technology for Harvest Innovations, is looking at legumes—lentils, chickpeas, and garbanzo beans—to feed the latest needs of savvy shoppers.

NEWS: CIRAS Approved to Purchase Metal 3-D Printer for Iowa Businesses

• Jeff Eckhoff

DES MOINES – The Iowa Economic Development Authority (IEDA) agreed this morning to contribute $100,000 toward the purchase of a metal 3-D printer that will be used to help CIRAS educate businesses across Iowa on the latest capabilities of additive manufacturing, to help train the next generation of workers in this poised-to-explode technology and to support new faculty research.
The IEDA contribution joins other federal and Iowa State University funding that will be used to purchase a direct metal sintering system, part of a $900,000 investment in this technology. The machine, which now will be ordered from its manufacturer, is expected to be up and running in an Iowa State University lab within months for the benefit of Iowa businesses.

CIRAS Supports Iowa Lean Consortium’s Continuing Growth

• Jeff Eckhoff

Six years ago, the Iowa Lean Consortium (ILC) was just a group of volunteers with a passion for Lean and a desire to bring its practitioners together from across the Iowa economy.

Today, the organization has 76 member companies and 63 individual members and routinely hosts events with capacity crowds—sometimes with a waiting list to get a seat. Members come from manufacturing, health care, insurance, finance, government, and education to learn from one another.

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