NEWMA celebrates 20 years of strengthening manufacturing’s image & building talent pipeline

Twenty years ago, Ann Franz was tasked with talking with CEOs to help the Bay Area Workforce Development Board understand what companies needed for future workforce. Trouble was, “not many CEOs wanted to talk to me,” Franz recalls.

One did, however: the now‑retired former owner and CEO of EMT International, Paul Rauscher. Franz, who early in 2006 was new to the manufacturing world, wanted to talk to Rauscher about the shortage of welders. “He’s like, ‘I don’t have welders.… But I have lots of other jobs [open], but nobody wants them. And is there anyone really working on trying to get people interested in manufacturing careers?’” says Franz, who had been hired by Northeast Wisconsin Technical College to fulfill a grant the college had with BAWDB. Her role has since shifted to UW‑Green Bay.

Rauscher says Franz’s timing was perfect. He’d hit a wall trying to get educational leaders interested in manufacturing, but he had a pivotal conversation with Jeff Rafn, president emeritus of NWTC. Rafn suggested it was manufacturers themselves who needed to change the industry’s image.

“And I thought, ‘boy, is he so right,’” Rauscher says.

Franz and Rauscher scheduled a meeting with a handful of leaders, including Rafn and John Davis of Great Northern Corp.

“We sat down and talked about what these goals should be,” Rauscher remembers. In June 2006, the Northeast Wisconsin Manufacturing Alliance (NEWMA) launched with 12 members.

Since then, the organization has grown to more than 400 members, about 250 of which are manufacturers employing more than half the manufacturing workforce in the 18‑county New North region, Franz says. With 600 companies in NEWMA’s target market, there’s still lots of opportunity to grow in its next 20 years.

“It actually grew, I think, more than either Ann or I or (former BAWDB Executive Director) Jim [Golembeski] ever thought we could grow it,” Rauscher says. “But it did grow, and it became the things we wanted. We engaged in education. We became the word when people want to know about manufacturing. Now they go and talk to Ann Franz.”

It’s a shift from two decades ago.

“Back in the day when I called schools, they’re like, ‘Thank you; but no, thank you,’” Franz says. Now, the organization has built strong partnerships with educators, highlighted each year through NEWMA’s Excellence in Manufacturing/K‑12 Partnership Awards. Those partnerships have led to a catalog of new programs like career exploration, Get Real Math! videos, and a tech ed teacher experience each summer, Franz says. The partnerships have helped expand STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) programs and opportunities like co‑ops and youth apprenticeships.

“All those things were developed through really hearing the voices of both entities, industry and K‑12, and coming up with solutions that meet the needs of the other,” Franz says. “We really wanted to be the voice of manufacturers and not just have a couple companies say, ‘Hey, this is what we need.’”

Finding a voice

NEWMA has had some success in reshaping the image of manufacturing from its antiquated reputation to accurately reflect its shift toward bright, technology‑focused facilities.

Rauscher says early game changers were Insight’s Insight on Manufacturing magazine and, along with it, NEWMA’s All Stars magazine and awards, which both recognized young manufacturers and also offered a tool to showcase industry careers.

It also has created connections by helping Insight launch what is now a premier manufacturing event, the Manufacturing First Expo and Conference, sponsored by First Business Bank. Franz remembers that the event attracted mostly skepticism at first, but today it draws more than 1,000 attendees annually. Two years ago, NEWMA forged another partnership with Insight to create the NEW Manufacturing Insights podcast, which has now produced more than 120 episodes.

The organization’s task forces have grown to eight, all of which meet monthly. The newest, a safety task force, was initiated when Mark Callow from Samuel Pressure Vessel Group reached out to Franz with the idea.

Seventy companies are now a part of the safety task force, learning from one another and sharing best practices, Franz says. While manufacturing facilities have become safer generally, the task force is important as newer, younger workers fill skilled roles and as new technology like cobots, robotics and self‑driving forklifts are being adopted.

‘Engaged and active’

Brandon Beard, president of DuxxBak Composite Decking and current chair of the NEWMA board, has a long history with the organization.

“I initially got involved because I didn’t see a lot of resources for folks in manufacturing that made manufacturing look cool,” says Beard, who began serving on NEWMA’s talent task force while he was working at NEW Plastics. During that time, the company received a Fast Forward grant that allowed 20 employees to go through a skill‑building training session.

“I just saw the impact that it had on the employees and just our business in general. I’d never seen an alliance like that, that actually did stuff that was meaningful for its members,” Beard says.

That’s what sets the organization apart.

“The members are extremely engaged and active. The members are at the forefront of recognizing future problems and issues, and then we proactively find solutions to those before they become a problem that’s just unsolvable,” Beard says.

Building worker skills has been a key focus for NEWMA from the beginning — including keeping up with shifts in technology, Franz says.

“One of the first things we focused on was frontline leaders and the need to upskill [workers], because often when somebody gets promoted from a production position, they’ve never had any formal training in leadership … over the years, we’ve had hundreds of people take that training,” she says.

Several other training programs followed, and in 2019 Franz worked with St. Norbert College to develop an Industry 4.0 study, which highlighted the importance of data analytics skills within manufacturing companies.

“We’ve had over 800 people take that training over the years,” she says, adding that later, when they did the study again, project management rose to the top. “We’ve had over 700 people take that training since 2021. And then AI was in our 2024 study, and now we’ve had over 600 people take our AI training,” Franz says.

College programs

Franz also is proud NEWMA developed a scholarship for manufacturing careers. It started with four $1,000 scholarships for each of the tech colleges in the region.

“Back then, $4,000 was a lot of money,” Franz says.

Now, NEWMA is giving $65,000 each year, with almost a million dollars in college scholarships presented to students.

“That was very significant for our board,” Franz says. “They didn’t want to just talk the talk and say, ‘Hey, you should go to college,’ but we wanted to invest in young people that were making that decision.”

At the same time, NEWMA created a study to provide a business case to support engineering bachelor’s degree programs at UW Oshkosh and UW‑Green Bay.

“When you think 23% of our population worked in manufacturing and we had no four‑year engineering degrees, it was just crazy,” Franz says. Both colleges began building engineering technology programs more than a decade ago, and now both have mechanical and electrical engineering programs, among others.

John Katers, Dean of UW‑Green Bay’s College of Science, Engineering, and Technology, says having a group like NEWMA helped the universities demonstrate “why manufacturing is so important in Northeast Wisconsin and why we should have had an engineering school here, long, long ago.”

Establishing those programs has had an impact on both building the talent pipeline and helping reduce ‘brain drain.’ Before, the closest engineering school was a two‑hour‑plus drive away and “there was no guarantee that … talent was ever going to come back to Green Bay,” Katers says.

Additionally, NEWMA ties everything together, he says. It is focused both on K‑12 programs, but has also created scholarships that support college students. “So they look at the whole thing very holistically,” Katers says. “There’s not a one‑size‑fits‑all solution to the problem. They need to have everybody working together for this entire region to be successful.”

Christina Stelter, talent acquisition manager for Alliance Laundry Systems and chair of NEWMA’s K‑12 task force, says because of NEWMA’s work, “we have more schools reaching out, knowing that we do tours and that we do job shadows and that we do youth apprenticeships. Our partnerships with the schools have really grown because we sit on the same task forces.”

That’s been great for creating awareness about the various opportunities within manufacturing.

“I think that’s what the K‑12 task force does — and also what NEWMA does in general — just opening people’s eyes and giving opportunities to learn more.”