Ingrid Clark, Town & Country Ontario
Ontario Manufacturers face many challenges: competition from around the globe, a strong Canadian dollar, aging population and shrinking qualified work force. We traveled to Simcoe to discover how an Excellence in Manufacturing Consortium provides a forum where manufacturers meet with peers to pool resources and discover answers together.

Al Diggins, Excellence in Manufacturing Consortium -Pres. & G.M.
EMC, in its simplest form, is a network, a knowledge network, a sharing network of manufacturers in Ontario regionally by clusters of manufacturers. Provincially we get those folks together on a regular basis.

John Evans, Ranpro
The first time I heard about it was when I joined HD Brown. They were already a member of the EMC organization and we started going to SIG's - Strategic Interest Group meetings. They have them once a month and they cover various ranges of topics from production and quality, safety issues. The senior managers have meetings; HR has meetings.

Brenda McKeachnie, EMC - Senior Community Dev't Mgr.
Basically I help bring key folks together from key functional areas in their organization, primarily to network on a peer to peer basis. So we'll get together around a board room table at someone's facility and share our best practices, talk about our challenges and opportunities in business, look at ways that we can help each other out without re-inventing the wheel.

John Evans
We meet once a month and have meetings and discuss various topics that are relevant to each group in each regional area. We talk about topics that are current and valuable and of interest and we network and share ideas. There is one saying we have. It's: "Steal with Pride". And we have absolutely no reservations about sharing ideas, and accomplishments you have had and successful acts and share with another company that is struggling or needs help and you do so. And it's a win-win for everybody.

Gord Jameson, RanPro G.M.- Simcoe
Our company goes back to about 1860 when it began as a tannery about 10 miles west of here in Delhi. It moved here in 1916. At that time it was involved in making all kinds of work gloves and leather related apparel. Since then it has evolved into a company that's making, what we call it, extreme conditions protective apparel. An example of that would be commercial fishing clothing.

Ingrid Clark
EMC received close to two-million dollars in support through the Ontario government's Rural Economic Development funding program. The money goes to programs like LEAN, internship programs and the development of new partnerships. Gord Jameson, General Manager of RANPRO, understands the benefits of his involvement in the Excellence in Manufacturing Consortium.

Gord Jameson
One of the biggest ones would be learning about cellular manufacturing and lean manufacturing - lean production. What lean manufacturing is all about is removing the wasted efforts in any operation. We have applied that procedure here over the last 3 or 4 years. And what it has allowed us to do, which was what I was talking about a few minutes ago is that we have to be very fast in delivery. We've got to be able to make short runs of what the customer wants. Lean manufacturing allows you to do that. It has also allowed us to drop our corporate inventory by a third. Our work in process by 70% and increase our turns - almost double.

Bob Richardson, Manufacturing Mgr, RanPro
After looking at the operation carefully you find out that maybe one of our employees is walking back and forth many many many times to do the same thing. We maybe we can save that person walking a few extra steps. We look at resources; you know perhaps we're wasting different resources, the time we are spending on projects. We go through and try to operate in the most efficient manner we can. We use the ideas of our employees - we involve our employees with all these Lean exercises that we do.

Ingrid Clark
Founded in the mid-1980s and incorporated in 1997, EMC Canada is a unique not-for-profit association of manufacturers. The organization is dedicated to helping members develop in the area of global competitiveness. Improvement and efficiency is based on building a strong community infrastructure of businesses.

Al Diggins
It's simple in its format. We will come into a community of manufacturers, and we will sit down with peer groups - senior managers to begin with and the CEOs - and go through a needs analysis process that identifies what is keeping them awake at night. What are their challenges? What kind of things need to change in their buildings to make them successful and then their buildings more successful? And then at the community level, which is why we are involved, what can we do together to be more successful as a community of manufacturers?

Gord Jameson
More companies should be involved in Excellence in Manufacturing. It is very inexpensive. You could pay for your annual fee, which is at the moment $1,200, in a flash with one meeting and one idea. It's a great chance to get together once a month with your peers in other companies. Anyone is welcome at the table as long as they are manufacturing. We brought our union people there. They are welcome as well. The ideas you get from EMC are just wonderful. And it is so simple, companies helping companies with best practices.

John Evans
We're all in the same business; we're all here to make a profit, to stay in business year after year after year.

Bob Richardson
We feel so strongly about EMC, that it's been such a valuable resource for us with the networking opportunities and the training that they offer that we feel it is very beneficial for any manufacturer located here in Ontario.

Ingrid Clark
EMC's mission statement is:
"Members Sharing to Optimize Learning, Expertise and Resources to Achieve World Class."
As we enter the Knowledge Economy it's good to know that Ontario manufacturers have a hand up on the competition when it comes to the global stage.