Morris group's goal: Big success for small manufacturers
There are countless businesses in New Jersey that manufacture medicines and process food for cooking in everything from high-volume restaurants to an 8-year-old's Easy-Bake Oven. While some of these companies are giant name-brands, a vast majority of them are operated by 10 people or less.
That's where Robert Loderstedt comes in.
The president and CEO of the New Jersey Manufacturer Extension Program Inc. said his nonprofit organization is there to lend small manufacturers a hand with just about whatever they need.
"Our mission is to help New Jersey's manufacturers become more profitable, productive and globally competitive," said Loderstedt, whose company is based in Morris Plains.
The NJMEP has began in 1996 and is part of the National Manufacturer Extension partnership. Loderstedt said all 50 states and Puerto Rico have similar organizations. It is one of 75 MEPs across the United States that are working to support the manufacturing sector by delivering technical and business assistance.
"First off, we work exclusively in Jersey with manufacturers; there are about 12,000 manufacturers in the state," he said. Almost 99 percent them are small- to medium-size, with 500 employees or less. Of those, 50 percent employ 10 people or less.
Loderstedt said his nonprofit, which employs 21 field agents and account managers, mostly works with companies that have between 50 and 120 employees.
"That's our sweet spot," he said. "That's the kind of size company that doesn't have the kind of money to hire people, which doesn't have enough dollars to put a full-time engineer on, or maybe they need help designing an employee handbook."
The way it works is NJMEP meets with a company that has a specific task that it doesn't know how to handle or approach. The field agents and account managers, all of whom have worked in the private sector and manufacturing, operate like a general contractor.
"Our job is to understand what you're looking to do, and then we look to validate that," he said.
Loderstedt said one of their clients needed to be trained how to read blueprints. NJMEP not only helped them get this done, but they told the client the employees needed English as a Second Language training first.
"That's what's nice, because we work around the client's entire enterprise," he said. "It doesn't really matter what their problem is. We have the ability to fix it."
Victor Davila, president of Food-Tek Inc., a Boonton-based company with roughly 20 employees, said his firm manufactures food products for toys. He gave examples of food products made for the famous Easy-Bake Oven, and Harry Potter-themed products.
Davila said he found out about NJMEP through Rutgers University's center for advanced food technology, which has a good relationship with Food-Tek.
Davila said that an international consumer-products company with a high-profile character to license came to one of Food-Tek's clients to set up a program to make a food product that would sell on a worldwide basis.
"Because they're worried about the character's image and the ingredients in the product, they want to make sure they have approved vendors," Davila said. That firm is requiring Food-Tek have an independent third-party audit Food-Tek to make sure it meets that company's standards for being an approved vendor.
Davila said this enables him to take any pre-emptive actions before the audit happens, which likely will be in May.
"We're trying to make sure what we do is done correctly," he said. "Something like this makes sense for us, given our size. For us to be regularly audited and inspected by a third party, it's not often necessary. It can be very, very expensive."
There is no specific fee structure for NJMEP's services, according to a company spokesman. However, NJMEP provides a free assessment and evaluation called a "Quick View" for new and potential clients. From there, a proposal is drawn up that is tailor-fit to the specific needs of the project.
Price of a project is determined upon the specific requirements of the project and which consultants are needed to be called upon to complete the tasks outlined.
Loderstedt said NJMEP not only identifies solutions to a client's needs, but "we actually do the implementation of the program," he said, referring to a contractor looking for sub-contractors to do the labor. "At that point we macro-manage the project from beginning to end. If they're not satisfied (we'll) redo it."
Loderstedt also said another important part of NJMEP is they don't even offer a proposal to the client until after meeting with them four or five times. They don't just dive right in. They get a good feel for the company first.
"We key in on it, where's that first level of pain and where can we take this pain away," he said. "It really is about building a relationship, getting them comfortable with us."
According to the company's Web site, NJMEP was established in 1996 by Saul Fenster, then-president of the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Donald Sebastian, executive director of the Center for Manufacturing Systems at NJIT, and Jay Brandinger, then-director of the Commission on Science and Technology, worked for close to a decade to gain the U.S. Department of Commerce's approval to establish a Manufacturing Extension Program in New Jersey.
Matt Manochio can be reached at (973) 428-6627 or mmanochi@gannett.com