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Southeast Pennsylvania has plenty of organizations focused on economic development and workforce training, but they have struggled to create the kind of local economic boost that similar efforts in other parts of the country have produced.
That’s according to a group of business owners who spoke at a conference on manufacturing at Drexel University last week.
Ronn Cort, CEO of Dunmore in Bristol, said he was previously part of a group that included 65 mid-sized manufacturers from Columbia, Montour and Luzerne counties in the northeast part of the state. Rather than competing for scarce resources or waiting for another organization to fix problems for them, they met to discuss their challenges themselves and worked with government to find solutions, he said.
“That’s one thing I don’t see here in this Greater Philadelphia area, is this kind of coordinated effort — not for manufacturers, but by manufacturers — to bring all these great public partners together,” said Cort, whose firm makes high-performance foils and films for the aerospace defense industry.
A regional group like that could help find fixes for challenges like finding workers, helping them get child care and arranging their daily transportation to job sites, he said.
The Reimagine Manufacturing summit last Friday was organized by the Delaware Valley Industrial Resource Center, one of the organizations trying to help local manufacturers grow their businesses.
Other groups in the area include the Southeastern Pennsylvania Manufacturing Alliance, known as SEPMA, and the Manufacturing Alliance of Chester & Delaware Counties, said Marek Gootman of the Brookings Institution, who moderated the panel.
He noted that another such group, the former Manufacturing Alliance of Bucks and Montgomery Counties, has gone out of business.
