Tag: Bart Raeymaekers

Company Week Column

CompanyWeek

The University of Utah competed to become Utah’s new Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) Center and in the end will replace Utah Valley University as the NIST partner. In Colorado, California, New Mexico and other centers throughout the West, MEP’s are hybrid organizations with university ties. Some operate for-profit businesses, many selling services to help manufacturers improve operational performance using concepts like Lean Six Sigma. 

Yet Bart Raeymaekers and Bruce Gale, engineering faculty and authors of the grant proposal and recipients of the MEP charter, envisioned a different focus. I asked Raeymaekers what compelled the university to compete for the MEP opportunity. 

“We noticed that the entire MEP system nationwide has been focused heavily on operational excellence, and realized that the future of manufacturing, and for small and medium sized businesses to compete in the global marketplace, that operational excellence can only bring you so far,” he explained. “You can only shave so much costs from your operation. Ultimately, we believe you have try to grow top line line revenue to compete.

Read the column

U of U Engineers Develop Center to Help Local Manufacturers Succeed

Utah Business Logo 164x50

Salt Lake City—One of the hot-button issues this presidential election is about companies outsourcing work overseas and figuring out how to keep manufacturing jobs here in America. To help convince these businesses they can perform better in their own backyard, two University of Utah mechanical engineering professors are establishing a center to show local manufacturing companies how they can spur innovation and utilize the latest in technology.

The new University of Utah Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) Center will deliver services for small and medium-sized manufacturing companies by providing expertise in advanced manufacturing technology, innovation, worker education, operational excellence, and on how to connect companies with investor opportunities.

“The goal of the program is to provide these services so businesses can remain competitive against cheap overseas labor and to keep those manufacturing jobs here,” said University of Utah mechanical engineering associate professor Bart Raeymaekers, who along with mechanical engineering professor Bruce Gale are creators of the center and recipients of the grant.

Read Utah Business article