Sharing manufacturers' knowledge.

• Author: Louiseize, Kelly
• Position: Excellence in Manufacturing Consortium - Organization overview

Anyone worth their salt has figured out two important components to success how to get the most of themselves and paying attention to detail matters.

Brainstorming on getting the most in the production cycle means people need to work collectively toward improving their product line and their global competitiveness.

Mike Duchene, general manager for Sudbury's Marcotte Mining seems to have found a leg up through the Excellence in Manufacturing Consortium (EMC). He has been a member of the not-for-profit organization for four years and says their programs and training sessions are second to none.

EMC consists of a multitude of manufacturers dedicated to growing their business domestically and internationally by working together within communities and government agencies.

"To go down the lean manufacturing chain, EMC is a good resource to use," Duchene says.

Founded in the mid 1980s and incorporated in 1997, membership spans the breadth of industries with networking clusters grouping together to address current challenges. Duchene has participated in some of the training sessions and have accessed the pool of seasoned manufacturing professionals through a web-based "member needs help database." Up to 1,000 questions and answers are provided on their library site. If a question has not been asked before, the consortium will send out a query to manufacturing members for feedback. If another person is dealing with the same issue, they too can be included in the answer session.

The consortium is driven by membership fees and a need to become more globally competitive.

China, Europe and India have developed a community of manufacturing companies that depend on economic agencies to drive private projects back to them. What often happens is one Canadian company comes up against a wall of manufacturing outfits from France, for instance.

"Canadian productivity is low compared to the world and we have a lot of work to do," Al Diggins, president and general manager of EMC, says.

Between 2002 and 2005 Canada's trade deficit to China jumped from $12 billion to $22 billion with the raw natural resources share of exports soaring at the behest of manufacturing goods according to the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC)...