Helping state firms make it

Manufacturing has always played an important role in Connecticut's economy.

But it's certainly not what it used to be, when most of our major cities were hubs for large factories that were major employers and proud mainstays of the local economy.

Nonetheless, we can still point to a few significant numbers. There are 5,000-plus manufacturing businesses across the state, including eastern Connecticut. Manufacturing still contributes about $24 billion to the total output of economic activities in Connecticut, and there's nearly 200,000 people who work in various manufacturing jobs within our borders.

Those numbers are courtesy of an innovative organization in Connecticut called CONNSTEP, which is a valuable resource to anyone associated with making things in Connecticut.

The Rocky Hill-based organization is a fee-for-service nonprofit that estimates it's worked with more than a third of the state's manufacturers since its creation in 1994. Bonnie Del Conte, its president and chief executive officer, says CONNSTEP is one of 59 affiliates of a national network of Manufacturing Extension Partnership organizations.

As an MEP affiliate, she says, it has active partnerships with the federal departments of Defense and Labor and the Environmental Protection Agency, along with international trade and export organizations. Her agency, she explains, is a business consulting group whose mission is to help small- and mid-sized manufacturing companies take advantage of "expert business solutions" so they can compete, and grow, here in Connecticut.

It's a small organization, she says, but its business consultants travel the state assisting manufacturers with a variety of needs, from teaching "lean" techniques to eliminating the waste in their operations and offering strategic planning. The organization, she says simply, is designed to make businesses more productive and competitive.

Besides manufacturers, the agency works with health-care organizations and local state agencies. CONNSTEP is supported by the state's Department of Economic and Community Development and, as such, provides some services that are often only accessible to much larger firms.

Del Conte says her associates at CONNSTEP have worked with numerous firms in southeastern Connecticut, including Sound Manufacturing in Old Saybrook, Davis-Standard in Pawcatuck and Consumers Interstate in Norwich.

She says manufacturing is still a mainstay of Connecticut's economy and says goods-producing firms not only create their own employment, but typically create two or more additional jobs connected to that enterprise, the so-called "multiplier" effect. There are, after all, suppliers and vendors who are integral to manufacturers and those jobs are critical to our economy, as well.

She says her organization has helped companies retain jobs in the state and also create jobs in Connecticut. Del Conte says in the past fiscal year ending in June 2009, its work helped create or retain 1,338 jobs, $11 million in cost reductions and $24 million in company reinvestment.

Del Conte has been with CONNSTEP for seven years, the first three as its controller and the past four as its chief executive, so she's acutely aware of the issues facing small- and mid-sized businesses across this state.

For businesses interested in her organization's various services, the best place to start is with its website at www.connstep.org. You'll find links to various webcasts and upcoming events, resources it can offer businesses and solutions to bolster the bottom line and keep firms competitive and healthy.

Says Del Conte of CONNSTEP's mission for small and medium businesses, "It's about keeping them here (in Connecticut) - and keeping them competitive."

Anthony Cronin is The Day's business editor.