The sign for Chute Middle School on Oakton Street in Evanston. Photo: I'm nonpartisan / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
Evanston manufacturers planned a morning of tours and networking on Friday, Oct. 3, 2014, to mark National Manufacturing Day.
The program ran from 7:30 a.m. to noon. It opened with a breakfast at IRMCO, 2117 Greenleaf St., from 7:30 to 9 a.m. for manufacturers, partners, legislators, sponsors, community leaders and reporters.
Five stops for students
At 9 a.m., about 90 local middle school students were scheduled to begin an open house and tour of five Evanston companies:
- Sugar & Spice Extraordinary Sweet Treats, a dessert maker
- Ward Manufacturing, which makes dies and does metal stamping
- IRMCO, a maker of metalworking lubricants
- CE Neihoff, which makes brushless alternators
- Sterling Precision Optics, a producer of optical glass
At each stop, students were to see how the business operates and talk with employees about the jobs available in the industry.
A national day
Manufacturing Day is meant to improve how the public sees manufacturing careers and to show students, parents, teachers and the news media what the industry does. In 2014 it was sponsored by the Fabricators & Manufacturers Association, International, the U.S. Commerce Department’s Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership, the National Association of Manufacturers and the Manufacturing Institute, with dozens of other groups supporting it. According to the Daily Northwestern, events were planned at more than 1,500 locations across 49 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and three Canadian provinces.
Evanston’s West End had hosted a similar tour two years earlier. In 2012 the Daily Northwestern covered a route that started at IRMCO and visited seven businesses within a three-block radius.
Sources: Daily Northwestern, Oct. 1, 2014 and Oct. 3, 2012.
Daniel Okafor covers business, startups and the Innovators section for The Evanston Edge.
