Posted: Nov. 16, 2009

A nonprofit consulting agency is soliciting a new round of applications for grants meant to help small and midsize manufacturers adopt faster and leaner practices.

Monday's announcement is the second time that the Wisconsin Manufacturing Extension Partnership has encouraged manufacturers to apply for the Next Generation Manufacturing grants, which are broken out into increments of $5,000 to $6,500.

The program was funded in May with $750,000 from the state Department of Commerce. Seven months later, not enough companies have applied and WMEP still has $380,000 in grants.

The grants pay up to 50% of project costs for services delivered by WMEP. The remaining project costs are paid by the company, which must have fewer than 500 employees.

The agency has offices in Madison, Brookfield and Appleton. Its work focuses on continuous improvement processes meant to eliminate waste, lower costs and optimize efficiencies of workers, equipment and materials.

"Wisconsin manufacturers who adopt Next Generation Manufacturing principles can improve their competitiveness, win a greater share of global markets, and react quickly to market opportunities," Commerce Secretary Richard Leinenkugel said in the announcement.

"To win new customers and market share in this global environment, manufacturers must have the best possible systems and processes in place to be highly innovative, lean and agile," said Mike Klonsinski, executive director of the WMEP.

The Wisconsin organization is tied into a national network of manufacturing partnership agencies.

Grants are broken into two broad categories:

• Up to $5,000 per company is available for Enterprise Business Transformation projects, which include a comprehensive assessment of a company's operations, identification of key competitive priorities and an action plan to achieve them.

• Up to $6,500 per company is available to help manufacturers implement Eureka! Winning Ways, a nationally recognized system for rapidly generating and testing new product ideas.