Rockford Tech Center Holds Key
For Back Bone Of U.S. Manufacturing

With the construction of a single building, an Illinois community college has positioned itself to become a giant in a field thought to be the sole domain of only the nation's largest universities.

With the opening of an $8.7 million facility, Rock Valley College (RVC) in Rockford, Illinois, is the new home for a unique, state of the art facility that puts this metropolitan area (population 284,000) on the cutting edge of manufacturing technology.

The recently opened RVC Technology Center has been carefully designed to address the previously unsolved universal needs of small and medium sized manufacturing. Although such companies are part of Rockford's 800+ manufacturers and also make up the bulk of companies in the United States, only industrial giants previously enjoyed the type of benefits the new RVC facility will provide for small and medium size businesses nationally. Through the pragmatic implementation of computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) and other computer oriented disciplines, the Rockford Tech Center expects to become an important prototype for its own community and the country as it plans to aggressively move into the 21st Century.

A MANUFACTURING MECCA

"The ultimate goal of the facility is to return the best minds in the country to the needs of the shop floor," says Karl Jacobs, president of RVC.

Jacobs cites the example of the Japanese economy as proof of the importance of excellence in manufacturing. Following WWII, Japanese business studied American ways of manufacturing and the result is a success story we're all too familiar with, says Jacobs.

"I think this country is beginning to realize that basic lesson again. To regain our competitive edge, corporations need to emphasize quality products rather than fancy finance and other aspects of business that don't do much to create sustained community wealth."

At the local Rockford level, two additional and pragmatic goals of the Technology Center are to further advance economic development in the area and to enable manufacturers to improve their operations by taking full advantage of the facility's remarkable resources. •

Page 18/ Illinois Municipal Review / March 1988