Credentials and info
Rick Terrien

State Should Woo Green Firms

Margaret Krome

My friend and neighbor, businessman Rick Terrien, escorted me to hell last week.

He let me tag along to see one of the fire-belching metalworking factories that make up his customer base. The trip illustrated an interesting strategy for Wisconsin's economic development.

We drove south to Illinois, where, in a verdant industrial park, a metalworking factory was blasting smoke, producing thousands of bolts, nails and other fasteners. Such factories take cut pieces of metal used in manufacturing cars, machinery and thousands of other items and heat them to temperatures of more than 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, followed by a plunge into an oil bath to cool and harden them. This process repeats at least once, with smoke pouring out in the later furnaces if the metal isn't de-oiled in a cleaner between burnings.

Recognizing how dirty that cleaner quickly gets, Rick and his business partner developed and patented a simple machine that uses gravity to separate the cleaner from oil coming off the metal.

Rick's machine has won rave reviews from Daimler Chrysler top management, Caterpillar and other manufacturers large and small that have used it. Why? Because it saves the expense of replacing dirty cleaner and buying more oil, paying back its cost in under six months.

But it is the environmental benefit that excites Rick the most. Plants using his small machine spew less pollution in the air. Also, factories that previously dealt with dirty cleaners and oils by diluting them to meet EPA standards before dumping the whole load into public waterways now use Rick's mechanical kidney to recycle both their oil and cleaner.

Earlier this spring Rick and his partner won the prestigious "Fast 50" award, which Fast Co. magazine gives annually to companies and individuals selected from thousands of submissions nominated on the magazine's Web site. The magazine calls it "a worldwide search for ordinary people doing extraordinary things." Companies that lost out to Rick's "Smartskim" machine include Lucent Technologies, Dow Chemical and Abbott Laboratories.

Rick's partner, David Walker, assembles the machines in a small town in Illinois. They hire sales staff from Michigan and elsewhere. But the company is headquartered in Madison. Why? "It's the parks, libraries, schools," Rick told me. In other words, it's a perfect town for a company headquarters in a virtual world where people work for companies thousands of miles away.

Wisconsin has always been a hotbed of neat ideas and great innovations. But what it took to make Wisconsin the company's home is our standard of living. As next year's budget fights start heating up, it's important to remember that conservation, clean environment, an investment in culture, natural resources and schools are what draw and keep companies like Rick's in Wisconsin.

Outsourcing has become a pejorative term, suggesting corporate irresponsibility. But global pressures and flexible technologies mean that a growing number of companies will have headquarters in one place and manufacturing capacity elsewhere. Wisconsin should take advantage of the opportunity to attract these virtual companies to the state.

In the last decade, Wisconsin has invested heavily in the biotechnology industry, on the theory that its jobs are environmentally benign and offer high salaries for workers. The same day I toured the Illinois metalworking plant, the Commerce Department was leading a delegation of 70 Wisconsin biotechnology leaders to a trade show in San Francisco.

But Rick's company suggests another meritorious strategy. State job development planners should recognize and support virtual businesses like Rick's with headquarters in Wisconsin, even if it manufactures in another state. Headquartering more such businesses in Wisconsin could attract a well-educated work force, generate a significant tax base, and encourage innovative entrepreneurs like Rick to make money while solving environmental and social problems.

Link to Madison Capital Times article