Manufacturing's Economic Impact on Maryland         • The $47,136 average annual wage for manufacturing is more than 30 percent greater than the $36,097 wage paid for other private sector jobs.         • From 1995 through 2000, manufacturing nationwide declined 0.3 percent while Maryland posted a 2.6 percent gain.         • Manufacturing pays $8 billion in annual wages and employs 168,000 Maryland residents, or nearly 7 percent of total state employment         • Manufacturing generates more than $536 million in State and local taxes         • The manufacturing industry sector comprises more than 4,800 manufacturers, 3.3 percent of all private employers Source: Maryland Advisory Commission on Manufacturing Competitiveness report, December 2002

Old and New Make For Mixed Bag of Solutions

For his part, Melissaratos is keen on getting the state back on the short lists of corporations, through a melding of the best in the old and new economies. He was vice president in charge of manufacturing operations at Westinghouse, now known as Northrop Grumman Electronics Systems, and managed research and development for Thermo Electron Corp. before starting a venture capital firm, Armel Private Equity Investments. He also chaired the Maryland Manufacturers Association for five years. Speaking to the action steps raised by the state's advisory committee on manufacturing, chaired by his successor at Northrup Grumman Bob Barnes, he says most of them are timeless, but there may be difficulties in creating an "overarching strategic plan for manufacturing" out of such a patchwork of industries, geographies and skill sets.

Bob Barnes

        "Manufacturing is extremely important in any economy," he says. "However, I believe our economy is at the point where the global situation forces us to pay more attention to the intellectual property side . . . and the ability to have a manufacturing sector responsive to new product introduction. You have to plan for the cost-effective volume and production to be done in the right place in the global economy."
        It falls to Maryland business and government to seed the manufacturing cycle "from pre-product development through product development to maturity," he says. That also presents an opportunity for small business and incubator companies to feed that pipeline. Meanwhile, says Melissaratos, the need for conventional manufacturing skills - high-precision machining for parts, for example - is just as evident for the high-tech realm as it is for old-line industrial equipment. Melissaratos has seen the resourcefulness of the Maryland manufacturing economy firsthand, and confesses to being amazed at the investment those firms were able to make to keep up, even as the strengths moved from aerospace to telecom to today's focus areas of biotech, medical devices and information technology. He also sees a role for the area, bolstered as it is by national labs and other federal institutions, in providing intellectual and prototyping infrastructure for homeland defense.