Max Blake, plant manager for the wood products division of Steelcase, oversaw the development a few years ago of the company's much-praised LEED-certified manufacturing plant — nicknamed "Project Pinocchio" — in Gaines Township, a community on the outskirts of Grand Rapids where the company owns around 1,200 acres (486 hectares). Now he's overseeing the consolidation of wood-furniture manufacturing operations from New Paris, Ind., and five product lines from Fletcher, N.C., into the $25-million facility. Simultaneously, the plant is on the way to completely eliminating volatile organic compounds (VOCs) — not a mean feat for a plant that applies stains and top coatings to wood furniture.
      "There are quality and durability issues," says Blake of this groundbreaking innovation. It's so groundbreaking, in fact, that several suppliers told company leaders they "were nuts," he says. And at the public hearing for the original plant building permit, only two people showed up: one from nearby office furniture competitor Haworth (based in Holland) and the other from another

Equipment from other Steelcase plants is unloaded at the company's LEED-certified Gaines Township facility, where a consolidation is adding jobs and increasing capacity.

nearby competitor Herman Miller, "figuring out what we were up to."
      In fact, one of the suppliers that stuck with Steelcase, Stuttgart-based Behr Industries, also keeps its North American headquarters in Michigan (Troy), and informed Gov. Jennifer Granholm during that November trade mission to Germany that it would be adding 30 new jobs to its Comstock Park plant in Grand Rapids. Steelcase uses other local suppliers too: one company provides the technology to help measure the depth and consistency of stain saturation in the wood.
      Blake describes the business climate of Gaines Township and the larger Grand Rapids area as outstanding and a team sport, led in large part by the efforts of Greater Grand Rapids The Right Place, Inc. Gaines Township gave the company a $95,000 property tax abatement.
      In a process that began in 2002, Steelcase looked at North Carolina, Mexico, Indiana and Michigan for the consolidation move, looking to shrink by half its 2 million sq. ft. (185,800 sq. m.) of wood-furniture manufacturing space at four U.S. locations. Cuts in Fletcher, N.C., and New Paris, Ind., accomplished that goal. Like the two aforementioned rivals, Steelcase is sticking close to home with such moves. And the lean manufacturing strategy it had long before adopted drove project leaders to reduce the plant's assembly area by three quarters and move in the new product lines and equipment from the other plants. "We promised 150 hires, and we've already added 67," says Blake. "I just gave approval for 150 more, and we have 130 temps in the building. Western Michigan labor understands high-end furniture making."
      They also tend to understand "non-union." "We're extremely busy," says Blake. "Clients want eight to ten suites, we work 12-hour days. The union wouldn't do it. Here, they're volunteering to do it, and we just loaded a truck on Halloween night." The non-union nature of the area is borne out in average hourly wage figures for manufacturing production workers in 2003: $21.28 for Michigan as a whole, $16.47 for the Grand Rapids-Muskegon-Holland MSA.
      Among the other factors driving the Gaines Township selection were the proximity of metal plants and the ability to consolidate freight movement. That figures, when around 40 percent of the plant's product is headed to the East Coast, with a decided uptick in the Washington, D.C., metro.
      "I'm excited, because when steel slows down, we trail them, but we take off before they do," says Blake, adding that orders are coming in again in the $5-million to $10-million range.