M

ost corporate site selectors prefer business locations that offer a large labor pool and easy transportation access.
      At Briggs & Stratton, they do things a little differently.
      "Generally, we look for a hard-to-get-to place where there is a good university and good support from local and state economic development agencies," says Paul Neylon, senior vice president of Briggs & Stratton's Engine Products Group, from corporate headquarters just outside Milwaukee. "It would take all day to get from Milwaukee to our other plants."

Paul Neylon (right), Labor strife in Wisconsin prompted small-engine manufacturer Briggs & Stratton to seek out right-to-work locations in the South, including this plant in Auburn, Ala. (below)

      This site selection strategy may be unorthodox, but it is working just as Briggs & Stratton executives planned.
      Since 1993, the company that specializes in manufacturing small engines has announced 18 expansion projects. Only two have occurred in the Milwaukee area. The remainder have been placed in small towns far from the beaten path.
      Typical of this strategy was the 1995 opening of the Briggs & Stratton small engine plant in Auburn, Ala., a small college town with no commercial air service.
      "Auburn is a great town with a great university," Neylon says. "It was a deliberate strategy for our company to go that far. We look for a right-to-work location. Auburn is a place less likely to have organized labor, and it's hard for other folks to get there. Auburn doesn't even have a commercial airport."
      Labor strikes at Briggs & Stratton plants in Wisconsin in the 1970s and 1980s convinced company executives that, in order to compete with the Japanese, the world's largest small-engine company had to move south.
      Briggs & Stratton acquired a plant in Perry, Ga., in 1978 to manufacture locks for General Motors and set in motion a wave of Southern expansions that continued through 2004. In December, the company announced a $12-million expansion of its existing tractor engine plant in Statesboro, Ga., home of Georgia Southern University.
      "Typically, we want a small-town location near a university," Neylon says. "We look for places where we feel there is under-employment and we can offer improved wages. We don't want to go into any place and brag about what we pay - we pay the prevailing wage. But we have had extraordinary success hiring college students."
      The company's success has been Alabama's too. Since 1995, Briggs & Stratton has completed three expansions in Auburn totaling US$74 million in capital investment and adding nearly 1,000 jobs to the area economy.
      The 280,000-sq.-ft. (26,012-sq.-m.) plant near Interstate 85 employs 856 hourly workers, another 90 salaried personnel and several part-time workers. The plant produces three engines: A 10-horsepower engine used in generators, a 25-horsepower engine used in high-end lawn and garden tractors, and a 4-horsepower engine used in edgers, pumps and single-stage snow-blowers. Altogether, the factory produces nearly 7,000 small engines every day.
      "Auburn is a great, great place to work," Neylon adds. "Because of the success of our Auburn plant, the local industrial authority was able to successfully recruit one of our top suppliers, Leggett & Platt, to move into a nearby industrial park on I-85."
      The new manufacturing facility for Leggett & Platt, announced in December 2004, will make aluminum castings used in Briggs & Stratton engines and will employ 160 workers in Lee County.