From Site Selection magazine, November 2003 NORTH AMERICAN REPORTS Milwaukee’s Waves of Change This summer, hundreds of thousands of Harley Davidson motorcycles roared into their birthplace to celebrate the Milwaukee company’s 100th anniversary. But Milwaukee is spending a lot less time looking back these days.         To be sure, manufacturing’s presence in […]

Faurecia, one of the world’s largest automobile parts manufacturers, recently opened its sixth plant in Poland. It will employ 350 by the end of 2003, eventually doubling that number. European Automotive Projects Move Into the East “More and more, volume car manufacturing is a cost-driven business, and manufacturing investment projects continue to migrate to the […]

  Dear IAMC members and prospective members: IAMC is off to an incredible start. I don’t think any of those who sat in the initial brainstorming sessions that launched the organization thought we could accomplish as much as we have in just a little over 18 months. Our success is a credit to our initial […]

Site Selection: Congratulations on becoming Chairman of IAMC. What are your thoughts as you take over the helm of the association? Bob Zane: My desire is to put a lot more focus on process. The association has established a foothold and has started to grow and gain recognition. Now, it’s time we put a process […]

A fter being named the No. 1 Business Climate in America in 2001 and 2002, North Carolina took proactive steps to ensure that its hard-earned title wouldn’t leave the Tar Heel State.         Over the past 12 months, economic development leaders and lawmakers pushed through creative reforms designed to make North Carolina […]

N orth Carolina is fertile turf for expansion-minded companies, finishing No. 1 in Site Selection‘s 2003 business climate rankings. The Tar Heel State’s potent site-selection kick was amply evident in R.H. Donnelley‘s decision to consolidate its headquarters in Raleigh-Durham, N.C. (reported earlier as the SiteNet/IAMC Dispatch‘s August Incentives Deal of the Month). In the end, […]

D epending on who’s talking, corporations are either hiding profits in tax shelters while states give away the farm with incentives, or, corporations are paying the lion’s share of state taxes and continue to prop up struggling state economies. Either way, each of the 50 states are taking aggressive measures to get themselves through an […]

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A s companies focus on their core competencies to remain in the black, there is greater incentive to turn to commercial real estate service providers to handle the real estate and facilities management functions.         Companies outsource projects to reduce costs while simultaneously gaining special niche skills and services such as lease […]

W Potlatch Corp.’s new distribution center at CenterPoint Intermodal Center on the former Joliet (Ill.) Arsenal property will soon be joined by the company’s tissue converting plant next door. hen Potlatch Corp., a Spokane, Wash.-based manufacturer of wood and paper products, began looking for a site for a new distribution center to serve its expanded […]

O rdering a computer, making an airline reservation or inquiring about a credit card bill increasingly involves talking with someone 12 time zones away.         Outsourcing of customer service functions by U.S. companies to the Asian subcontinent and to the Philippines is transforming the call center industry as firms move jobs from […]

From Site Selection magazine, November 2003 SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION Top Business Park Locations Infrastructure, transportation access make industrial parks prime sites for expanding companies. Hal Johnson knows a thing or two about business park development. As the chief economic developer for Orangeburg, S.C., Johnson has literally put his community on the map by making corporate […]

T he opening of the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Food Processing Technology Research Facility in 2004 may well trigger a boost in high-tech investment in the metro Atlanta area. Obvious beneficiaries of the US$9.4 million center are commercial food processors that adopt systems developed by the Food Processing Technology Division of the Georgia Tech Research […]

F orward-thinking companies in the IT, software and telecommunications sectors know that clustering – locating in (or being closely connected to) geographic hotbeds of innovation with concentrations of other similar and related companies, skilled knowledge workers, universities and technology centers and advanced physical infrastructure – is a key way to gain competitive advantage. The regions […]

A bout the time this issue of Site Selection reaches you, I will be finalizing remarks I have been asked to share at a Midwestern state’s annual legislators’ conference. “Competition” is the meeting’s theme, and my role will be to put that state’s relative competitive performance in the context of other states’ and to introduce […]

B oeing’s site search for its 1,500-worker, US$900-million 7E7 assembly plant has hit the home stretch, with Washington positioned as perhaps the place to beat.         As scheduled, Boeing on June 20 shut down submissions for 30-page proposals for the groundbreaking 7E7 Dreamliner plant, which touched off one of recent memory’s most […]

From Site Selection magazine, September 2003 WORLD REPORTS Edited by JOHN W. McCURRY Toyota Taps Thai, Aussie R&D Sites Ever-expanding Toyota Motor Corp. plans a Thailand-Australia research and development base to serve growing markets in Asia and Oceania. Both will begin operations in late 2004.         The Thailand facility will be in […]

  Dear Colleagues: Jack BrophyIAMC Chair It’s hard to believe that is has been more than a year since we launched the Industrial Asset Management Council (IAMC) with less than 20 paid members in an uncertain economy.         We have succeeded above and beyond our most optimistic projections and are on track […]

entral to any region’s success as an economic center is its transportation and logistics infrastructure. This used to mean having rail, highway, air and sea access – even two or three of these could support key industries. But some areas are seeking to distance themselves from competitive locations and are re-evaluating the definition of transportation […]

here is a new wave striking at the shores of company distribution and transport networks. It’s called optimization, and its permutations range from consolidated and re-purposed warehouses to entire economic zones that one logistics expert calls by such terms as “technopolis” and, yes, even “multifunctionopolis.”         Those terms were coined by Franco […]

W hen Siemens Medical Solutions needed a corporate headquarters last year for its American sales and services divisions, PECO Energy provided the location data the company sought.         The result? Siemens moved its U.S. medical headquarters to Great Valley Corporate Center in Malvern, Pa., in Chester County, bringing 3,000 jobs and US$75 […]

M edtronic first came to the Netherlands 34 years ago when the Minneapolis-based medical device company was looking for a European base. The company grew steadily there and recently opened its largest distribution center in Heerlen, in the province of Limburg.         The Netherlands, selected by the Economist Intelligence Unit in March […]

T he global business scene is full of paradoxes. Here’s one: The market’s getting bigger, and the world is getting smaller. In the semiconductor industry, this yin-yang trend plays out in its own fashion. First, the wafers are getting bigger while the chips that come from them are getting smaller. Second, the plants that make […]

S ite Selection: Your recent comments on the need to re-evaluate certain incentives programs and the impact of state-vs.-state bidding wars over projects indicate that you would favor a change in public policy toward recruitment of large companies. Can you elaborate?         Gov. Sonny Perdue: We want to earn the business, not […]