Ten years ago, Washington Manufacturing Services started assisting Washington’s manufacturers, and Mark Johnson has served on the Board of Directors since the beginning.

Focus is fundamental to marketing, innovation and sales success. Consider that products with a highly focused marketing message are 60% more likely to be successful in the marketplace than those with broader messages.

In August of 2006, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez announced that he was convening a panel of business leaders and academics to assess how best to measure innovation in the U.S. economy. This advisory group, whose first meeting was held in February, will study the impact of innovation on major sectors and will attempt to construct national and sectoral measures of innovation activity and its impact. To institutionalize this initiative, Gutierrez also announced that he is forming a Commerce Department innovation measurement team.

Representatives from Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) centers across the nation gathered in Washington DC for the annual Hill Day presentations on March 8, 2007. Hill Day is an opportunity for MEP centers to meet individually with their congressional delegations – both Senators and Representatives.

Many Washington state manufacturers just accept that their cost of freight is high when doing business in a global marketplace. Often, these manufacturers experience a competitive disadvantage when competing for east coast business with firms that are closer to their customers, while subsidizing freight costs to obtain business can take a healthy bite out of the bottom line. The good news is that there are opportunities to reduce the costs of your less-than-truckload freight