Building the Blueprint
A great deal of potential exists within
the U.S. manufacturing industry. One
of the primary keys to unlocking that
potential is increasing each state’s com-
petitiveness. This is no small feat, but it
is made more easily achievable thanks
to the insight provided in “A New Blue-
print.” The report acknowledges both
the important role manufacturing plays
in America’s economy—particularly in
America’s southern states, including West
Virginia—and the challenges the industry
is currently facing.
Abernathy’s manufacturing blueprint
came about as a result of the efforts of the
Southern Governors Association (SGA) to
identify and address the issues surrounding
the industry. “As the South was emerging
from the Great Recession, the association
saw an opportunity to strengthen man-
ufacturing competitiveness in the South
as well as a way to attract good manu-
facturing jobs,” he says. Using the SGA’s
2013 annual report as a foundation, he
and his team took the initiative one step
further by conducting their own research.
“We focused on several policy areas
that are impacting manufacturing
competitiveness, rapid technological
change, workforce skills mismatches,
slow growth in productivity, the impact
of innovation and our struggle to make in-
vestments in infrastructure,” he says. “We
concluded that given the hyper-competi-
tiveness manufacturers face from global
competition, if we want to successfully
compete, there are things we can do.”
The end result was “A New Blueprint,”
which was meant to encou rage both effi-
cient collaboration and immediate action.
What the report determined was that im-
proving manufacturing competitiveness
must be addressed, and in order to do
so, focus must be given to four key areas:
business climate, workforce, innovation
and infrastructure.
For the report, Abernathy worked with
an advisory group to develop these four
key areas into four indexes that assess
the relative competitiveness of each of
the southern states. The indexes provided
information that allowed Abernathy to
help the states identify their individu-
al strengths and weaknesses instead of
merely comparing them with the others,
which allows him to help guide each state
toward more competitiveness.
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WEST VIRGINIA EXECUTIVE
Ranking the Mountain State
“A New Blueprint” was presented to
members of the West Virginia Manufac-
turers Association (WVMA) at the asso-
ciation’s first annual Winter Convention
in December 2016. At the event, Aber-
nathy shared his report’s findings for the
industry as a whole as well as how West
Virginia faired among the four indexes.
“A pleasant surprise was West Virgin-
ia’s strong performance in infrastructure.
West Virginia scored the best in the infra-
structure index—in the top 20 best states
nationally,” he says.
West Virginia ranked in the middle
among southern states for workforce and,
to Abernathy’s surprise, ranked lowest for
business climate. “The business climate
score was a little surprising,” he says. “The
state’s business tax climate is ranked 18th by
the Tax Foundation, but the U.S. Chamber
of Commerce’s Institute for Legal Reform
ranks West Virginia 50th, and the state’s
effective tax rate for labor-intensive man-
ufacturing operations is ranked 47th.”
As a result, his advice for the Mountain
State is simple: focus on making improve-
ments to the state’s business climate and
improving the skills of the workforce.