November 2012

11/30/2012 - BY: MIKE BEELS
As a consultant, I work with many, many family owned businesses in Michigan. When I start to relate the numbers to not only my clients, but my friends, I realize the incredible importance of having a succession plan. Imagine the impact on a company, a family, the employees, and a community without one.

11/21/2012 - THE CENTER
Top Twelve Reasons We’re Thankful in 2012

11/16/2012 - THE CENTER
Defining innovation should be easy, unfortunately, it’s not. Is it a process? Is it the end game? Is it merely a new way of doing an existing thing or is it only something completely different? Is collaboration a tool that allows innovation to take place or is collaboration itself the innovation? At least we can agree on this - manufacturing innovation includes the introduction of new processes and practices, new technology and equipment and/or new materials to a company.

11/9/2012 - THE CENTER
Pay Per Click advertising, the “Sponsored Ads” that display at the top and side in search engines like Google, is a highly effective method of driving new prospects and buyers to your website. You only pay for visitors who actually “click” your ad – a more cost effective advertising approach than Yellow Pages, ThomasNet, Newspapers and many more traditional forms of advertising.

11/2/2012 - THE CENTER
The U.S. economy relies heavily on the manufacturing sector. Manufacturing firms fund most of our domestic corporate Research & Development, and the resulting innovations and growth in productivity improve our standard of living. Manufacturing boosts exports and the industry plays an important part in national defense.