June 7, 2001

Wahpeton Company Gets Help From NDSU Institute for Business and Industry Development

When Industrial Plating of Wahpeton recently needed to expand its plant it turned to North Dakota State University’s Institute for Business and Industry Development for help.

Ray Goodin, engineering specialist with IBID surveyed the property and looked at the area the company had to work with. "From what we learned, we were able to give them three or four scenarios to work with."

The ideas from IBID gave Industrial Plating some different perspectives, according to Gary Oliver the company’s general manager. "We took some of their ideas and some from our own people and came up with what we feel is a very good layout."

That collaboration is the latest in the relationship between Industrial Plating and IBID. Industrial Plating, founded in 1969, supplies plated steel components to its customers. As the company has grown, it looked to IBID for help.

"IBID representatives made a site visit for us and discussed some of the services they offer," says Gary Oliver, general manager of Industrial Plating. "It piqued our interest because some of their services are relative to how we manufacture so we thought it would be a good fit."

IBID provides one-on-one consulting to identify and solve business and technical problems. IBID also performs the role of "matchmaker" finding the needs of urban manufacturers and then matching those needs with the capabilities of suppliers, particularly those in the more rural areas of the state.

"We helped them find a software package that would control the manufacturing operation," says Reuben Tschritter, engineering specialist with IBID. "The program we helped them find controls things like how many parts are manufactured, where it’s done, cost information, process information and accounts payable and receivable. Plus the program was available at a reasonable cost."

"It eliminated us having to call individual companies and we had a chance to look at some software companies that we weren’t even aware of," Oliver said.

IBID also helped Industrial Plating find a company that specializes in waste water treatment operations. "When you have a facility doing plating work, you have to treat the wastewater before releasing back to the municipal sewer system," says Goodin. "They had a need for a larger system, so we gave them a couple of company names that we had worked with in the past."

"IBID really laid the groundwork for us and found us a company that had actually installed a waste water treatment operation in North Dakota," says Oliver. "So we were able to call someone right here in North Dakota and use them as a reference. We were looking to increase our capacity and upgrade our system. The company that IBID found for us worked with us to reuse as many of the existing components as possible."

Goodin and Tschritter both agree that researching a company that they recommend to others is vital. "We try to get an understanding of what their capabilities are before we recommend them to others, says Tschritter. "We also ask for references so we can call those companies and find out if they’re satisfied."

Anyone involved with business and industry that has a problem can contact the NDSU Institute for Business and Industry Development office at (701) 231-1001, e-mail at ibid@ndsuext.nodak.edu or on the Web at www.ndsu.nodak.edu/ibid/ .

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Source: Roy Goodin, (701) 231-1005, rgoodin@ndsuext.nodak.edu
Reuben Tschritter, (701) 231-9494, rtschrit@ndsuext.nodak.edu
Editor: Rich Mattern, (701) 231-6136, Richard_Mattern@ndsu.nodak.edu

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