Meet America’s Makers: 25 Manufacturing CEOs Thriving In The U.S.

Depending on what you hear and whom you believe, American manufacturing either has begun a fundamental renaissance that will outlast the vicissitudes of geopolitics—or it is enjoying a last gasp before being finally laid low by trade wars, labor mismatches and a recession.

Numerous signals support each view. President Trump likes to declare how his America First policies—including corporate tax cuts, regulatory rollbacks and new tariffs—led to the creation of a half-million manufacturing jobs over the previous two years. And more U.S.-based CEOs now are considering “reshoring” some factory work.

At the same time, Trump’s tariffs are hitting some U.S. manufacturers hard, even while the trade deficit continues to balloon. High-skill factory jobs go begging, as many millennials turn up their noses at the opportunities. The dire need for rapid digitization confounds many factory owners. And plant closings and layoffs in the auto sector could be a precursor of a broader manufacturing slowdown.

“The next five to 10 years will be pretty good for U.S. companies,” David Farr, CEO of Emerson Electric and member of the executive committee of the National Association of Manufacturers, told CEOs gathered for the Chief Executive Smart Manufacturing Summit in Dallas.

“U.S. manufacturers are globally very competitive right now, and there’s the chance to do more…. But there needs to be a resetting of global trade [and] that’s not easy to accomplish.”

Whatever the big picture, expect our 25 “Makers for American Manufacturing” to fare well. For the second consecutive year, Chief Executive has selected a handful of people who are really successful, whose companies represent robust trends in the U.S. manufacturing economy, or who are reshaping their industries or manufacturing as a whole.

Here are our Makers for American Manufacturing for 2019:

Scott Wine / CEO, Polaris Industries, Medina, MN
He was doing everything right for America, opening a new plant in Huntsville, Alabama, in 2016 to make snowmobiles, motorcycles and ATVs, and boosting company sales by 14 percent last year while doubling net income. But Wine’s company has gotten badly nicked by retaliatory tariffs in China and Europe that threatened to erase 25 percent of Polaris’s profits. He addressed the latest skirmish in the ongoing trade war, musing that Polaris might have to move some U.S. output and jobs to Mexico now.

Andi Owen / CEO, Herman Miller,  Zeeland, MI
She’s not only the first woman to head one of the world’s premier office furniture makers but also someone whose experience lies entirely in the branding world, most of it with The Gap—not in manufacturing. She’s a digital maven whom the board hoped could bring Herman Miller into a new era.

“There’s not as much of a leap as one might think from one industry to the other,” Owen says. “But in the fashion industry, we made a lot of landfill. [Miller] is in an industry where we tend to make heirlooms and things that last. And while I spent my career in fashion trying to shorten supply chains and get as much control over them as possible, at Herman Miller we have a ton of control and suppliers right around the corner from us. It’s nice to have local production.”

Darrell Jobe / CEO, Vericool, Livermore, CA
Tom Bickes / CEO, EmployBridge, Santa Barbara, CA

During an unprecedented labor squeeze in manufacturing, these two owners have helped expand the national workforce—to great results. Jobe has relied largely on ex-cons to keep up with the company’s rapid growth, supplying earth-friendly food and pharma coolers, as home delivery has boomed. Bickes has built the largest industrial staffing provider in the United States, as he has helped close the skills gap for ordinary workers.
About one-third of his 45 employees are ex-prisoners, says Jobe, himself a former gang member who was plucked off the streets by a friend’s father and whisked into a career in packaging. “I always told myself that if I had an opportunity to start a company, I would hire individuals in need and help them re-establish,” he says. “If you give these people opportunity and hope, and value them as individuals, they’ll actually give you a much better return on your dollar than a standard employee who can get a job anywhere else.”
Bickes says EmployBridge has developed proprietary testing and screening tools so that its recruits fit well with each manufacturing client, fueling company growth up to three times the industry average over its 20 years in business. “This also has allowed us to open doors for individuals who maybe hadn’t thought about a manufacturing career before but had the skill sets to succeed,” he says.

John Krafcik / CEO, Waymo,  Mountain View, CA
Michael Manley / CEO, Fiat Chrysler, Auburn Hills, MI
R.J. Scaringe / CEO, Rivian Automotive, Plymouth, MI
Evan Lyall / CEO, Roush Enterprises, Livonia, MI
Tom Broad / President, Midwest Steel, Detroit, MI

Each leader is making a huge statement about the future of automotive manufacturing in Motown amid the industry’s evolution to “mobility.” Manley has begun building a Jeep plant in the central city, the first new assembly plant in Detroit in nearly 40 years. Broad is leading digital disruption of a perceived low-tech industry with a modeling platform that accelerates project planning, while aggressively tackling the labor shortage with apprenticeship programs.

Krafcik has committed Google’s automotive unit to build its first generation of self-driving cars in a supplier plant in the city. Scaringe is partnering with Ford and Amazon for his startup to produce electric trucks and SUVs in the area. And Lyall’s specialty-vehicle company is applying what he calls the area’s “tribal knowledge” to the new era—first by building an autonomous-weeding vehicle for farm fields that was sprouted by a startup in Silicon Valley.

Jules Pieri / Founder & CEO, The Grommet, Somerville, MA

She democratized manufacturing with her e-commerce platform that has allowed more than 2,000 “makers” to launch their consumer products online over the past decade, including eventual big winners Fitbit and SimpliSafe.

“Only 10 percent of small business owners have any experience in the area where they’re now creating a company,” Pieri says. “But it’s much easier for a small company to be radically innovative in consumer products. They don’t need to defend legacy products or shelf space that was hard-earned; they’re trying to get the shelf space. Their hurdle rate for success in financial returns is much lower. And they don’t have to go negotiate with seven different internal department; they just say, ‘This is how it should be,’ and so that’s how they make it.”

Brandon Main / CEO, XTreme Manufacturing, Henderson, NV

A leader in the rapidly emerging area of construction-module manufacturing. Main’s outfit uses shipping containers to make structures from backyard indoor gardens to military blast shelters to multi-unit housing complexes. “On the typical construction site, there is a tremendous amount of waste and labor overlap,” says Main, whose company is approaching $100 million in annual revenues, doubling or tripling each year recently, capping off a decade of its modular approach.

Hadley and Dana Wendt / Co-Founders, Jouzge, Oregon, WI

This daughter-mother team started a fast-growing maker of high-protein, low-sugar snack bars for girls that is representative of the women-led startups revolutionizing the food business—and also stands for a female-empowerment trend among makers.

Hadley Wendt insists that she began with a purpose rather than a product per se. “I wanted to build strong and confident girls from the inside out,” she says. “I wanted to give girls a healthy option that hit a taste profile for them instead of for a 42-year-old woman who puts kale in her smoothies. So we covered the bars in chocolate. Girls love chocolate.”

Antonio Pietri / CEO, Aspen Technology, Bedford, MA

The company has mastered asset-performance management software for process manufacturers. Pietri has led AspenTech from a Nasdaq delisting 10 years ago to a new era of growth by helping customers to digitally transform their operations by leveraging the Internet of Things and machine learning.

Tom Shorma / CEO, WCCO Belting, Wahpeton, ND

Innovation—even in an unglamorous industry—is how Shorma has kept this 65-year-old family manufacturing business growing in diverse markets for its rubber-based products.

“Everything we do in our plant is unique, and literally no one else in the world can do what we do,” he says.

Plus, WCCO Belting braves export markets with a sales team that can speak 14 different languages. Trump’s tariffs have been a hindrance, but the company now ships to more than 20 countries. “We’re based in a very small, rural town about as far away as you can be from ocean ports and still be in the U.S.,” Shorma says. “But we embrace global trade and innovation.”

Ric Fulop / Founder & CEO, Desktop Metal, Boston, MA
Clay Guillory / CEO, Titan Robotics, Colorado Springs, Co

Each is a leader in the rapidly evolving world of additive manufacturing. Guillory is a young entrepreneur representative of this fast-growing ecosphere of players, in which Titan makes 3D printers and 3D prints everything from prosthetics to footwear to auto parts. “Companies are moving past incubation and putting these [printers] on the floor,” Guillory says. “It’s truly happening.”

Fulop’s company is attempting to revolutionize 3D printing of metals and counts Ford and BMW among investors. “So far, 3D printing hasn’t been an applicable technology for mass production of metal parts,” Fulop says. “We’ve developed a high-performance process that lets manufacturers take advantage of the freedom of geometry and elimination of tooling… in the future, people will manufacture for design.”
Bob Patel / Chairman and CEO, LyondellBasell, Houston, TX

The head of the $40 billion global chemical, plastics and fuel company represents the new triumph of the American oil patch, as it innovates in packaging and aims to double exports of its natural gas liquids in the next few years.

Laura Nador / President, CHEP North America, Atlanta, GA

The greening of the manufacturing supply chain is the sweet spot for this company that provides durable, high-quality pallets to many industries, and then transports and refurbishes them instead of trashing them. “More and more companies are keen to improve the sustainability of their supply chains, to reduce their footprint in carbon dioxide and source materials that never end up in a landfill,” Nador says.

Sharad and Sahil Tak / Co-Founders, ST Tissue, Isle of Wight, VA

The father-and-son combo is consolidating and revitalizing a commodity category—production of paper towels and toilet paper—in an industry that got old and lazy. ST Tissue refurbished or built new mills to become the cost and quality leader in supplying the market’s commercial segment, where price-competitiveness is king.

“We built a series of new mills close to suppliers and customers, and made the mills standardized so they could share parts,” Sahil Tak says. “It’s similar to the mini-mill concept in steel. It’s about costs and how you run the operation in a lean fashion, and the technology you’re using to that end.”

Bob Chapman / Chairman & CEO, Barry-Wehmiller, St. Louis, MO

The company is a highly diversified industrial manufacturer and an agglomeration of more than 100 acquisitions. But Chapman’s biggest contribution is speaking and consulting to try to help other companies break the cycle of employee disengagement and disaffection by building a healthy culture through what he calls “Truly Human Leadership”

Andrew Inglis and Sarah Baker / Co-Founders, Silverside Detectors, Cambridge, MA

They make arguably some of the most important equipment in America: radiation monitors that detect radiological and nuclear threats entering the U.S. Yet, they’re not running a multibillion-dollar defense contractor. A seven-year-old startup stemming from the minds of whiz kids, Silverside represents some of the best fruit of America’s growing movement of manufacturing incubators, the rising implementation of 3D printing and a penchant for vertical integration right down to subjecting these crucial national security devices to extreme temperatures in the company’s own testing area.

Andy Romjue / President, Hoffmaster Group, Fort Wayne, IN

The paper-straw business is going crazy because American consumers now hate single-use plastic waste, and Hoffmaster snapped up the Aardvark paper-straw brand—America’s largest—last year so that it could ramp up production rapidly to take advantage of the soaring market.

“There’s been a flurry of demand with plastic-straw bans and with people looking for alternative options,” Romjue says. “As that expands, and more cities announce bans and the movement spreads [around the world], we will be able to add capacity commensurate with the demand increase.”

Read more: Masters of Manufacturing: Tom Bickes Helps Close Skills Gap for U.S. Factories