MN Valley Business Article 2017

Manufacturing Upswing: Companies adding employees

Area manufacturers are in growth mode, although ongoing worker shortages are making them work harder to attract the people they need and causing them to worry a bit about the future. Mitch Jacobs, president and CEO of V-TEK in Mankato, which serves semiconductor industries, said the future looks good. “We’ve seen a nice level of growth on the sales front and continue to see growth forward 18 to 24 months, which is as far as we can forecast.”

Jacobs, who has been with V-TEK for seven years, stepped in as president and CEO in 2016. Earlier this year KODA Enterprises Group, a private investment firm in Massachusetts, acquired V-TEK. “From an operational standpoint, it’s been business as usual,” Jacobs said of the new ownership. “What it’s given us is an injection of excitement and a bright future for the business.”V-TEK serves the semiconductor industry. “But that really touches most all industries — semiconductors in automobiles, medical devices, the consumer electronics market, infrastructure for the cellular and satellite industry,” he said. The company supplies the equipment and consumables used in packaging chips to those industries, as well as providing the service of packaging to some of the customers. “We package them before they are made into a board. If you think of a completed circuit board, we’re packaging those chips so the high-speed manufacturers can pick and place those chips on the board automatically,” Jacobs said. “It continues to be more complex. Computing devices and semiconductors get smaller and smaller. A lot of what we do is value added in the packaging process, for example 3D vision inspection and redundant electrical testing — proving components are to specification before they’re packaged.” He said the semiconductor industry has been very strong and they’re exploring expanding their customer base, including more medical and automotive device packaging. Like most every company, keeping jobs filled takes hard work. “It’s always a challenge to find the skilled employee positions.We have a strong relationship with South Central College and Minnesota State University – Mankato, so we use those pipelines to find young, talented, skilled workers. But the job market’s been tight and we’re always looking for the next member of the team to help us grow.”

V-TEK, which has 60 employees, was started in 1985 by Dennis and Vivian Siemer. The company also has three locations in Mexico that employ 150. In 2013 they acquired Royce Instruments in Napa, California.“We have a sales and engineering office in Napa, but we consolidated the manufacturing in Mankato” Jacobs said.