Helping hand: Indiana Business Modernization and Technology Corp.

• Author: Kaelble, Steve
• Position: Manufacturing - Brief Article

It's the dream of political reformers: make government run as well as businesses do. The dream doesn't come true very often, but it is happening in Indiana, where an organization originally set up by the state to help Hoosier companies has privatized itself and quit taking tax dollars.

The agency is BMT, short for the Indiana Business Modernization and Technology Corp. BMT specializes in helping businesses--especially manufacturers--improve quality and become more competitive, but BMT itself also subscribes to the gospel of continuous improvement. Through the years it has added services and found more efficient ways to deliver them. Though it now charges for most of its services, clients still view BMT as a bargain.

Del Schuh, BMT's president, recounts the history of the organization, launched nearly two decades ago as the Corporation for Science and Technology, or CST. The original mission, says Schuh, was to provide seed capital for high-risk research. Around 1988, he says, CST began examining why some of its client companies succeeded while others failed. "We recognized that we needed to provide a significant amount of other business assistance," he recalls.

BMT supplanted CST in 1991 "with the additional responsibilities of providing business-assistance services, with a particular focus on manufacturing," Schuh says. Business assistance can take on a wide variety of forms, including funding assistance, quality improvement, safety enhancement, plant layout, marketing help--Schuh can rattle off 11 different categories of assistance. "With any given company we work with we could bring all 11 areas t bear or we can bring one. We can provide tools and opportunities and vision for them."

Those 11 areas include:

* Sales and marketing

* Manufacturing operations

* Financial planning and record-keeping

* Quality improvement and certification

* Materials management

* Product design and engineering

* Personnel issues

* Facilities planning and layout

* Management information systems

* Environmental and safety matters

* Access to technological assistance

Some of BMT's most popular services involve quality improvement. A program called "Fast PayBack" helps manufacturers achieve ISO registration through group instruction. ISO, the International Organization for Standardization, devises and coordinates standards for quality and manufacturing processes in order to facilitate global trade. Achieving ISO registration is a must to compete and thrive in many...