Northern Indiana update: the region's top business stories.

• Author: Mayer, Kathy
• Position: Regional Report North - Paragon Medical Inc.

AN ACTIVE BABY BOOMER generation is boosting the economy in northern Indiana, where both orthopedic and recreational-vehicle manufacturers are benefiting from folks determined to keep moving.

A need for new knees and hips. Kosciusko County's hotbed of orthopedic and surgical product companies is heating up even more as the baby boomer generation embraces healthy lifestyles.

"We said this before, and it's continuing to be true," says Joy McCarthy-Session, president of the Warsaw-Kosciusko County Development Corp. "As baby boomers age, they're needing new knees and new hips so they can remain active, play basketball, bike, rock climb, parachute and all of those active things."

That's prompted recent expansions at three medical-related companies.

In Warsaw, Zimmer Holdings Inc. has increased employment from 1,800 to 2,000 at its world headquarters and orthopedic medical device facility. The company is spending $64 million through 2007 to expand its office, manufacturing and distribution space by 200,000 square feet, and it's adding some 400 jobs by year-end 2005, a boost of about $15 million in annual payroll.

In 2004, Biomet Inc. in Warsaw acquired Interpore International Inc. and the Merck interest in a former joint venture, helping it achieve record sales and earnings for its second quarter. The company designs and makes orthopedic joint replacement devices and other reconstructive products.

DePuy Inc., a unit of Johnson & Johnson, also in Warsaw, has added a new Trauma and Extremities Group at its 1,200-employee orthopedic facility. The group focuses on providing surgeons with access to technology for treating accident victims and patients with severe joint problems.

In nearby Pierceton, Paragon Medical Inc., an orthopedics supplier that employs 325, is preparing to expand into a multi-facility campus. Tobias Buck, company cofounder and chairman, was named the 2004 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in lift sciences; and also received the Mira Award in 2004 for best and brightest innovators in technology-related industries.

Kids out of college and disposable income. With half of its manufacturing workforce--some 25,000 people--at work building recreational vehicles or supplying that industry, Elkhart County is king in creating getaway vehicles. And it's a wide-open highway, reports Bill Bradley, executive director of the Economic Development Corp. of Elkhart County.

"About 53 percent of our workforce is in manufacturing, the highest...