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Weekends are humming again at Innovative Injection Technologies Inc.’s West Des Moines plant.

For two quarters in 2009, the plastics manufacturer put the brakes on its round-the-clock production schedule, idling its machinery and technicians each Saturday and Sunday from April through September.

“Prior to April 2009, we had run 63 consecutive months of 24-7 production,” said Bob Janeczko, Innovative Injection Technologies’ (I2tech) CEO. “We had a great 2008. Then the market really collapsed.” I2tech, which currently employs about 140 people, reduced its production hours by 15 to 20 percent, but in October resumed seven-day-a-week production, and this year expects moderate sales growth of 6 percent compared with 2009.

But manufacturers have a long way to go before they’re out of the woods. In Iowa, as in the rest of the country, the recession has had a disproportionate impact on manufacturing compared with other sectors of the economy, said David Swenson, an Iowa State University economist.

“We have a lot of manufacturers in the state that provide inputs or parts into other products, so when people demand fewer durable goods, there are less inputs needed,” Swenson said. “We’re having a second round of slowdowns, and that’s going to hit us hard in Iowa.”

Declining, but still leading

Iowa had about 21,600 fewer manufacturing jobs in November 2009 than it did the previous November. During the past decade, Iowa has lost more than 56,000 manufacturing jobs, according to data tracked by Iowa Workforce Development. In July 1999, approximately 254,300 Iowans were employed in manufacturing, compared with 198,200 in July 2009, a 22 percent decrease.

In terms of both output and employment, however, manufacturing remains one of Iowa’s leading industries, turning out more than one-fifth of the state’s gross domestic product and employing more than one out of every 10 workers. The largest manufacturing sectors in Iowa by employment and payroll – food, machinery, fabricated metal products, transportation equipment and plastics and rubber products – make up the bulk of the industry’s output in the state and are well-represented in Central Iowa.

Generally, Central Iowa manufacturers may recover more fully from the recession than other medium-sized manufacturing centers in the state, Swenson said.

Overall, “I’m anticipating that the size of manufacturing in Iowa, once we’re fully out of this recession, will be smaller than it was going into the recession,” he said.

Ron Cox, director of Iowa State University’s Center for Industrial Research and Service (CIRAS), said the degree to which manufacturers are feeling the pain varies by industry. “Anecdotally, people are telling me the food processing sector is not hurting as much because people are still eating,” he said. “Certain segments of machinery have done well; some segments of John Deere have laid off employees, while others haven’t.”

Overall, “we’ve had some companies tell us they’re down 50 percent (in production), some 20 percent,” Cox said. “We haven’t had any companies unscathed; it’s just a matter of how much they’re hurt.”

Retaining workers

Last year, 70 Iowa companies, primarily manufacturers, participated in an Iowa Workforce Development (IWD) program called WorkShare. That program enabled about 7,000 workers at those companies to avoid layoffs by working fewer hours and collect unemployment compensation for the lost hours.

“It’s a benefit for everybody, because the employer can keep a skilled work force and the employee is able to qualify for unemployment benefits,” said Kerry Koonce, an IWD spokeswoman. Nearly all of those companies that applied for Work-Share last year continue to have workers on reduced hours, Koonce said.

Companies have used a variety of cost-cutting strategies. Goodrich Corp., which employs about 420 people at its Turbine Fuel Technologies Division in West Des Moines, focused on minimizing capital expenditures and reducing non-essential costs such as travel, said Jeffrey Hurst, vice president of aero/gas turbine components.

Goodrich, which makes parts for jet engines, did not have to cut any jobs in West Des Moines, but did reduce hours and then eliminate 20 positions at its Carroll plant, he said. It has also tried to avoid filling positions that become open through attrition, and overall reduced its Iowa work force about 8 percent last year.

“We try to leave open any avenues that allow us to retain our work force and level it out with demand,” Hurst said. However, it did not hold back on salary increases, he said.

“We wanted to be equitable to our work force, and we felt very strongly that we didn’t want to compromise those individuals,” he said. “We didn’t want to deincentivize people.”

Another West Des Moines manufacturing operation, Windsor Windows & Doors Inc., has particularly felt the pain of the slumping homebuilding industry, said Mark Rieser, vice president of sales and marketing. The company manufactures windows and patio doors, primarily for the residential market nationwide.

“The recession hit the homebuilding industry as hard, if not harder than any other industry,” Rieser said. “A clear indication of that: In 2006, there were almost 1.5 million housing starts in the United States, compared with about 440,000 housing starts in 2009. So right now the industry is built to a capacity of about three times that of demand, so it’s having an effect on most, if not all, manufacturers.”

The company, which employs about 250 workers at its West Des Moines plant, has implemented Lean concepts for the past several years to improve efficiency and reduce waste in its manufacturing processes, which put it in a better position to weather the recession, Rieser said.

Though the company has had to reduce hours, it was able to spread the reductions over a two-year period, he said.

Windsor, which operates out of a 225,000-square-foot plant, in 2006 added a second, 100,000-square-foot building in which it manufactures vinyl products. It has also focused on using more energy-efficient glass to keep ahead of new construction codes, he said.

The federal tax credit for first-time home buyers seems to be spurring more construction activity in entry-level houses, Rieser said, and his company is “cautiously optimistic” about 2010.

Swenson said manufacturing typically lags the services and consumer goods sectors in recovering. “We have so much excess capacity right now, I really don’t see a strong signal sent to manufacturing until we consume a lot of that excess capacity that was part and parcel of the recession.”

At I2tech, Janeczko agreed that the pace of recovery in consumer purchases will largely govern how quickly his company bounces back. One of its primary markets for plastics, the recreational vehicle industry, obviously has been down considerably during the recession. However, its two other prime markets, agricultural machinery and general industrial components, have both been fairly strong, he said.

“The encouraging side of that is that our customers are still investing in research and development and new product lines,” he said.

“They are investing in new tools for the future, which is encouraging for us.”

Despite the recession, I2tech proceeded with a $1 million expansion project last year, purchasing a 35,000-square-foot building on 2.3 acres adjacent to its existing plant. The acquisition allowed the company to relocate an off-site warehouse from Urbandale.

“We thought the market was right for our expansion,” Janeczko said. “We think that investment is going to pay off in the future as we go forward. There are some opportunities where you can make some good acquisitions in a down economy.”