Continuous improvement in manufacturing is vital to help our businesses continue to grow and stay competitive in the global market. Have you thought about implementing changes to make your manufacturing process more lean? Are you working towards improving the quality of the product you manufacture? What about reducing a negative impact you may have on our environment? While these are great projects to implement, sometimes we don’t always have the funds available to actually do so.

That’s where the CME SMART Funding Program comes in.

The Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters group (CME) created the CME SMART Program with funding provided by the government of Ontario. This program was created to help small to medium sized manufacturers in Ontario improve efficiency and productivity to better compete in the global market.

How do they do this? They help fund projects that implement changes to improve your operational efficiency. These projects could include lean manufacturing and/or design, environmental impact reduction, IT best practices, quality improvement and energy efficiency. These projects should hopefully not just increase your efficiency but would change the way you do business, as well as reduce or eliminate waste (both wasted time and wasted materials) and phase out mistakes and non-value-added activities.

After getting approval from CME for the funding, these projects must be started within 2 months of your notification of selection from the CME, and should not take longer than 6 months to implement.

How much do they fund? The best projects proposed to the CME SMART Program get selected for funding, and you can receive either 50% of your project costs, or $50,000 – whichever is less.

Who is eligible? Companies with 10-500 employees that have their manufacturing operations in Ontario are eligible for the CME SMART Program. These companies would have to have been in operation in Ontario for at least two years.

Northbridge Consultants is a service provider for the CME SMART Program. We can provide you with SMART Assessments and help you implement these programs.

B&W Canada gets contract for 8 replacement steam generators for Bruce Nuclear Power Plant.

Goodyear to open Retread Plant. Trend in construction, mining, forestry 7 recycling industries have prompted Goodyear Canada Inc to open a plant in North Bay, On to be completed in fall of 2008.

Onex gets Husky! Onex to pay $960 million for husky injection Molding Systems Ltd.

Patheon Inc to sell Burlington based commercial manufacturing business to Pharmetics of Laval, QC a vitamin & herbal products contract manufacturer.

Mergers and Aquisitions reach 2000 transactions, for the first time resulting in a deals reaching a total of $268.6 billion. The largest deal was an acquisition of Alcan by Rio Tinto for $37.6 billion.

Siemens VDO Plant to close! Due to decrease orders for its product on falling North American car sales and rising cost for materials like copper and plastic.

Changes to the SR&ED Tax Credit Program  to encourage more Canadian Companies to claim!