Industry Clustering Strategies

Industry Clusters are defined as a grouping of interrelated industries in which a region specializes, enabling the region to successfully compete in the global marketplace. The City of Dayton has identified each of the following industry clusters as holding significant opportunities for the City to capture new jobs over the next 20 years:

• Advanced Materials/Manufacturing
• Sensors& RFID
• Aerospace Technology
• Regional Health Services

The tactical strategies designed to meet the City’s Industry Clustering objectives emphasize better understanding and collaboration among government, industry, and academic leaders. Through collaboration, the City will proactively influence outcomes by building relationships and participation early rather than later in the decision-making process.

Advanced Manufacturing/Materials

Advanced Manufacturing/Materials is an initiative developed as part of CitiPlan 20/20 to assist regional manufacturing firms in implementing new processes and technologies so that they can remain competitive in the New Economy. Advanced Manufacturing/Materials includes the themes of lean manufacturing, supply chain management, composite materials, and collaborative manufacturing.

CityWide and TechSolve have joined forces to offer business services to Greater Dayton area manufacturers, with the goal of helping them improve their competitiveness and get the most out of investments in improvement initiatives. TechSolve directly implements solutions in the areas of Lean Manufacturing, Supplier Development and Machining Optimization. These solutions are all designed to help companies increase profits and productivity, both on the factory floor and in the front office.

As part of this partnership, CityWide:

• Provides financial incentives for local manufacturers to adopt advanced manufacturing processes.
• Works with regional partners to provide funding to local manufacturers whose long-term outlook is promising, but who are financially strapped due to the recent economic downturn.
• Supports the development of McCook Park as an Advanced Manufacturing Center.
• Supports the development of Tech Town as a support center for McCook Park and other local manufacturers.
• Works with other strategic partners who can help provide competitive advantages to local manufacturers.

Sensors & RFID

Dayton is becoming the premier hub for the development and commercialization of new Sensor and RFID (radio frequency identification) solutions. Accordingly, the City of Dayton and CityWide are supporting efforts to grow these industry clusters. CityWide in conjunction with EPC Technologies has created the world’s first business incubator that specifically focuses on RFID technologies (Dayton RCC) and has partnered with the University of Dayton to support a consortium of academic, business, and government entities focused on commercializing sensor technologies (IDCAST).

The Dayton RFID Convergence Center (Dayton RCC) provides business acceleration and intelligence to entrepreneurs and early stage companies in the RFID, sensor, data management and mining technology industries.

IDCAST—a University of Dayton-led consortium of 8 universities, the USAFRL, and more than 30 businesses—has established a collaboration center at Tech Town that includes shared laboratories, equipment, and collaboration space. The primary focus of this collaboration is to develop and commercialize layered and remote sensing, chem-bio sensing, LADAR, and kinesics sensing solutions for the military and for commercial applications.

Additionally, CityWide has convened a coalition of area businesses, RFIDayton, to work together to grow the regional industry cluster.

Aerospace Technology

In September 2009, Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland and Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher named Dayton as Ohio’s official Aerospace Hub—the first of its kind in the state. The Aerospace initiative leverages this designation by linking Wright-Patterson Air Force Base with related aerospace academic research efforts, commercialization channels, and business incubators to attract and grow the aerospace business within the boundaries of the Aerospace Hub and the City of Dayton.

The hub is a designated business district that encompasses the urban area of Dayton stretching from Tech Town at the north to the University of Dayton Research Institute at the south.

Led by UD, partners also include the City of Dayton, Montgomery County, CityWide, and the Dayton Development Coalition.

Health Services Jobs

The health services industry is extremely important to the economic vitality of the City of Dayton. In fact, with more than 21,000 Dayton workers, the health services industry is technically the city’s largest employer!

Hospital/healthcare institutions export services to the region and generate wealth to the inner city. While Dayton’s population represents just 17.5% of the MSA (metropolitan statistical area), hospital/healthcare jobs in the city represent about 40% of total hospital/healthcare jobs in the MSA. As part of Dayton’s CitiPlan 20/20 strategy, CityWide will:

• Collaborate with existing facilities such as Miami Valley Hospital, Good Samaritan Hospital, Grandview Hospital, Dayton Heart Hospital, Elizabeth Place, and the Veterans Administration (VA) Hospital to grow their presence in the city.
• Provide financial incentives to attract medical support facilities and support the development of medical “themed districts” that are focused near existing hospital/healthcare facilities.
• Support the VA Master Plan and the stabilization and growth of the job base at the VA Hospital.

Health services is a rapidly growing industry with an already-strong presence in Dayton. The official CitiPlan goal is to create 4,100 new healthcare jobs by the year 2020.