Ever since the United States and NASA put men on the moon in 1969, people have referred to ambitious projects and amazing accomplishments as “moonshots.” That was the idea 40 years ago when Insyte Consulting was created by Moog founder Art Moog, UB President Steve Sample and Erie County IDA head Bill Donohue. The goal was nothing less than helping WNY manufacturing survive the terrible headwinds of the late 1900’s when our industrial base shrank so significantly it seemed doomed to disappear.
Now, it’s Insyte Consulting’s 40th Anniversary and I’m excited to report that WNY manufacturers working with Insyte Consulting have generated over $4 BILLION in economic impacts, including over 18,000 direct manufacturing jobs created or saved. This is a real testament to manufacturers throughout our region who have worked hard and invested in making themselves more competitive, more innovative, more efficient and more profitable, resulting in the very healthy WNY manufacturing sector that we have today which produces billions in gross domestic product every year and supports over 60,000 direct jobs. Here is the breakdown:
| New and Retained Sales | $ 2,615,224,505 |
| Capital Investments | $ 578,255,037 |
| Cost Avoidance | $ 174,014,867 |
| Jobs Created or Saved (18,711)* | $ 905,369,157 |
| TOTAL | $4,272,863,566 |
* New York State estimates each job is worth $48,387 in annual compensation
It’s always difficult to grasp large numbers, but here’s one way to wrap your mind around $4 billion. A dollar bill is a little more than six inches long, so if you laid 4.27 billion dollar bills end-to-end they would reach over 400,000 miles. The moon is only about 238,900 miles away, so that’s far enough to reach the moon and return more than halfway to Earth. You do not need to be a rocket scientist to understand what an impressive accomplishment this is by WNY manufacturers and we’re not done yet! We are still adding to that total to get all the way to the moon AND back to earth, so we have to keep working. In the meantime, I would like to thank our WNY manufacturers and my hard-working and dedicated colleagues at Insyte Consulting, without all of you we could never have achieved so much. I cannot wait to see what the next 40 years will bring!
