WDM×Madison: From Lambeau Field to Monona Terrace

Oct 14, 2026 · @Doug Barton

The Summit’s first regional stop

In June, 698 people filled Lambeau Field for the first Wisconsin Drives Manufacturing Summit. The Fox Valley sent 240 of them, the largest group in the room. On October 6, the network took its first step toward a year-round presence: a WDM regional event hosted inside the UWEBC Annual Conference at Monona Terrace in Madison.

WDM×Madison was a new manufacturing track built for the same purpose the Summit served. It connected manufacturers with expertise from Wisconsin’s universities, technical colleges, and industry partners. Scott Manley of Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce opened with the case for manufacturing’s importance to Wisconsin’s economy and communities. What followed was a day of practical sessions on workforce, technology, and strategy — and a working model that GBIG and other regional groups can bring into their own events.

Oliver Schmitz: a statewide network that comes to you

Oliver Schmitz, UW–Madison’s Associate Dean for Corporate Engagement and Entrepreneurship, used the stage to lay out what Wisconsin Drives Manufacturing is and where it is going. His starting point was simple: the challenges Wisconsin manufacturers share — workforce shortages, technology adoption, supply chain resilience, and emerging markets — can’t be solved by any one company or institution alone. WDM exists so manufacturers can connect, collaborate, innovate, and compete with the whole state behind them.

He described WDM as Wisconsin’s statewide manufacturing network: more than 100 engaged stakeholders — manufacturers, researchers, educators, policy-makers, economic developers, and technology leaders — coordinated by the College of Engineering at UW–Madison. GBIG is one of them, alongside the NEW Manufacturing Alliance, UW–Green Bay’s Resch School of Engineering, and TitletownTech. The work is organized around four pillars: Workforce, Technology, American Made, and New Markets.

The June Summit proved the demand. Oliver’s numbers: 698 participants from 336 organizations, 64 percent of them from industry, and 18 opportunities for action identified in the room. Then his central idea — WDM is moving from one summit to a year-round network, and it comes to you. WDM×Madison is the pilot of a model for independently organized regional WDM events. The partnership network, with its universities, technical colleges, and industry partners, shows up at your regional event. The aim is to move manufacturing innovation from discussion to implementation.

Build capability before needs become shortages

Preparing people for what comes next was the morning’s central theme, and it will sound familiar to anyone running a mill, a converting line, or a packaging plant in Northeast Wisconsin. Madison College’s Grant Emmel and Matthew Garcia showed how academic programs and customized employer training develop tomorrow’s technicians while strengthening the workforce already on the floor. Their message: build capability before workforce needs become shortages. The same model lives in every technical college district in the state.

UW–Madison’s Lennon Rodgers continued that conversation through hands-on engineering education, industry-sponsored capstone projects, and new CNC machining, casting, and forging programs at the Grainger Engineering Design Innovation Lab. Both sessions gave manufacturers practical ways to engage — from developing their own employees to bringing a real business challenge into a student project.

Think differently about strategy and technology

The afternoon pushed the room to think differently. Aurora WDC’s Arik Johnson demonstrated a new interactive scenario-analysis tool that combines AI with human expertise. Drawing on Clayton Christensen’s work on innovation, he explored how established companies get comfortable with what made them successful — a risk any mature industry knows well. The audience jointly chose a future scenario, and the tool developed strategic questions and possible positions for a UWEBC member company in that space. Arik described it as delivering roughly 60 percent of his earlier wargame simulation’s capability for “10 cents on the dollar.”

Joe Hamann of UW–Milwaukee’s Connected Systems Institute showed how manufacturers can test connected systems and AI before making larger investments, and develop the skills to run them at the same time. His theme — test before you invest — is a practical answer for plants weighing automation and Industry 4.0 choices without disrupting production.

Start with the business problem

Chris Baichoo of WMEP Manufacturing Solutions brought the day’s conversations together: start with the business problem, understand its root cause, and connect with the capabilities needed to solve it. A WMEP–UW–Milwaukee collaboration to improve Lean assessments showed that approach in action. For small and mid-sized manufacturers without a deep bench, Wisconsin’s MEP network is the front door to the rest of the system.

Chelsy Cegielski, UW–Madison’s InterPro Engagement Manager, closed the track by pointing to opportunities to work together on professional development and workforce needs, and inviting manufacturers to continue the conversation.

What this means for Green Bay

What stood out to me was how naturally the conversations connected. Each organization brought different capabilities and showed how partnership makes them more valuable. That is what we wanted manufacturers to see: people they can call, resources they can use, and partners who can help them think through a challenge or explore a possibility.

The Summit started in Green Bay, and the Fox Valley showed up in greater numbers than any other region. WDM×Madison proved the stage can travel. The paper, packaging, printing, plastics, and converting companies that make Northeast Wisconsin what it is face the same workforce, technology, and market questions that filled the room in Madison, and they have partners within driving distance — UW–Green Bay, NWTC, the NEW Manufacturing Alliance, and the MOC/MEP network — ready to answer them.

Stay in the loop or learn more at widrivesmanufacturing.com or www.uwebc.wisc.edu.

Photo captions: the WDM×Madison speaker lineup