Does your business or organization have what it takes? Find out via Nebraska’s Edgerton Program?

How does your business measure its performance? How do you stack up with your competitors? The Nebraska Edgerton Program offers an opportunity for you to conduct your very own assessment of seven key areas of performance excellence: leadership, strategic planning, customer and market focus, measurement analysis and knowledge management, workforce focus, process management, and results.

These are the exact same criteria used by world-class businesses, and educational and health care organizations like Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Motorola, Caterpillar Financial, Cargill, Kenneth Monfort College of Business, Jenks Public School, SMS Health Care, and St. Luke’s Hospital of Kansas City, to name a few. A free assessment tool is available at: http://www.quality.nist.gov/. If you’re looking for a more thorough external assessment of your performance improvement system, along with in-depth guidance on ways you can improve, apply now for the Edgerton Award Program. Your application will be reviewed by external evaluators who will provide you and your company or organization with the most thorough feedback report you could hope to get.

Since 1993, more than 45 businesses and organizations have participated in the Edgerton Program, including Lincoln Industries, Behlen Mfg. Co., Saint Francis Medical Center, Eaton Corporation Torque Controls Division, Valmont, NEAPCO, Inc., Cargill Corn Milling and Tennaco Manufacturing. Complete the Eligibility Determination Form by Sept. 30 at http://www.edgertonaward.com/ (under “FORMS”) to find out if you qualify for the Edgerton Program. The complete application is due December 15. To learn more, contact Jenne Rodriguez at [email protected]

Pickens seeks to help Nebraska increase wind power

Texas oilman-turned-wind power advocate T. Boone Pickens brought his alternative energy campaign to Lincoln Tuesday. (Editor’s note: Pickens has invested $10 billion in his own wind power project in the Texas panhandle.) Nebraska ranks sixth nationally in wind potential but only 20th in using wind to generate electricity. Gov. Dave Heineman and others involved in the development of wind energy said Nebraska is beginning to overcome some of the hurdles that have kept it out of the top 10.

In fact, the governor said Nebraska could climb into the top 10 within the next decade — an ambitious goal that would require more than a seven-fold increase in the state’s wind-generating capacity. Representatives from the state’s two largest utilities, OPPD and the Nebraska Public Power District, said there are substantial obstacles to wind power — including the fact that the ideal sites for wind farms are in north-central and western areas of Nebraska, far from the state’s population centers.

Also, they said, the need for electricity peaks in summer, when winds are calmest in Nebraska. There also are reliability concerns — NPPD’s 60 megawatt wind farm at Ainsworth, which went online in 2005, has been troubled by cracked blades and turbine problems in recent months. Other obstacles are building enough transmission lines to transfer electricity to customers and adapting the nation’s energy grid to handle the unstable stream of power generated by the wind.

Not everyone likes the big transmission lines, the represenatives noted, and more and more people are beginning to dislike the wind towers. Because Nebraska’s utilities are publicly owned and pay no taxes, federal tax incentives provided to develop wind farms are not available to them. Other federal incentive programs for public utilities are underfunded, those interviewed said. Under the Community Based Energy Act passed by the Nebraska Legislature last spring, private utility firms may develop wind farms with local farmers and farm groups and qualify for tax credits.

Nebraska Sec. of State meets with business leaders

Secretary of State John Gale stopped in Grand Island Tuesday morning for a business roundtable to explain the duties his office performs for businesses. Asking for a show of hands, Gale learned that several of the businesspeople meeting with him were notaries public.

He pointed out that notary laws have been tightened because there were too many instances of people not following the law. Too often, people were willing to “pre-notorize” documents, allowing people to sign them and fill in the date when not in the notary’s presence. “It’s a crime,” Gale said, noting that the state now requires people to take an open-book test to be a notary in an attempt to avoid such problems.

Gale also noted that as many as 8,000 Nebraska corporations were not filing annual paperwork in time for the right to continue to do business in Nebraska as legal corporations. Nebraska law requires corporations to renew their paperwork every two years.

Nebraska is in the Midst of Farm Country’s Boom

The farm economy in the Great Plains states are a bright spot in the otherwise gloomy national economic picture. In states like Nebraska, the housing market is holding up just fine, the banks are making plenty of loans, and employers keep adding jobs. Retail spending in the middle of the country was strong even before the $600 tax rebates this spring, and low interest rates and a tax provision in the economic stimulus bill are helping to goose already booming sales of farm equipment and pickup trucks.

The price of farmland in Nebraska has doubled in the past three years, primarily reflecting the boom in commodity prices. The increase also reflects the impact of rate cuts by the Federal Reserve that enabled buyers to bid up land with borrowed money. But if crop prices drop toward historical norms, it could mean sharp decreases in land prices that would devastate some farmers.

The availability of loans to farmers is the strongest it has been in five years, according to a survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, even as banks nationwide are becoming reluctant to lend money. The reason: There wasn’t much overbuilding of housing here, so most regional banks are not saddled with the same bad mortgage and construction loans as their counterparts on the coasts. The good times are not uniform across the region; livestock producers have been pummeled by high prices for feed and fuel.

In Blair, Neb., however, long-vacant storefronts have been turned into furniture shops and restaurants in the past couple of years, and Wal-Mart is looking to open a store just down the way. The billion-dollar Cargill plant that turns grains of corn into high-fructose corn syrup and ethanol just announced another $100 million expansion, adding a Danish company that makes enzymes out of corn — a reflection of booming global demand for all types of commodities.

That prosperity also shows itself on Lyle Schjodt’s farm a few miles outside Blair, where he farms 1,000 acres of corn and soybeans, 150 head of cattle, and 1,200 hogs. He still has the first tractor he ever bought, back in 1968, in a shed. “I’ve been farming for 39 years, and I haven’t seen a better year than this one,” he said. Schjodt is upgrading his equipment; he just ordered a $120,000 Case IH planter, a massive red device that deposits seed corn every seven inches in 30-inch-wide rows. He bought a new $50,000 Ford F-350 back in the spring, too. Nationally, truck sales are battered by skyrocketing fuel costs. But auto sales are up 8% in the Omaha area so far this year, according to sales tax receipts.

Nebraska Business & Industrial Expo Coming to Lincoln Oct. 1-2

The Lincoln Business & Industrial Products Show is considered one of the largest and diversified Business Expos in the Midwest. This year, the show will be held October 1-2 at the Lancaster Event Center. Admission and parking are free.

According to event organizers, the expo will give attendees the opportunity to see hundreds of products and services that can be used in day to day operations, collect literature, compare prices, and become acquainted with new suppliers all at one time. The Products Show officially opens at 11 a.m., Wednesday, October 1, and continues until 6 p.m.

The Show re-opens on Thursday, October 2, at 10 a.m. and is open until 4 p.m. If you are interested in showcasing your company and exhibiting at the Lincoln Products Show, contact Bob Mancuso, Jr. at 402-346-8003 or 1-800-475-SHOW.

Focus on youth should solve Nebraska’s labor issues, expert says

or being a community that says it needs its young people to stick around, Grand Island has a funny way of showing it. That’s what Mike Henke, general manager of the Grand Island human resources firm Associated Staffing, concluded after talking to groups of Grand Island high-schoolers. Many high-schoolers say they want to leave the state because there’s nothing to do.

“As a community, we’ve kind of run them out of the things that they love to do,” Henke told the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce Executives on Thursday. “Then we’re shocked when they want to leave.” Henke was speaking to a group of about 20 chamber officials at the Nebraska Chamber Executives’ summer/fall conference at Grand Island’s Midtown Holiday Inn. He said that, for many Nebraska towns, that workforce crisis largely hinges on two aspects: The inability to find workers for entry-level, mostly unskilled labor positions and what’s often called the “brain drain” — the inability to attract the state’s young professionals to come back home.

Those problems are helping lead to a labor shortage that’s expected to get worse as baby boomers retire, Henke said. In response, Henke advised towns to be aggressive about marketing themselves to prospective residents and employees. This generation of young adults tends to choose a community to live in first and a job second, he said. That puts the onus on towns to sell themselves through an active Web site comprehensively listing those cool things to do or communications with a database of high school graduates, he said. Businesses themselves aren’t exempt, either. Henke said the old mentality of “here’s your job — take it or leave it” is dead, replaced by companies that provide loads of perks and bonuses to attract and keep the best employees. “I hate the ‘woe-is-me’ attitude in some communities in the state,” Henke said. “We have so much to offer.”

Nebraska negotiating with Yahoo on data center

A person close to Gov. Dave Heineman confirmed on Aug. 2 that state and local officials are negotiating with Yahoo to build a data center in the Omaha metropolitan area. Negotiators are “at a very serious stage,” and Yahoo might decide within five or six weeks, the person said. The governor’s office declined last week to comment further on whether the state is talking to Yahoo, or whether Heineman would seek additional tax incentives to lure the company here.

A spokesman for the Internet search engine, which is based in Sunnyvale, Calif., declined to say whether it is talking to Nebraska officials. Nebraska’s business incentives package allows it to compete successfully for computer data centers and other sought-after business developments, State Tax Commissioner Doug Ewald said. But Ewald said he had received no application from Yahoo for incentives under the Nebraska Advantage program, which rewards companies for multimillion-dollar capital investments and the creation of high-paying jobs. And not much can happen until he does, Ewald said.

The Legislature modified the Nebraska Advantage program this year to create an additional level of incentives called the Super Advantage. The new level awards incentives if a company meets one of two thresholds: $10 million investment and creation of 75 new high-salary jobs; or a $100 million investment and 50 new high-salary jobs.

Cuban trade team inspects Nebraska Panhandle dry bean industry

Two Cuban trade ambassadors visited the Panhandle last week to learn about Nebraska’s dry edible bean industry.

The Cuban officials met with scientists and technicians at the University of Nebraska Panhandle Research and Extension Center Wednesday afternoon, then toured Kelley’s dry bean processing facility at Mitchell.

Nebraska court orders illegal immigrant’s bills paid

A Nebraska court has backed a 2007 ruling ordering an Omaha employer to pay workers’ compensation to an illegal immigrant.

A three-judge panel of the Nebraska Workers’ Compensation Court has affirmed a ruling made by a Douglas County trial judge in March 2007. It requires Sun Valley Landscapes to pay the man’s medical bills and lost wages.

Most bridges in Nebraska considered safe

Motorists can safely drive cars and pickups over any open highway bridge in Nebraska, a state roads official said Thursday. Even if an open bridge is listed as structurally deficient on the National Bridge Inventory, it’s safe for passenger vehicles, said Mary Jo Oie, spokeswoman for the Nebraska Department of Roads. Drivers with heavy loads, however, need to observe posted weight limits. At the same time, Nebraska, like other states, has bridges that increasingly need repairs and replacement, Oie said.

Nebraska has closed no state highway bridges in response to last year’s Interstate 35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis, Oie said. Any bridges currently closed for replacement or repair were scheduled before the collapse. All of the roughly 15,000 bridges in Nebraska are inspected at least once every two years. About 3,500 are maintained by the state and another 380 belong to cities.

The remaining 11,500 are maintained by Nebraska counties. Use extra caution when encountering county bridges on minimum maintenance dirt roads, a former state bridge engineer told the Journal Star last year.