For 26-year-old Noemi Diaz, who was born and raised in El Paso, Texas, on the U.S. side of the border, it feels like destiny has led her to work in the manufacturing industry.
In Juarez, where 400,000 of the city’s 2 million-strong population work in the manufacturing industry, approximately 75% of low-skilled manufacturing jobs— usually in Mexico’s maquiladora factories —are occupied by women.
However, when it comes to women occupying high-skilled manufacturing jobs, that involve more than just assembling products or require specialized qualifications, the number decreases dramatically. The Manufacturing Institute, for example, calculates that women constitute less than one-third of the skilled manufacturing professionals.
Diaz, who moved to El Paso to study accounting at college, thinking it would go on to become her career, found herself inevitably drawn to the dominant manufacturing industry. She started working for an injection moulding company and hasn’t looked back since.
“I’m kind of in love with it,” she said, having already identified the advantages of being a woman in a man’s manufacturing world.
When women come along, “people start to talk differently,” she said, explaining how her clients— who are mostly male —tend to express their needs more clearly when they are talking to a woman.
“Once I talk to them, their language changes,” she said, it is a positive change from the standard behavior toward women in the region, which has at times been discriminatory and against a backdrop of violence in the city.
Like many other bi-national citizens, Diaz crosses the border every day from Juarez, Mexico— where her entire family lives — to El Paso, Texas where she works at Solution Tools Mold & Die, a bi-national company that creates moulds for tools used on production lines.
Although just a river separates the two border cities, being able to live and work with offices on both sides gives Solution Tools Mold & Die the best of two completely different markets and customer bases. Diaz said it doubles the number of opportunities for the molding company.
While having a U.S. company office is a mark of the company’s credibility for its clients, having a Juarez site works to Solution Tools’ advantage. It saves the company time, money and removes the logistical hassle of running merchandise back across the border to different markets.
The company is a uniquely placed go-between and service provider for the US market and Juarez; a city that plays host to 70 Fortune 500 companies and some of the biggest names in manufacturing, including Bosch, Johnson and Johnson, and Delphi Corporation.
Even so, there is a lot more opportunity that companies serving cross border manufacturers, are yet to fully capitalize on. According to data from COPARMEX, the Mexican Employers’ Association and the state Department of Economy, only 2% of production inputs to the $39 billion manufacturing industry come from businesses in the state of Chihuahua.
The Bridge Accelerator program is run specifically to help the region and companies based within the regional sector obtain a share of that supply chain. Solution Tools’ choice to enroll in the program was part of a large ambition to become the ‘go to’ injection moulding provider for manufacturers in the region.
Run out of Technology Hub, the 12 week program takes 12-15 companies through a process of professionalization, enhancement and optimization. At the end of the program companies get in person opportunities to pitch their services to decision makers at large scale manufacturers, like Bosch. They also get to meet with investors with the capacity to support and back their companies.
As Diaz explained Solution Tools, was able to pitch business to a number of different companies, who they are in finalizing discussions with.
“If you look at us when we started The Bridge, and now, we’re a totally different company,” Diaz said, “It has been a good and noticeable transformation.”
Since long before the launch of The Bridge, Technology Hub has been running programs to tap into the talent of local women entrepreneurs. ‘Mujeres Emprendedoras’, is a tailored program formed in 2015 to inspire and empower women in the world of business and entrepreneurship. The incubator established the program to open women like Diaz to a broader vision of work and life beyond the traditional expectations set on women in Mexico.
Before Covid-19 changed how we work and collaborate, women from all over the region met every second Friday of the month. The Tech Hub program covers everything from incorporating a business, pitching and securing investors, to market analysis and research. We look forward to resuming the program as we transition back to work from the lockdown.
With the pandemic pushing changes in global demand and trade relations, Solution Tools expects many large-scale manufacturing operations in Ciudad Juarez to be expanded. Diaz said The Bridge program has prepared and placed Solution Tools in a strong position to take advantage of the new business opportunities on the horizon.
Cover Photo by: HUBmedia
