by Michael Hutchins Herald Democrat
As Texas Instruments and GlobiTech each prepare for multibillion-dollar expansions, the deal could signal a change in direction for Sherman City. With the two tech companies and others slated to create thousands of jobs in the region, local leaders and economic developers have begun calling the city the technology center of North Texas.
But what does it take to create such an economic ecosystem?
While city leaders, education and business officials recently said Sherman is poised to become the region’s tech hub, there are still needs to be met before Sherman can truly embrace that role.
“I’ve used that term and ecosystem corridor, but what you have to go into is what defines the technology hub of the entire ecosystem,” said Kent Sharp, president of the Sherman Economic Development Corporation. “Well, that’s a matter of interpretation.”
Advances in technology preceded recent announcements.
Texas Instruments and Globitek are in the spotlight following the announcement of investments of $30 billion and $5 billion in new manufacturing facilities in Sherman, respectively.
But city officials say the current mass genesis may have started five years ago, when Finisar announced it would begin manufacturing vertical-beam laser technology in the former MEMC building on U.S. Highway 75. At the time of the announcement, Apple made a promise. Finisar has invested more than $300 million in developing facial recognition technology that will be used in Apple’s iPhone products.
Since then, Finisar and its parent company II-VI have begun production at the Sherman facility. Most recently, the company announced that it will invest an additional $50 million to further build out its Sherman facilities by the end of 2021.
While Finisar was one of the first businesses in the recent technology boom to expand and invest in the Sherman market, the largest investment to date comes from Texas Instruments, which in 2011 By the end of 2021, it has announced that it will invest about 30 billion dollars. By upgrading chip production at Sherman to new 300mm silicon wafers. The new buildings will be built in four phases, the first of which is planned to start production in 2025.
This is the year It was followed by news that Globitek and parent company Global Wafers will invest $5 billion in a new silicon wafer manufacturing facility in 2022. The new facility will produce 300 millimeter silicon wafers, which are used to manufacture microchips and electronic components. Like TI, Globitek plans to build the new facility in four phases that will create a total of 1,500 new jobs.
Creating a technology ecosystem in Texoma
Sharp has used the term tech hub to describe the region since its announcements, a term that can be interpreted in many different ways. For some, being a tech hub involves creating an ecosystem of related businesses and industries that support and complement each other. This includes companies and developments in the multi-stage production chain from raw materials to finished products. Texoma currently hosts two of these standards in the form of TI and Globitek, Sharp said.
“If the wafer is made here, the wafer sends the chip to a chip company like TI that prints it on the wafer and sells it.
(Steps) in the process,” Sharpe said.
While Globitek can manufacture the silicon wafers used in chip manufacturing, other companies such as TI ultimately manufacture the chips. These chips are sent down the production chain to other manufacturers of circuit boards and other applications that are later used in countless other products, from cars and trucks to consumer electronics.
While it’s difficult to hire a company along the production line, Sharp said economic developers are targeting manufacturers that use chemicals and other raw materials and provide services earlier in the production line, such as Glubitech and Texas Instruments.
“That’s the low-hanging fruit because they need to be here.” They can’t even come into Dallas and send it here. They should be in Grayson County, but really should be as close to the plant as possible.
City Manager Robbie Hefton shares the view that this tech hub is a system of interconnected industries, comparing Sherman’s potential to what happened in the Portland area following the construction of Intel facilities.
“If you look at Google Maps, there was nothing, then there was Intel, and then there was all this other stuff around,” Hefton said. “That’s kind of what I think when these things start stacking up vertically.”
“So to me, a tech hub is not just about having a high-tech company here, it has a variety of things that support businesses,” he continued.
Beyond the business needs of the community, Hefton said, there are third-level needs of any successful business that can attract and attract workers to the community. This includes adequate housing and other community assets and facilities for the new workers.
“Being a technology hub ensures that your community not only has those basic building blocks, but also a livable community,” Hefton said. “We have a downtown that is desirable and a magnet and a destination for workers in those industries.”
Creating manpower will be a challenge.
While city leaders boast about Sherman’s amenities, Sharp pointed out that the community still has some hurdles for tech industries looking to relocate to Sherman. Among these challenges is human resources. In recent years, the Sherman-Denison region has experienced historic lows in unemployment rates, with some industrial employers having trouble recruiting from an already limited pool. These problems have grown in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and the struggle to hire across industries.
In addition to the aforementioned pool, Sharp said, the state may need additional educational resources to prepare candidate workers for these positions. Part of this section may be supplemented by existing partnerships and relationships. Sharp Sherman is fortunate to be within driving distance of the University of Texas at Dallas, which has maintained ties to TI through programs and training initiatives.
“I know there’s an academic component and that’s not just training in manufacturing jobs, but research and engineering, scientific stuff,” Sharpe said. “Usually a college offers some of that, but obviously UT Dallas offers a lot more. … That was the part that was missing from the telecom corridor.”
Locally, Grayson College has been instrumental in creating ways for students to pursue education and training in local industry, manufacturing and healthcare through local school AMP programs and other initiatives. However, Sharp said the types of jobs created by TI and Globitek may be outside the traditional scope of the AMP program.
Despite this, Grayson College President Jeremy McMillen said the college has a history of preparing workers for local tech jobs over the years. The college hosted short-term training programs focused on onboarding and developing employees to prepare for new positions. In the year In 2018, the college will receive $541,0000 in state grants to train Finisar employees in cleanroom operations and other onboarding training. Globitek has participated in training programs over the years.
“Globitech has been our training partner for decades and both of the trainings we’ve done there have been very tailored to what they needed at the time,” McMillen said.
The first step in providing training is to determine what skills employees need to enter these positions, McMillen said. The college is working with these companies to find out what programs they need. McMillen proposed that the next budget include $250,000 in training costs when the college must offer courses to employers next year.
“Some need two years, some need short-term training,” McMillen said. We should minimize the differences between the two only to the extent necessary.
While training will help provide a local pool of workers, Sharp said the first wave of workers for these expansions will likely come from outside Sherman.
“I feel like most of them are going to Sherman, at least for the first wave,” Sharpe said. “I look at our current AMP program and I don’t know if the numbers are there to meet the needs of Globitek, II-IV and TI.”
