Jergens Leverages Cleveland’s Infrastructure From the Shop Floor to the Moon

There was a small piece of Jergens, Inc. orbiting the moon not too long ago. A quick-release pin, precision-machined on the floor of a Cleveland manufacturing facility, made the journey on NASA's Artemis II space shuttle. For Matt Schron, General Manager of Jergens, that fact is more than a point of pride — it’s a chapter of a story eight decades in the making.

"Jergens started in 1942," Schron said. "At that time, we were making parts for the wartime effort — airplane seat parts that were made here in Cleveland." The company grew, diversified, and for a time moved away from aerospace entirely. "Today we've actually gone full circle, and now we're making more aerospace components than we ever have in the past."

Jergens' story is an example of what Cleveland's industrial ecosystem makes possible, and a signal to every manufacturer considering where to locate, consolidate, or expand.

A City That Never Stopped Making Things

Cleveland's manufacturing story is not a moment in history. It is a living, compounding ecosystem that has survived, adapted, and in many sectors, accelerated. 

Northeast Ohio is home to more than 6,000 manufacturing companies, with regional specialties in primary and fabricated metals, plastics and rubber, and machinery manufacturing. That scale is not accidental. It is the product of generations of companies choosing to stay, grow, and build here,  and in doing so, creating the conditions that make the next company's success more likely. 

For Jergens, the ecosystem isn't an afterthought. It's the people they call when they need answers.

"Whenever we have a new product, or a new part that we're trying to research, the nice thing about Cleveland is that there are many different resources you can tap into,” Schron said. “You have either the friend who has made a similar part, or they have the material that they've either machined or tested."

That kind of proximity — technical, relational, and geographic — is not something a company can replicate by relocating to just anywhere. It is something built over time, in a place where manufacturing has always mattered.

Titanium, Aerospace, and Institutional Knowledge

Jergens' current work illustrates how Cleveland's ecosystem delivers in practice. As the company has expanded deeper into aerospace, it has encountered the challenges that any advanced manufacturer faces when working with sophisticated materials.

"We have some new materials that we're working on, including titanium and specialty applications that go into aerospace and defense markets," Schron said. 

Working with titanium is not straightforward. It requires specific tooling, precise machining strategies, and knowledge of how to treat and process the material across its full production lifecycle. For a manufacturer developing those capabilities, the learning curve can be steep. In Cleveland, it doesn’t have to be. 

"There are friends in the area that we can source titanium from," Schron said. "How you machine that titanium, what product do you use to machine it, how do you treat it, how do you go through and process it? There's a whole ecosystem around Cleveland that allows you to tap into their experience and knowledge."

This is what distinguishes a true industrial cluster from a simple concentration of companies. The knowledge flows between colleagues at industry events, between neighbors on the shop floor, between companies that compete in some markets and collaborate in others. For a manufacturer working at the frontier of aerospace materials, that circulating knowledge is among the most valuable assets a location can offer.

Cleveland's anchor institutions amplify this effect at the research level. NASA Glenn Research Center, located in Cleveland, serves as a national hub for aeronautics, propulsion, and materials science, including advanced metals, hypersonic systems, and next-generation aerospace components. And MAGNET (Manufacturing Advancement for Growth in Northeast Ohio) provides manufacturers of all sizes with direct access to innovation resources, robotics expertise, and smart manufacturing capabilities.

Big Companies, Small Companies, and the Space Between

One of the less-discussed dimensions of Cleveland's manufacturing ecosystem is its vertical range, the span from global Fortune 500 corporations to newly launched startups, and everything in between. Parker Hannifin, a Fortune 500 company and global leader in motion and control technologies, is headquartered in Greater Cleveland with roughly 58,000 employees worldwide. Cleveland-Cliffs, the largest flat-rolled steel producer in North America, is based downtown. Lincoln Electric and Swagelok round out a roster of internationally recognized industrial leaders.

But for Schron, the full spectrum matters, not just the flagship names.

"You have big companies with lots of good experience, and you have small companies, too, that are just starting and growing," he said. "So if you want different resources to utilize, you can tap into all of those people to help support you as well."

In a manufacturing ecosystem where the majority of firms are small and mid-sized, the supply chain is more flexible, more locally sourced, and more responsive than one dominated by a few large players. For a company like Jergens manufacturing aerospace components and constantly innovating on the production floor, access to both the depth of large-company expertise and the agility of smaller specialists is not just a convenience, it’s also a competitive advantage.

Manufacturing as Community

Cleveland's ecosystem goes beyond supply chains and knowledge networks. It is a community in the most literal sense defined by shared identity, mutual support, and a genuine investment in collective success.

"I have friends, relatives, and everybody else in between that are all part of manufacturing," Schron said. "We work together, we see each other, we help each other out. It's a great place to have a business, to have manufacturing, because the people are here to support you."

This culture is both a cause and an effect of Cleveland's manufacturing density. Companies stay because the community supports them. The community deepens because companies stay. And the relationships that form across that community between competitors, collaborators, suppliers, and customers become the connective tissue of an ecosystem that individual firms could never build alone.

Cleveland's workforce reflects that same concept. More than half of the graduates from the region's 20-plus colleges and universities chose to stay in 2024 — a talent retention rate that gives companies a talent pool that recognizes and appreciates the region's opportunities, giving manufacturers immediate access to one of the deepest precision labor pools in the country.

What It Means to Welcome a New Manufacturer

For companies considering a move to Cleveland, Schron's perspective is worth hearing directly, not as a civic booster, but as a manufacturer who has built his career in the city’s infrastructure and knows exactly what it offers.

"For a company coming into Cleveland, I'm excited for them," he said. "It gives me an opportunity to work with them, right? How do I network with them? What skills and values do they bring? What resources do they bring to Cleveland? What opportunities can we partner with them on? How can we showcase Cleveland on a global scale?"

The city is investing to make sure the stage keeps growing. A $100 million Site Readiness Fund is unlocking 1,000 acres of shovel-ready industrial land to attract the next generation of manufacturers. A $1.73 billion modernization of Cleveland Hopkins International Airport is expanding the city's capacity as a global freight and talent gateway. Ohio's manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index was expanding in early 2026, a sign that the momentum in the sector is real and accelerating.

The Full Circle

Schron's description of Jergens' journey from wartime aerospace, through decades of precision workholding, and back to aerospace is a story about adaptability. But it is also a story about place. Jergens did not make that journey somewhere else. It made it in Cleveland, surrounded by the suppliers, partners, research institutions, and fellow manufacturers that made each evolution possible.

"We left the wartime efforts making job shop components and workholding stuff, and now we're back, and the number one parts we're making are aerospace components," he said. “We've gone full circle, starting in aerospace, getting out of it, and now we're going to the moon."

For manufacturers looking for a place to build something that lasts, something that grows, adapts, and ultimately reaches for the highest possible ambitions, Cleveland's ecosystem is not a starting point. For companies like Jergens, it is the reason they got there.