"If you are serious and you don't know what you want to do, find a trade, go to community college, get a job, and then figure it out." - Kevin Conlin

"We all do about anything. None of us are better than anyone else." - Mike Taylor

Last Wednesday, we visited one of Illini Prairie CEO's investors: Mid-State Tank, near Sullivan. Mike Taylor, Manufacturing Services Manager, and Kevin Conlin, General Manager, not only talked through their business with us, they walked us through every area of the manufacturing plant.

Conlin's father and a partner started Mid-State Tank in 1986. Mid-State specializes in aluminum and stainless steel ag chemical and fertilizer tanks, aircraft refueling and deicing tanks, and chlorification tanks for municipal water departments.

Three key ideas stood out to us at Mid-State:
1. They train within, and do not require employees to have welding experience.
2. Everything about the plant is designed with efficiency and quality control in mind.
3. Employees are trained to be versatile and rotate through various areas of the plant often.

Mid-State Tank is working towards being even more efficient in the future, breaking ground next month on a new Plant 3 at the main headquarters.

Thank you, Mid-State Tank, for the thorough tour of your plant, and for getting us thinking about quality control and traceability.

(Oh, and thank you for the breakfast burritos. We're pretty sure Aian & Gavin ate 4 each. So good!)

#entrepreneur
Midland Institute for Entrepreneurship
@Mid-State Tank