Abstract
The manufacturing industry has over three hundred different manufacturing processes; each process has its own importance and application. Sacramento County has more than seventy large-scale manufacturing companies and small-scale machine shops. By searching on Thomas Net and on the manufacturing companies’ websites, I attempted to identify all the manufacturing processes around Sacramento County. I then selected a few processes and conducted a detailed investigation on Google for the available suppliers of each process. After accessing the online data, I tracked the rare manufacturing processes and then analyzed the needs of these processes in several cities of Sacramento County. In addition to analyzing the manufacturing processes data in my thesis, I interviewed the suppliers of two rare manufacturing processes, peening and injection molding, to discover the greatest need for suppliers in the Sacramento County. During the interviews, the suppliers explained many critical problems of manufacturers of Sacramento County such as, outsourcing, minimum wage increase and the waste of materials such as metals and plastics. Consequently, this thesis has also provided possible solutions for these local and statewide problems. In addition to the tracking of manufacturing activities, the thesis has provided suggestions for improving “Supplier Discovery”, an online project for developing the database of manufacturing companies that are specifically located in Sacramento County.