Now in its third year, the business organization CBIA is heading across the state on its manufacturing bus tour and WSHU's Brian Scott Smith spoke with CBIA president and CEO Chris DiPantema and asked him what the tour was all about.

It's another exciting way for us to celebrate Connecticut's rich legacy of manufacturing and also its importance to the economy today.

October is Manufacturing Month in Connecticut, although we celebrate manufacturing all year round because it's so critical to our economy, employing about 11%.

of the private sector workforce.

And so the bus tour is a way to showcase some of the state's top manufacturing facilities, get a better connection with those leading and working in those facilities, what their strengths are, maybe what some challenges are that we can work on here in Connecticut to make them grow even stronger than they have been.

And the audience on the bus tour is a wide variety of individuals from other business leaders, policymakers, educators, other manufacturers even looking for benchmarking and best practices.

It was...

The Lee Company was crowned for their satellite propellant isolation valve, which is a bit of a mouthful to say, but it's a device that they make that goes on pretty much every satellite up in space.