Manufacturers in Chicago: food, metalworking and the job shops of a two-state metro

This report is for engineers and buyers looking for a Chicago-area supplier, for analysts, site selectors and job seekers, and for B2B sellers working the metro's plants. It covers the Census count and how Chicago ranks, the 13 counties across Illinois and Indiana, what the plants make, the public companies headquartered here, the local data and groups for finding names, and a prospecting plan.

The count and how Chicago ranks

The US Census Bureau's County Business Patterns (CBP) for the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN metro area (CBSA 16980), all manufacturing (NAICS 31 to 33):

Ranking the CBP metro file ourselves, Chicago is third among metro areas by manufacturing establishments (after Los Angeles and New York) and second by manufacturing employees (after Los Angeles). Manufacturing is 8.7% of the jobs CBP counts in the metro, right at the national 8.8%.

CBP counts establishments: each plant or location with paid employees. A company with plants in Elk Grove Village and Gary counts twice, its downtown head office is classed as a management office, and owner-only shops aren't counted. The employee figures are for the week of March 12, 2023.

Thirteen counties in two states

Per-plant and pay figures are our calculation. Cook County alone has 47% of the metro's plants and employees. DuPage, Kane and McHenry to the west and northwest add 2,760 plants between them. Across the state line, Lake and Porter counties in Indiana have fewer, bigger and better-paid plants: seven of the metro's 12 iron and steel mills are there, employing 12,597 of the 13,260 people the mills employ.

What the metro makes

The detailed codes show the supplier network behind those totals:

For a buyer, that's the point of Chicago: a part can be turned, plated, molded and packed within a short drive. Food is the other pillar, with commercial bakeries, meat processors and 27 non-chocolate candy makers; see food companies in Chicago for that side.

Size

The 1 to 19 band combines 3,173 plants with 1 to 4 employees, 1,448 with 5 to 9 and 1,430 with 10 to 19. In all, 2,393 plants have 20 to 99 employees and 854 have 100 or more.

Public manufacturers headquartered in the Chicago area

SEC EDGAR has 60 listed companies with manufacturing SIC codes (2000 to 3999) and business addresses in the metro. The 16 largest by revenue, each confirmed in its latest Form 10-K:

Revenue is company-wide. A head office is where corporate purchasing and strategy sit; the plants that buy day to day may be in other states or countries.

Finding Chicago-area manufacturers by name

• City licenses. The City of Chicago's Business Licenses dataset, updated 29 October 2026, lists 627 active, unexpired Manufacturing Establishments licenses held by 592 business accounts, with addresses. It covers the city only, not the suburbs.
• IMEC. The Illinois Manufacturing Excellence Center is the state's NIST Manufacturing Extension Partnership center. It also administers Cook County's Manufacturing Reinvented grant program, which reimburses manufacturers for improvement projects and was not taking applications when we checked.
• Indiana side. The Purdue Manufacturing Extension Partnership covers Lake, Porter and the other Indiana counties.
• Development and business groups. World Business Chicago, the city's economic development agency, and the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce track expansions and new investment.

To check a supplier's safety record, use OSHA's Establishment Search. Illinois's OSHA state plan covers only public employees, so private plants in Illinois fall under federal OSHA; Indiana runs its own plan for private employers, so its inspections come from the state.

Prospecting the metro's plants

Job shops buy around their customers' programs: a new part number, a move to a larger building, a new five-axis machine or a first quality hire are the moments to call. Food plants plan around audits and line changeovers; steel mills around outages.

Worked example: a cutting tool distributor

Illustrative example. Prairie Tooling and its sales rates are fictional; the counts are from Census data.

Prairie Tooling Supply (prairietooling.example) sells cutting tools and tool management to machining shops, and wants plants with 10 to 99 employees.

• Machine shops, precision turned product makers and die and tool shops in the metro: 569 + 210 + 110 = 889.
• Across all metro manufacturing, 3,823 of 9,298 plants (41%) have 10 to 99 employees. At that share, about 365 of the 889 fit.
• Cook, DuPage and Kane counties hold 6,666 plants (72% of the metro), so about 260 accounts are within an hour of the warehouse.
• Prairie's reps can work 20 new accounts a month each, so two reps cover the list in about seven months.

The slow part is knowing which shops just won work that will change their tooling spend. Bebop can search for "Chicago-area machine shops and precision turned parts makers with 10 to 99 employees that bought new CNC equipment or are hiring machinists" and write a playbook for each.

Subject: Tooling for [Company]'s new [machine / work]

Hi [first name],

I saw [Company] is [adding a five-axis machine / hiring machinists]. New capacity usually brings new materials and cycle-time targets, and that's when tool costs drift.

We set up tool management for shops in Cook and DuPage counties and report cost per part each month. Could I stop by with a sample tooling plan for one of your jobs?

[Your name], Prairie Tooling Supply

For the metro's businesses in every industry, see companies in Chicago.

Next step: see the manufacturing industry guide for how job shops and larger plants make buying decisions.