When Marcia Thompson and her husband Jeff first started Thompson Fabricating Inc. more than a decade ago they were constantly involved in every part of their business.

Producing roll-offs -- large metal containers for the waste and scrap industry -- her husband would roll up his sleeves to work on the production line while Mrs. Thompson pulled duty at office work. Now though the couple has more leisure time and devotes more of their efforts at growing the Wheatland company.

"We crossed-trained our employees to do everything just in case something ever happened to us,'' Mrs. Thompson explained.

These and other ideas were given to women on the Women's Economic Development Outreach tour which hit Mercer County on Thursday.

Following the tour at Thompson Fabricating the group headed for Precision Steel Services Inc., an aluminum extrusion fabricator in Farrell.

Sponsored by National City Bank, the business tour began Monday in Westmoreland County and worked its way north up the I-79 corridor each successive day. The tour ends today in Warren and Erie counties.

Although learning about the various businesses along the tour is featured, the true highlight is to offer information and resources to women in business.

Each day is started with a seminar giving women business owners tips followed by afternoon tours of locally-owned companies where businesswomen are a guiding force.

Seminar topics such as financing, how to access state and federal business programs and contacts with local chambers of commerce and development groups along each stop were talked about.

But economy of time was the name of the day, said Linda Stevenson, a National City vice president who created the tour.

"Anyone of these topics could have been a full day,'' Ms. Stevenson said. "Women want to manage their time. They don't want to leave their business for a full day.''

Women take a different tack when it comes to business, said Catherine Mott, site manager for the tour and owner of Strategic Sales Solutions, a Mercer consulting company.

"Women don't network like men,'' Ms. Mott said. "Men take a half-day off work to play golf. Women won't do that.''

For that reason women business owners often aren't up to par on knowing financial resources available to them, she added.

Dubbing the tour a success, Mrs. Stevenson said it will be made an annual event. She's already picked out next year's theme -- insurance.

"There were an awful lot of questions on insurance today,'' she said.