Building and selling products made in the United States is a part of Mortara Instrument’s identity and is critical to its business, says Chuck Webster, senior vice president of the Americas. “We want customers and members of the community to know that we made a conscious decision to manufacture products in the U.S.,” he says. It is also a business approach that led the company in September 2012 to launch its “Built with Pride in Milwaukee” campaign to coincide with the company’s 30-year anniversary in the non-invasive cardiology business.
“Built with Pride in Milwaukee” isn’t just a marketing campaign, says Webster. “It is a choice that Mortara has made to keep knowledge and innovation in the U.S., regardless of potential cost-savings. Because our headquarters and manufacturing operations are located in Milwaukee, we have direct oversight of the quality of Burdick, Mortara and Quinton products that are delivered to our customers across the globe. We design in the U.S. We manufacture in the U.S. Keeping design engineers and manufacturing team members together yields higher efficiency, better quality and vastly improved responsiveness. Taken together, these facts trump any perceived economic advantage of outsourcing jobs to low-cost countries.
“We believe that this approach is a critical component of our success and sets us apart from our competitors. Manufacturing products in the United States really resonates with our customers. It denotes a certain level of quality, and we believe purchasers like to know that they are contributing to the U.S. economy.”
Speaking recently to CEOCFO Magazine, Mortara CEO Justin Mortara, PhD, explained the company’s approach. “We design products in-house,” he said. “We have an R&D group in Milwaukee and another in Bologna, Italy, that collaborate. These designs are ultimately turned into products and shipped throughout the world.
“Manufacturing in Milwaukee is exciting for us, and we feel strongly that it is not only a good thing to be close to our manufacturing facilities from a quality standpoint, but it is also, quite honestly, a good thing for the community. We have real jobs that we are offering across a diverse set of skills. It is nice to have not just senior talent design engineers, but entry-level assembly people working as part of the team. It feels good as a CEO to be expanding in that area and offering more jobs across that entire spectrum.”
The fact that labor is a relatively small component of the total cost of the company’s products makes the made-in-the-USA approach easier for Mortara to implement. “In our devices…there are a significant number of technological components and a comparatively small amount of labor to assemble the products,” Mortara told CEOCFO Magazine. “The nominal higher cost of manufacturing in the U.S. and, more specifically, in Milwaukee, has a comparatively small impact because the labor content is low.”
Says Webster, “We encourage [distributor sales reps] to share that our products are manufactured in the U.S., in order to highlight the reputation of our brands.
“The Burdick, Mortara, Quinton brands have long been recognized as innovative, integrated, and designed to solve the challenges of the clinical environment, as well as simple to operate,” he continues. “We look forward to continuing that tradition for decades to come. Manufacturing products in the United States will be part of that tradition.”