Accelerate Magazine October 2020

OCTOBER 2020 MAGAZINE 19 COVER STORY is gaining momentum as we enter the fourth quarter of the year. Eaton announced in September that it will invest $24 million to expand its 2300 Badger Drive facility by 233,000 square feet. Eaton said it is redesigning its Power Systems footprint in southeast Wisconsin to increase production of regulators and transformers, improve production efficiencies and reduce costs. “This project is a long-term investment in the community that will enable Eaton Power Systems Division to increase volume and better meet the growing needs of customers in the utility markets,” said Jackie Pride, communications manager for Eaton Power Systems Division. The result will be more than 700 employees at the company’s Badger Drive location in Waukesha. Construction on the expansion is planned for this fall and anticipated to be complete by fall of 2021. Some manufacturers are even expanding because of the pandemic. In the early days of the pandemic, it became clear that a complicated global supply chain for medical, pharmaceutical, safety and other critical supplies hindered early access to those supplies. Many American manufacturing companies innovated swiftly to ramp up production of hand sanitizer, face masks and coverings, industrial cleaners, critical medical equipment and more as those items became nearly impossible to find through the traditional global channels. In June, Sussex IM, a leader in custom injection molding and advanced automation, announced the addition of an ISO Class 8 clean room to be completed later this year. The $2 million investment reflects the company’s ongoing commitment to support the ever-growing medical market complementing its ISO 13485 certification, achieved in 2018. As Sussex IM CEO Keith Everson says, “the pandemic has triggered a manufacturing renaissance in the United States.” Sussex IM has set its sights on preparing for life after the pandemic. The 43-year-old company is anticipating a future shortage in clean room capacity as more medical production comes back to the U.S. The plans are part of a multi-year, phased approach to continue adding flexibility and increased capacity to serve the medical market, so that Sussex IM can adapt to the likelihood of OEMs quickly increasing reshoring efforts in the coming months. “We see issues in the complicated global supply chain that have created a demand for more medical molding clean room capacity. This is the first step of many we are taking to solve these problems,” Everson said. In addition to the clean room, Sussex IM is expanding its Advanced Manufacturing Facility with a 71,000-square-foot addition, scheduled to be completed in February 2021. The clean room and Advanced Manufacturing Facility THE PANDEMIC HAS TRIGGERED A MANUFACTURING RENAISSANCE IN THE UNITED STATES. Rendering of the IOS Class 8 clean room at Sussex IM's facility in Sussex.