David Peacock: The Importance of Onshoring

Hytrol has been an American-made company since it was founded in 1947. It’s a crucial aspect of our company’s brand and a huge factor in our success. Through the challenges we’ve had along the way, we’ve always pledged to keep our manufacturing facility in the United States, and there are many reasons we’ve chosen to do so.

Onshoring has been a growing trend for American manufacturing recently—about 700,000 jobs have been added in this industry since 2010, and that number continues to grow. Hytrol is actively participating in this trend. As we expand our facility, we are also increasing the number of positions we have to offer.

Onshoring is viewed as a positive turn for several reasons, and for Hytrol the reasons are simple: we want to continue to make the highest quality products in the world, to remain able to swiftly react to changing demands, and to support our hometown families. Our decision also fits with our core value of serving as good corporate citizens by proactively creating opportunities within the U.S. economy.

You Can’t Create Value Without Quality

Some manufacturers, steeped in dated manufacturing philosophies, might assume that production in a low-cost country would lead to lower costs and higher value. By focusing only on cheap labor, they missed the big picture: value is about more than initial cost. Effective quality control is valuable to a company and to its customers. Companies who keep manufacturing onshore have direct control over their processes and, thereby, control over the quality of their product at all times.

The reason that Hytrol creates a product of such quality isn’t an accident—it’s by design. By continually tracking all processes, we understand any issues immediately and work to rectify them. We don’t pay shipping to import potentially faulty Hytrol equipment, and that means our customers don’t either.

By manufacturing our product right here in Arkansas, we are ideally located to respond to the needs of our customers. If any change is needed, our engineers immediately respond with face-to-face communication with our production employees. That ability does not exist for companies that have elected to build their conveyors offshore.

Local Manufacturing=Smart Business

Manufacturing isn’t only important to the economy—you could argue that it’s the most important piece of the economy. Hytrol has almost 900 employees, but retaining those jobs in the U.S. has a much wider effect than that 900. For every $1 spent in manufacturing, another $1.40 is added to the economy. Each manufacturing job creates 2.5 jobs in local goods and services. That multiplier is the largest of any economic sector.

Looking at it from another direction, for each manufacturing job that is offshored, 2.5 U.S. jobs are lost. Moving a job from the U.S. to another country isn’t only putting your workforce out of jobs. You’re creating a ripple effect that extends to other industries, too.

Keeping manufacturing right here under our own roof just makes sense. We get to create more value and be more accountable to our customers, and we get to add to the economy we’re working in. The United States is a great place to be, this is a good time to grow, and we pledge to continue to work to keep the ideals we were founded on: creating a quality product with our customer in mind.