Our business partners in Boston are finding that it’s not always cheaper having products made in China.
Boston’s Temperature@lert, a maker of temperature monitors that send alerts to e-mail and cell phones, has shifted manufacturing for all of its products from China to the U.S., including some to Massachusetts, CEO Harry Schechter said.
Founded in 2005, Temperature@lert had contracted the production for two of its three main products to Chinese manufacturers. With the rise in fuel costs recently the company began looking for a way to save on fuel costs by manufacturing in the U.S. The company does frequent shipments of small amounts of product and rising fuel costs had become a big issue for them.
The article gave more background on the company that we found very interesting:
The cellular product has always been made in the U.S., at contract manufacturer New England CM of Franklin, Mass., but the company moved the other two products to the U.S. in September, Schechter said. The USB product is being made New England CM, he said.
The company ultimately found larger logistics-related savings, including reducing product defects to near-zero. Temperature@lert updates its monitors — for cellular, USB and wifi — every quarter, and so locating the manufacturing in the U.S. allows the company to move faster, said CEO Harry Schechter.
Who knows, maybe with the economy downturn causing CFO’s to to examine costs more closely, more companies might be considering bringing manufacturing back to the United States and that could also mean more jobs. Wouldn’t that be a win win? Let us know what you think about this. We’d like to hear from you.
If you would like to read the full article from Boston Business Journal, just click here.
