Sponsored: Detecto – October 2024 – The Journal of Healthcare Contracting
Manufacturing the majority of its products in the U.S. is much more than a strategy for DETECTO, said Jonathan Sabo, Vice-President of Marketing & Customer Support. “It’s baked into the very ethos of who we are as a company. We are proudly USA-made of American and global components for most of our medical products.
“From the beginning, DETECTO has always been a true vertically-integrated manufacturer of medical products and our founder believed that if we could make it here at our factory in Webb City, Missouri then we would,” Sabo continued. “From the strain gauges in the load cells of our electronic scales to our printed circuit board production to the metal fabrication and final assembly, the DETECTO factory is alive with USA-made manufacturing ingenuity and hard work every day.”
DETECTO can control its own destiny when it comes to supply chain, since the company controls a large percentage of it internally. “This especially became critical during COVID when we controlled a larger piece of the pie in our parts and production cycle than many others and could react quicker and more nimbly in helping our medical customers,” Sabo said
The benefits of being USA-made of American and global components has many advantages to the local community in Webb City. The company has a positive impact on southwest Missouri in that they employ well-paying, long-lasting jobs that are stable and allow employees to work with customers on a global stage. The manufacturing industry is fairly stable compared to many other sectors, and especially scale manufacturing itself doesn’t have the crashing highs and lows of other industries that are significantly impacted by outside economic influences.
The need never ends for medical scales, mobile storage carts, waste receptacles, and stadiometers that are manufactured, so that provides permanent, healthy jobs for the local economy.
“We’ve found that customers do definitely appreciate USA-made goods and are willing to pay a slight premium for them, inside the U.S. especially, but also overseas,” said Sabo. “Many of our international distributors in the Middle East, Latin America, and southeast Asia have sought us out due to our factory being in Webb City, Missouri that is ISO quality controlled and VCAP certified. They know we control a large percent of our supply chain and production process internally, so that allows us to monitor production quality and ensure the best product for our customers, so our distributors aren’t constantly chasing return issues.”
Speed and consolidation are the two biggest areas of change in the post-pandemic world, Sabo said. “We have changed our production planning and business model in recent years to better help our customers by having more finished goods on our warehouse shelves, so that we can quick-ship next day. This has become an expectation in the Amazon era we live in now that when an order is placed it will ship out right away, whether it is one of our medical scales, carts, waste receptacles, or stadiometers.”