Ipsen Viewpoint April 2011

Published 4/19/11 on www.TheMonty.com

At Ipsen, we disagree with recent articles predicting that the end is near for American manufacturing. In fact, our team is affirming every day that this is not the case. Driven by the motto, "Hard Work Wins," we are dedicated to an intense focus on innovation, service and support, which we believe reflects why American manufacturing continues to thrive.

"Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower." - Steve Jobs

No matter your industry, innovation is an advantage. In the example of cars, the car-maker works hard to understand customer needs and overlays as well as macro-economic trends, environmental concerns, energy consumption, cost and design. After all the analysis is complete, they take a leap of faith that they did their homework correctly and start producing 40 per hour.

The Ipsen Team installs a TITAN® H4, installed and online in 3 days.

In 2008, Ipsen's Innovation team believed that this business model should also apply to heat treatment, and an initiative called Project TITAN® was born. Global acceptance of the American-made TITAN® Vacuum Furnace has exceeded expectations with systems already sold into 15 different countries, but we can't just sit back and relax on the heels of that success. Our Innovation team is now busy working on TITAN® 2.0.

Jim Grann teaches an Ipsen U class.

American manufacturers realize that service takes commitment, that providing a quality product means providing quality support. In recent years, we noticed that many of our customers' highly skilled maintenance workers and technicians were retiring and not being replaced. We saw this change as an opportunity to re-affirm our focus on service.

We started a program last year to double our service team within two years through a training school. We then decided that this training could also help our customers build their knowledge base, and Ipsen University (Ipsen U) was born. Creating a standard development program has been a key building block for providing all around quality to our customers.

Ipsen Shanghai opened a second plant in the greater Shanghai region town of Changzhou. The factory was opened in mid-March to meet sharply increasing local demand in China for Ipsen thermal processing equipment.

American manufacturing's success is also linked to building a strong global support network. Globally, Ipsen is expanding to better serve our customers. In the last year alone, we doubled our manufacturing factory space in China, opened a service, sales and testing facility in Malaysia to serve ASEAN countries, expanded our team in Brazil and broke ground in Bangalore for our second facility in India. The next 12 months will be no less active with further expansion plans - including expansion in the USA. With continued focus on innovation, service and global support, American manufacturing is here to stay, because: Hard Work Wins.