Since moving its China-based production lines back to the United States last year, DeVilbiss Healthcare has seen an increase in demand for those products. As a result, the company has increased its US workforce by over 20% and is positioning itself for growth.
In order to keep up with demand for these US-manufactured products (most DeVilbiss products are made in the United States or made in the United States of US and imported products), DeVilbiss has increased its manufacturing hours from 12 hours a day to 16 hours a day with two separate 8-hour shifts.
Recently, DeVilbiss has hired 33 assemblers and a manufacturing supervisor, three manufacturing engineers and a technician, and three quality engineers and two technicians. In addition, several of DeVilbiss’ suppliers have added to their workforce to keep up with the demand from DeVilbiss.
“In today’s competitive marketplace, customers are demanding reliable products that help them lower their costs. The high quality and lower total cost of ownership of our products has driven our sales growth,” says Ed Murphy, president & CEO of DeVilbiss Healthcare, in a release. “We have hired new people every month since returning these products to the USA.”
In 2007, the decision was made to move a number of DeVilbiss’ production lines to China in order to decrease production costs and remain competitive in the marketplace. In August 2012, DeVilbiss determined the optimal solution to accelerating the continuous quality improvement program for these products was to relocate the production of the China-based product lines back to Somerset, Pa. This project was completed in November 2013.
The production lines brought back to the corporate headquarters in Somerset were for the DeVilbiss iFill Oxygen Filling Station, several compressor nebulizer systems, and the 5-liter oxygen concentrator.
DeVilbiss’ IntelliPAP CPAP Systems, Vacu-Aide Series Suction Units, and DeVilbiss iGo Portable Oxygen System have always been manufactured at the Somerset headquarters.
