Manufacturing Day lets Butler Technologies, Penn United showcase new opportunities
Two manufacturers in Butler County used National Manufacturing Day on Friday, Oct. 7, to show off.
Butler Technologies and Penn United opened their doors and invited the public to see their new technologies and facilities.
“It's a national event, and this is our first time participating for an open-house style event like this,” said Courtney Houtz, Butler Technologies marketing specialist. “It's meant to dispel the stigma around manufacturing. It's really not a dirty, gross environment."
Butler County is home to more manufacturers than any other county in Pennsylvania, with an average salary of $46,000 according to the Tri-County Manufacturing Consortium.
Penn United, which specializes in high precision metal manufacturing, used the day’s platform to showcase its new manufacturing facility with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 300 North Pike Road in Buffalo Township, across from Lernerville Speedway.
According to Bill Jones, Penn United president, the new building cost almost $10 million, with a new assembly line in place and another identical one that should come early next year.
"Encouraged by our entrepreneurial spirit, we started looking for a way to add space,“ Jones said. ”The other building is kind of land-locked, and we looked at trying to add onto that building, but it just wasn't going to fit. We had other things in the building up until recently."
Penn United did not announce the amount of jobs it will be looking to fill, but the hiring process has already begun, as open interviews were conducted following the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
Jones explained Penn United’s expansion will help keep these types of jobs within the United States.
"’Made in the USA’ needs to be on everything we produce,“ Jones said. ”We have some large goals for our employee-owned company and hope to be good employers, so we can continue to give back to our community. Because I believe that's what it's really all about."
Butler Technologies, which specializes in making custom user interface products and printed electronics, is also seeing growth, thus giving the company the need to expand its manufacturing floor.
Houtz said the company hopes to break ground next door to its current location, at 231 W. Wayne Street in Butler, within the next year.
"The manufacturing floor will move over to the new building, and the old building will be more office space,“ Houtz said.
Butler Technologies also hosted guided tours of its facility, which was open to the public to help draw interest to the company.
With expansion just on the horizon, Houtz said the company has just one open position at the moment. But it will need more help once the new building opens.
Butler Technologies started out as a simple screen printing company, but today it has products that stretch across many different industries.
One area that has been picking up at both Butler Technologies and Penn United is their wearable technologies.
"We also see growth in connected medical devices,“ said Charlie Phillips, Penn United vice president. ”It's one of the biggest projects we are working on right now. Wearable devices that monitor health, dose medicine — and it allows your medical provider to see exactly what's happening."
According to Mike Wagner at Butler Technologies, wearable technology has been in the works since 2016.
"We see a lot of growth in that industry,“ Wagner said. ”Everything is now mobile. They want data in real time, so putting sensors and things like that in the clothing and gathering information has been at the forefront in athletic monitoring, but now medical industries are seeing some benefits to that, because they can do remote doctor to patient interfacing."
Industrial production has come a long way, and there are so many more career opportunities in the field, especially on its home turf, Houtz said.
"Manufacturing is not what it used to be,“ he said. ”It's new, and it's advancing. We make really cool different products."
