Macromatic in BizTimes Magazine

Made In Milwaukee Macromatic focuses on new product development

By Hilary Dickinson, BizTimes Milwaukee

Macromatic Industrial Controls Inc. boasts approximately 15,000 catalog numbers, but its goal is to continue developing two or three new products or redesigns every year.

This is one way the industrial control and monitoring products manufacturer, which celebrated its 40th anniversary May 1, works to stay fresh and ahead of the competition.

"My strategy has been every eight to 10 years technology changes, and you learn a lot about what customers like and want and maybe aren't getting from someone else. You listen to what they wish they could have if someone could give it to them, and those kinds of things we try to incorporate," said president John Perdue.

Earlier this year, Macromatic launched two 17.5 mm modular products, a time delay relay and a voltage monitor relay, in a new mounting configuration offering a narrow, compact design intended to save space in control panels.

Time delay relays turn on and off at different times and under different sequences to help an electrically-controlled process do what it is designed to do. Voltage monitor relays, on the other hand, protect equipment when an overvoltage or undervoltage condition is potentially damaging or when equipment is required to operate within an upper and lower voltage limit.

The company also plans to unveil this month a redesign of a three-phase monitor relay called the PMD Series Relay, originally introduced in 2014. The redesign, which is DIN-rail mounted versus plug-in, features a new enclosure design and includes better fault indication and true RMS voltage sensing.

Three-phase monitor relays monitor voltage levels and will turn off a motor if a fault is sensed to prevent expensive equipment damage.

Time delay relays, voltage monitor relays, and three-phase monitor relays are considered three of Macromatic's nine product families. The others are alternating relays, seal leak and temperature relays, liquid level control relays, current sensing relays, intrinsically safe relays, and custom engineered products.

All the products, however, can be classified into two groups: those that manage electrically-controlled processes, and those that protect equipment like motors against voltage and current faults.

Macromatic's products are mainly used in the HVACR (heating, ventilating, air conditioning and refrigeration), pump control, material handling, water treatment, generator, and lift and elevator industries. It recently entered into the irrigation market as well, serving customers in golf course irrigation and farmland irrigation.

All the products are built to order, and each contains a circuit board with associated parts. They are assembled, programmed, tested and packaged at Macromatic's 16,000-square-foot Menomonee Falls facility.

Perdue said the assembly process has become more efficient since the company redesigned its workspace into modular cells about three years ago. Now, the product families are built in centralized areas, thereby saving space and eliminating the need for the product and the employee to move far across the facility.

Macromatic, which sells directly to OEMs and through North American distributors, employs 20 people. Perdue said he plans to hire another two this year and one or two next year.

While he did not disclose the company's annual revenue, Perdue said Macromatic has averaged double digit growth every year since 2009. He expects that rate of growth to continue for at least the next five years.

The growth, he said, is due to focusing on the company's areas of strengths; developing new products and redesigns; and putting a newfound emphasis on marketing.