Officials use Mack tour to tout strong businesses in Gardner

By Owen Boss

GARDNER — In a continued effort to raise people’s awareness of the strong businesses that exist in the local area, Mayor Mark Hawke, members of City Council and Greater Gardner Chamber of Commerce toured the Mack Prototype Inc. building Tuesday. Mack President Ric Perry said 96 percent of the prototyping company’s sales come from low-volume manufacturing of items that include computer products, various athletic equipment, automotive parts, plastics needed for knee replacement surgeries and state-of-the-art robotic household appliances. “Low-volume manufacturing means that some of the machining processes here will only produce three or five products a month, while some of our equipment in the basement can produce three or five thousand a month,” Mr. Perry said. Mr. Perry added that while producing thousands of products a month may seem like a lot, when considering the production ability of other local manufacturers such as the ACT Fastening solutions plant, Mack’s numbers are much lower by comparison. Mr. Perry said that he was particularly proud of the company’s involvement with producing various medical equipment that would make state-of-the-art surgeries such as knee replacements and artificial hearts possible. Also a point of pride for the company is the fact that they signed a contract with the Massachusetts based company, iRobot, and produced all of the prototypes for their extremely popular robotic household cleaning device, the Roomba. The company is also proud of its employees, who, according to Mr. Perry, oftentimes stay past their work shift to complete personal projects with the machinery located within the building. “We find that many of our employees will stay after work to continue their own personal projects after hours,” said Mr. Perry. “They work with the same skill set they do during the day, and develop their skills in their spare time.” Unlike other companies, Mack Prototype has not had to cut back on their employees as a result of a struggling local and national economy. “We started off last year with 32 employees,” said Mr. Perry. “We ended the year with the exact same 32 employees, and in this day and age that really is unheard of.” oboss@thegardnernews.com

Appeared on Page 3 on 5/8/2008 (Vol. 206 No. 110)