Milwaukee Tool announced today that they will be opening a new Engineering Design and Innovation space in Chicago, to accommodate the company’s continued investments into new technology.
In press materials, Milwaukee says:
As Milwaukee Tool continues to pursue advancements in productivity and safety on the jobsite, the level of innovation necessary to design and develop breakthrough solutions requires engineering expertise across many disciplines. The company continues to actively invest in emerging technologies around motors, power electronics, lithium-ion batteries, wireless connectivity and IoT, embedded systems, and artificial intelligence.
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The new R&D office will be located in a 70,000 square foot space within the historic Old Post Office in Chicago, which Milwaukee invested more than $14 million to renovate.
Approximately 10,000 square feet will be dedicated to lab space, for design and development of critical new technologies.
The space will be used by engineers from multiple disciplines, including embedded systems, firmware, power electronics, systems and mechanical engineers, PCB designers, and project leaders.
Milwaukee adds that the new location will act as an extension to their Brookfield, Wisconsin headquarters.
At the time of this posting, Milwaukee employs more than 10,000 people in the United States.
They spent $216 million in domestic expansion projects in the last year, including at this new facility in Chicago.
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Milwaukee Tool also has domestic presences at Greenwood, Grenada, Olive Branch, Clinton, and Jackson, MS, and Brookfield, Menomonee Falls, Milwaukee, West Bend, Mukwonago, and Sun Prairie, WI, Cookeville, TN, and Greenwood, IN.
Related, Milwaukee expects to open their new USA hand tool factory in 2022.
Any questions?
Steve
Now they will be known as Chicago Electric Power Tool! Oh wait… 😉
Itisnotme
I’m assuming employees will be provided with bullet-proof vests and an ammunition allowance.
Drew M
I wonder if body armor is legal there…
Rob
There’s no gang violence in that area. It’s Richie Rich land. You clearly don’t know Chicagoland. The interstate runs through the damn building. Their silver spoon recruits can live in Schaumburg and commute for an hour or buy a fancy apartment on the coast.
Travis
Interesting. As a mechanical engineer myself, I would not consider Chicago as a center of excellence for engineering in general- I know many machine tool companies have offices there, but in my experience most of the real engineering gets done elsewhere- Makino has a mold center in Wisconsin for example, and DMG Mori is in California. I wonder if there was a tax break/financial incentive that influenced their choice of location.
TonyT
I also think of Chicago more of a financial and trade center, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t significant industrial activity in the area. Chicago does have the biggest, by far, automation show in the US (if it’s still going on after Covid).
There’s a lot of high tech outside the well known areas, such as the Minneapolis/St Paul metro area (medical, hard drive, industrial automation), Fresno/Central Valley (agricultural automation), Orlando (optics/lasers), and Arizona (lots of semiconductor and optics). On the CNC side, Haas is in the Los Angeles area.
mkaz
The future of power tools is comically large Bluetooth dongles.
I would suspect this is partially to tap into a bigger white collar/tech talent pool, without going to one of the more prohibitively expensive markets (SF, NYC). With tools, you can’t do 100% remote and yet you’ve gotta compete with companies that can. There’s a ton of existing software, embedded systems, etc in Chicago.
A few years back, a Bosch recruiter contacted me about a mobile app position in Chicago. Sometimes I wonder how that would have gone.
Anyway, Chicago’s not too far away from Milwaukee. It makes sense to me given where things are headed.
fred
You might be right about incentives for the location. Chicago is not so bad a commute from the city of Milwaukee and may be a spot for higher visibility. A 10,000 sq foot lab and 70,000 sq. ft, R&D center sound as much like a showcase operation as it does a working facility. I say that thinking about our metal fabrication building that had a footprint of about 250,000 square feet. I’m not a naysayer about this, however, and no matter what Milwaukee’s intentions for use – this seems like a nice development. Also, that old post office – while not in the chi-chi miracle mile section north of the river – is still in a nice business district which should avoid the gun violence of some South Chicago neighborhoods.
Jim Felt
I’m mostly brand agnostic but sure have a lot of respect for their investing in the North American market over the years.
As for “Chicago” its so called stereotypical perception mentioned above like so many other cities is illusionary to most actual residents.
I think it’s a great positioning move on their part. The revitalization of that historic building is just so part of their product usage too.
The real big question is what’s going to replace Lithium-ion?
John
Agreed on both parts. Sadly seems to depend on what channel you watch and I’m curious to know what Milwaukee will develop out of this place. Maybe a multivolt battery or system for new tools to be more efficient.
Adam
I left Chicago for a reason, and this was 10 years ago. It is a city to visit, not live.
If Milwaukee was given tax incentives, then ask the people of the state what they think of *their* taxes. The peoples only tax incentive is to move out of state unfortunately.
fred
I read that the population of the Loop area (where the Old Post Office is located) grew by something like 45% from 2010 to 2020 – and that the population of the overall city was down slightly in 2019 – but then up by a bit more than the 2019 loss in 2020. Perhaps that’s reversed in the last year and maybe it’s an artifact of something else going on. As you say, it certainly is different from the state as a whole where the population seems to be in decline particularly in the last 2 years – where something like 120,000 people moved out.
Rob
I know plenty of people that left the state and their experience has been exactly how I told them it would be. Education takes a nose dive when you leave Illinois. Everything else naturally falls into place from there.
Badger12345
They also built/renovated a new facility in downtown Milwaukee. The company has been aggressively recruiting new graduates in engineering, product development, marketing, sales, finance, etc. and like many other companies they have learned that these early career employees want an active night life and all of the other amenities that appeal to young, single, and relatively high income people. They have little desire to live out in the boring suburbs where many of us older people with families might prefer.
TomD
Those new career employees eventually have families, so a company that straddles the “high city life” and the “quieter suburb life” can be a great deal. Start working in the Chicago office, later when you’ve some kids and want a house, move to the Wisconsin office.
Ron
That Chicago office is the literal entrance to the city. The highway ends under it and becomes Congress parkway. Union Station is a ONE MINUTE walk from it. The selling point is that they’re expecting people to live in the burbs.
Although, I personally took that commute for a couple of years and would rather not. But I currently sleep at work because I don’t want to drive a half an hour. So, grain of salt and all of that.
Milwaukee and Chicago are the same in that you’ll never know when you’re out of the city limits unless a sign or a map tells you. Especially in modern times where every other building is an identical corporate store.
Albert
These are the kinds of jobs this country needs. Not the ones making shiny sockets and wrenches.
SamR
IMO this move is purposed for a future HQ electric car company or to supply future car companies with battery technologies. TTi is spreading it is web in the US car industry. For more information, read about Automotive China’s plan “Made in China 2025.”
Paul C
Ok, I read it. It is completely different from what you claim. They want to increase China DOMESTIC content to 40% by 2020 and 70% by 2025. They want to increase their current chip fab footprint from 3% to somewhat significant. They have a list of targeted companies. Some like Alibaba and Huawei and Sinopharm are pretty well known. NOTHING about MIC 2025 suggests anything about promoting foreign influence. It’s all inwardly focused. And TTI is not on the list. It wouldn’t be because the main TTI plants were not in mainland China (two systems, one country) and so TTI has only recently fallen under mainland control. Frankly most of what they are doing like tax incentives is very similar to how Western countries promote technology growth. It is nothing like the spying or political meddling in US politics.
rob
Everything TTI has been doing in the past five years seems like they want to be ready to ditch Hong Kong immediately if China completely takes over. They’re a German-Hong Kong company and not a PRC company.
Tom
Hey, take it easy on Chicago. Murder rate and crime generally is in a bad place, but that’s true across the country. It’s actually about the same as Milwaukee and way better than plenty of other Midwest cities people don’t consider dangerous (St Louis, Cleveland, Kansas City).
Chicago does have a growing tech hub, and Bosch recently made a big investment in a similar vein. And as already noted, good tactic to recruit engineers from Big 10 schools.
rob
I lost track of how many times I’ve had to explain that organized crime on organized crime violence is a whole different subject than say New York City in the 1970’s. You’re not going to get shot in Chicago, unless you join a gang in Chicago. That extends out to the burbs where I work. Murders every week. All crime on crime.
JR Ramos
Did they mention anything about creating new jobs for US citizens in this lab, or are they just going to jockey around current employees? Either way, sounds like a good addition, surely will be great for the local area. I looked around and couldn’t find this press release to try to answer my own question.
Stuart
https://www.milwaukeetool.jobs/JobSearch?Location=11
It looks like they have 15 new listings up for the Chicago, IL location. 3 of the jobs are for IT security specialists, and 12 for mechanical or electrical engineering roles.
If you look at the job board, there are currently 395 job openings at USA locations and 1 in Mexico.
Some of the job openings are at new facilities, others could be due to expansion efforts or other reasons.
December 2017 – https://14cyiuhvcgv.com/milwaukee-pledges-usa-jobs-cordless-tool-manufacturing-expansion-plan-2017/%3C/a%3E : “We currently employ over 3,500 people in the USA.”
2022: “Over the last decade the company has experienced incredible double-digit growth globally and currently employs more than 10,000 people in the United States.”
They’ve been creating jobs.
JR Ramos
Ah, thank you. I was looking for news/press and never would have thought to browse for jobs. I was just curious mainly about the engineering positions, creating new jobs there. Those types of higher end jobs are where we need to be. Sometimes companies just shift what they already have, and in this case it wouldn’t be shocking to see engineering employees arrive from other countries as well.
Collin
Building offices right when employees want to stay working from home, hmm. Wonder how many people are going to want to actually commute to work in Chicago or would rather stay at home most days.
Stuart
Engineering isn’t exactly a “work from home” field.
MM
It depends on what you’re doing, I suppose. I do a lot of engineering work remotely. With the internet it’s easy to share code, drawings, with customers or other people working on the project. Video chat like Facetime, Skype, etc, has largely made face-to-face meetings obsolete. And I suspect that in the decades to come there will be newer and better technology for remote work as well.
Stuart
If you look at the job descriptions, there are a lot of responsibilities that one cannot easily do in a home office.
For instance:
“Conduct hands-on experiments of power tools, perform simulations, and draw concise, logical conclusions by analyzing data.”
“Perform root cause failure analysis of motor test failures.”
At their headquarters, Milwaukee has explosion-proof battery testing rooms, at least one SEM, thermal analysis equipment, and a huge manual and automated machine shop.
To ridicule Milwaukee’s opening of a new physical office/engineering space because many workers are seeking “work from home” positions doesn’t take any of this into account.
Rob
“ Perform root cause failure analysis of motor test failures.”
Well, they are the most cheaply made motors I’ve ever seen. Maybe they can start with that? 😂 Maybe get rid of the sloppy solder joints, damaged wires, and the stator’s copper just all sloppily hanging about.
Paul C
I PARTLY agree. I’m a service engineer. That means it really doesn’t matter if I have an “office” or not much of the time. My “office” is on the road. I have a desk at an office near a large city 90 minutes from home. I go there for some meetings and to pick up parts. Other than that it’s just like going to a customer…no reason to l want to go there.
My brother in law is an “office” engineer. Most of what he does is on computer, meetings, and on the phone. As far as location he lives in a resort town 10 miles from the beach in summer and 20 minutes from 3 ski hills in winter. When COVID hit he stopped going to the office most days.
Previous jobs I’ve been a plant/facilities engineer. No way to avoid the office on these jobs! But again they don’t put those in big city downtown districts.
We do have the big contract engineering offices in Raleigh. They are on Capital Blvd a few blocks from downtown. At one time they located there because it was attractive to some younger people. Now not so much. Most of them want to work from home (or anywhere) and not waste time commuting. The big downtown office has given way to working in pajamas. Even on college campuses for a while they started putting high rises within walking distance of campus. Now the push is for what I’ll call private resorts where they have pools, tennis courts, walking trails, hot tubs, basketball courts, and tons of other activities. Then if campus is on lock down or you just want “remote” classes you can live the resort life out away from the high rent/high rise where you can’t even get a parking spot. Suburbia isn’t just for families.