According to an article that appeared in the October 2005 issue of the Economist, fewer than 10% of employed Americans were working in manufacturing for the first time since the Industrial Revolution. Since many of those jobs consisted of management and clerical positions, the actual percentage of people involved directly in production was much small. Nonetheless, the number of American manufacturing jobs decreased 15 percent between the 1979 and 2005.

Although the 1980s was a tough decade for the American manufacturing worker, the bleakest years began in 1990, when the number of manufacturing jobs continued to decrease every year through the present. Despite the adverse effects of outsourcing has had American manufacturing jobs, U.S. manufacturing is still worth hundreds of billions of dollars annually; and American workers continue to churn out some of the best quality products in the world.

In order to produce consistently high quality goods safely, manufacturing companies make no compromises when it comes to the very best industrial tools and supplies. Whether you’re talking about compression springs, Destaco clamps, industrial lifting magnets, or vibration control systems, the quality of merchandise is only as good as the tools used to make them. And when the safety of workers is also a concern, it is never worth it to settle for anything that the best industrial equipment.

Try to imagine, if you can, what goes on inside a factory on a daily basis. The sound of the state-of-the-art equipment that workers operate creates a steady, deafening hum that requires workers to wear ear protection devices. Hydraulic pumps produce thousands of pounds of pressure with awesome precision. Molding temperatures can reach 4500 degree Fahrenheit. Work pieces weighing hundreds of pounds are lifted high into the air by robust cables and clamps.

It only takes the failure of one set of compression springs or a single, plastic knob to mess up the entire process, and endanger the safety of workers. For this reason, the leading manufacturers always make it a priority to supply their workers with the very best quality industrial equipment. After all, no amount of money is ever more important than safety.