Hutchinson Technology designs and manufactures suspension assemblies for hard disk drives. Without them, data and other information would not be transmitted from the disk drive. Hutchinson has succeeded in its goal to be the leader in their industry through continuous innovation and improvement
while exporting nearly all of their products.
Today it manufactures the majority of worldwide suspension assemblies for all sizes of disk drives at its facilities outside of Minneapolis; in Sioux Falls, S.D.; and in Eau Claire, Wis. This 41-year-old company that began in a chicken coop seeks to deliver the highest data storage capacity at the lowest cost.
Since its first disk drive in 1956, disk drive capacity has increased five million times. Also, the cost per megabyte of storage has plummeted, helping introduce today’s successful high-tech economy. Hutchinson’s 5,000-plus employees have helped in this transformation and its Development Center continues to provide new products and processes.
Hutchinson knows that exporting is also important to its success. Manufacturers command higher prices around the world for their more sophisticated products. At Hutchinson, over 90 percent of revenues stem from exports to Thailand, Hong Kong, China and Japan where Hitachi, Samsung, Seagate, Toshiba and Western Digital use their products for computing, portable music players, digital photography and cell phones.
