Offshoring and Re-shoring
At its peak in the early 1990s, the company employed about 1,300 workers in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area. In 1993, the company began moving much of its manufacturing to China, and later also moved some manufacturing to Mexico. Most of the jobs at its Milwaukee plant were eliminated, although the company continued to perform some of its manufacturing at the plant using heavily-automated manufacturing processes.
In January 2011, it was announced that about 36 jobs were being returned from China to the Milwaukee plant, which would increase the number of positions at the plant to 379. Most of the added jobs were for making combination locks, subassemblies and keys. It was reported that the company would also continue to contract with three Chinese factories and about twenty Chinese suppliers, and operate its maquiladora near the Arizona border, where Mexican workers perform non-automated labor-intensive work such as assembling made-in-Milwaukee components.
In February 2012, U.S. President Barack Obama visited the Master Lock headquarters in Milwaukee Wisconsin and lauded the company's recent return of jobs from overseas locations. As of that time, it was reported that the company had returned about 100 jobs from overseas during the preceding two-year period.
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