Manufacturers in Milwaukee: power, controls, water and the metal shops behind them

This report is for engineers and buyers sourcing from Milwaukee-area suppliers, people looking for manufacturing work in the region, and B2B sellers covering southeastern Wisconsin plants. It covers the federal count and how the metro compares, the four counties, the clusters, the public companies headquartered here and a prospecting plan. For the whole state, see manufacturers in Wisconsin.

The Milwaukee metro at a glance

US Census Bureau County Business Patterns (CBP) 2023, all of manufacturing (NAICS 31 to 33), Milwaukee-Waukesha metro (CBSA 33340):

Ranking the CBP metro file ourselves, the Milwaukee metro is 24th among US metros for manufacturing establishments and 20th for manufacturing employees.

How manufacturing-heavy is Milwaukee?

Manufacturing's share of private-sector employment, the 50 largest metros by private employment, CBP 2023 (our calculation):

Four counties

Milwaukee County has the most jobs. Waukesha County, to the west, has almost as many plants. Washington and Ozaukee to the north add 518 more, mostly mid-sized.

What the metro makes

The pay column is our calculation from Census payroll and employee totals. Fabricated metal and machinery are 41% of the plants and 36% of the jobs. The specialties show in the detailed codes:

• Electrical equipment (motors, generators, switchgear and industrial controls): 42 plants, 7,716 employees, $95,104 average pay.
• Metalworking machinery (dies, molds, tooling and machine tools): 131 plants averaging 28 employees.
• Other general purpose machinery (pumps, compressors, material handling, packaging machinery and power tools): 85 plants, 4,985 employees.
• Beverage manufacturing: 37 plants with 1,475 employees.

Dairy product manufacturing has 9 plants in the metro, but the Census Bureau flags its employee total as high-noise (the noise added to protect confidentiality changed it by 5% or more), so it isn't reported here.

Public manufacturers headquartered in the metro

SEC EDGAR lists 16 companies with a listed ticker, a manufacturing SIC code and a business address in the four counties. Here they are grouped by what they make, with revenue from each company's latest 10-K:

The other two are LiveWire Group (electric motorcycles, $25.7 million in 2025) and Koss (headphones, $13.0 million in the year to June 2026). Revenue is company-wide. Visit Milwaukee's list of the city's top employers, which it attributes to the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce and doesn't date, also names private and out-of-state manufacturers such as Milwaukee Tool, Johnson Controls and GE HealthCare.

Plant size

Small plants (1 to 19 employees) number 1,228, mid-sized ones (20 to 99) 682 and large ones (100 or more) 280. These are establishments with paid employees: each plant is counted where it operates, a head office is counted as an office, and owner-only shops are left out. The employment snapshot is mid-March 2023.

Where to look up Milwaukee manufacturers

Prospecting Milwaukee manufacturers

Milwaukee's plants are engineering-led. Many make machines, motors and controls for other manufacturers, so their buyers are engineers, and their busiest years follow their own customers' capital spending. Head-office density matters too: at the 16 public companies, some purchasing for plants elsewhere is decided here, while the plants in the metro may belong to companies headquartered in other states.

Worked example: a skilled-trades training provider

Illustrative example. Menomonee Valley Skills and its conversion rates are invented; plant counts are from County Business Patterns.

Menomonee Valley Skills (mvskills.example) runs short CNC, welding and maintenance courses for incumbent workers, on site or at its training center.

• Plants with 20 to 49, 50 to 99 and 100 to 249 employees: 419 + 263 + 199 = 881.
• Fabricated metal, machinery and electrical equipment are 569 + 333 + 72 = 974 of 2,190 plants (44%), so about 392 fit by size and industry.
• Two contacts each (HR or training lead, and the plant or operations manager) makes 784 people; at a 6% reply rate, about 47 conversations, and at one cohort booked per five conversations, 9 companies.

The useful signal is a plant that's hiring machinists or maintenance technicians it can't find. Bebop can search for "Milwaukee and Waukesha county machinery and metal fabrication plants with 20 to 249 employees hiring CNC machinists or maintenance technicians" and research each one.

Subject: Training the machinists [Company] already has

Hi [first name],

I saw [Company] has had a [CNC machinist / maintenance technician] opening posted for a while. When the hire is slow to come, upskilling one or two people already on the floor is often faster.

We run eight-week evening courses for Milwaukee-area plants, at our center or yours, built around your machines. Would it help to see the syllabus?

[Your name], Menomonee Valley Skills

Next step: most of the metro's plants have fewer than 100 employees, so how to sell to small businesses applies to much of this list.