Bruno Independent Living Aid

After a slow start this morning we made a late departure north to Bruno. It was actually looking like we were going to be a bit late but luckily our carpool driver Mr. Kiser handled the Milwaukee traffic like a champ and got us their 15 minutes early as our professor JJ shields was walking in.

Right away when we walked in the lovely receptionist Sue greeted us gave us the proper safety equipment for our tour. Finally after every one arrived we were introduced to Bill Benson the director of engineering at Bruno. Bill was a great host and showed us around the factory where they assemble their products and ship them out. It blew my mind how much Bill knew about everything that went on in his factory. Bill was never stumped by any of our questions and explained every product station that we stopped at in great detail. 

One of my favorite products that Bruno was working on in their factory was their valet signature seating. This is a seat in the car that lifts you out of the car and lowers you down to the ground so you don’t need to worry about falling or hurting yourself while getting in or out of your car. This hit home for me due to the fact that I have a handicapped brother. One of the hardest things for us to do is get him into the front seat of a car if he doesn’t want to ride in his wheel chair. It is a two-man job to do this. My dad has to lifts my brother out of his chair and walk him to the car door as I crawl in through the car and grab my brothers feet and lower them to where your feet normally go. After a few minutes of adjusting we finally have my brother comfortably situated in the car. This is a very strenuous task for us as well as my brother. I know for a fact that if we were to get a car seat like the valet signature seating that it would be so much simpler to get my brother in and out of the car. You can see in the video I posted how this chair would work if it were in a car.

After exploring the factory floor we went into one of the conference rooms where Bill had a few of his marketing team members come in to speak to us. I was very interested in the things they were doing to try and beat out competitors. Things such as properly positioning the company when using the Google search engine, creating an easy to use online format for the companies many dealers around the country, and even things as small as a new consumer friendly product brochure.

I do have to say though my favorite thing by far about Bruno is their slogan on their web page. It is “Bruno for your independence”.  Many people take for granted independence. They don’t quite realize how important it is until it is gone. Many of the people that Bruno reaches out to are elderly people who are just recently reliant on some type of aid to get around or even someone who is born with a disability and is required to rely on help all the time. I think that Bruno is doing a fantastic job in giving these consumers a product that can give them some of that independence back or give someone that feeling of independence who could never experience it before.

This was a fantastic experience and I want to thank all of the people from Bruno who made this experience possible!