Daily News
From Home Furnishing Business
Symbol Opens R&D Center
June 16,
2015 by in Bedding, Product 
Symbol Mattress has established its first research and development center inside its 150,000-square-foot factory in Watertown, Wis.
The 5,000-square-foot R&D area, overseen by Mark Jannke, Symbol’s vice president of product development, features equipment including a Rollator to simulate mattress wear, a Cornell Tester to assess durability, a Load Cell machine that determines force/deflection, plus digital scales for weighing components and a small-scale burn lab to test for flammability of raw materials.
The test center also includes videography and still photography equipment to document test results.
“Having the ability to conduct our own tests of finished products, processes and raw materials, versus expending the time and expense typically involved in using outside labs, will be a tremendous benefit to our business,” Jannke said. “We plan to do more ticking and raw materials analysis in the future and will be updating our software programs over the next 12 months to better manage our data.”
Mike McQuiston, company executive vice president, said the center will help Symbol get quality results more quickly.
“Most important is that our retail customers will have reason to feel even more confident selling Symbol-brand sleep products,” he said.