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Updated: April 7, 2025 / 2025 Manufacturing Excellence Awards

Manufacturing awards: Iwaki America modernized water treatment

A group of nine men wearing white button down shirts and lanyards stand beside each other. photo | Courtesy of Iwaki America Tom Marcone (third from right) said Iwaki America will take over the remaining space at its current facility within the next three years, creating the need to add 8,000 to 10,000 extra square feet of space.
By Mica Kanner-Mascolo
2025 Manufacturing Excellence Awards
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For Iwaki America, a Holliston chemical handling equipment and technology manufacturer, product development and innovation begins with the voice of the customer.

“They're the ones who are buying the products, who are out there controlling the processes, trying to make their processes better and more improved,” said Tom Marcone, Iwaki’s vice president of corporate marketing. “If they say, ‘We need faster speeds,’ ‘We need more connections,’ ‘We need better sensors,’ whatever it may be, we take that under advisement.”

Iwaki’s products work to keep water treated and safe, a line of work forced to adapt with the rapidly changing technological offerings available.

Unlike the products from decades prior requiring manual adjustments by an in-office person, who could choose to do so or not, Iwaki’s Walchem division of products allow for remote monitoring like a Nest Thermostat or a Ring security camera on an industrial scale.

Workers using the Walchem system can turn on and off parts of water plants through the platform and receive notifications they can choose to address or ignore. If ignored, a notification is escalated to a more senior employee to review, making supervision of machines further secured.

A bio box for Iwaki America
A bio box for Iwaki America

With customers ranging from large manufacturers to municipal governments, Iwaki has been taking in feedback and searching for market trends in order to best meet customer and industry needs.

“Everything's kind of getting smaller and more compact. People are expecting more power from a smaller unit. That's what we did,” said Marcone. “We've almost doubled the amount of things that [our platform] can monitor and control.”

With the company’s old system, users were limited with the amount of alarms, pumps, and valves and the range of things it could turn on and off.

“As technology improved, we wanted to improve our technology,” he said.

Each quarter Iwaki is implementing software updates to make sure it’s staying on top of the latest technology available for clients.

With these new updates, capacities, and products comes the need for more space. Iwaki has been operating its original Holliston facility since 1989. Nearly 30 years after its main office opening, the company needed room to stretch its legs, leading to the opening of a new production and warehouse facility next door in 2018.

The newer facility includes every aspect of Iwaki’s business, such as manufacturing, research and development, and assembly. It holds the company’s 3D printers, which since about 2019 have allowed Iwaki to create prototype parts without having to wait for a machinist.

“It really speeds up the process of going from design to manufacture,” said Marcone.

While Iwaki expanded its occupancy within its second building in 2022, growing to a total of 18,000 square feet at the facility, the company’s growth is already pushing capacity with new and improved offerings continuously in the works.

“Here we are, seven years later, and we're also busting up the seams again,” he said.

Mica Kanner-Mascolo is a staff writer at Worcester Business Journal, who primarily covers the healthcare and diversity, equity, and inclusion industries.

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