WBJ names the 2023 Manufacturing Excellence Award winners

Photos | courtesy of Rentschler Biopharma, Inc. The Rentschler Biopharma facility in Milford is used to perform contract developing and manufacturing for other company's products, particularly pharmaceuticals.

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By Brad Kane

Read all the 2023 Manufacturing Excellence Awards profiles.
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Wirefab, Inc. may best embody the past, present, and future of manufacturing in Central Massachusetts.

The winner of the overall excellence award in this year’s Manufacturing Excellence Awards, the employee-owned Worcester company had to come to terms with its historic past in order to restructure its culture for a prosperous future. Where it once found success making the same products over and over again for the same clients, the company has bought new equipment and is actively pursuing new clients from different industries, offering innovative products to solve today’s problems.

Central Mass. has a long history with manufacturing, dating back to the American Industrial Revolution and carrying through to today, where the sector is still one of the largest industries by economic output. The region once manufactured looms for weaving textiles and now develops treatments for diseases. The seven category winners of the Manufacturing Excellence Awards this year are a showcase of the industry’s long history here.

The third-generation FLEXcon Co., Inc. is rolling out a new product designed to make medical devices safer and more accurate. At less than two years old, VALIS is disrupting the scrap metal recycling industry. BMP Medical is celebrating its 45th anniversary this year and just collaborated with Waltham medical equipment maker Rhinostics to make a better nasal swab for COVID-19 tests. Multiscale Systems, the winner of the Rising Star award given to companies less than 10 years old, is developing environmentally friendly composites.

Then there’s Rentschler Biopharma, Inc. which was founded out of a German pharmacy 151 years ago, and now is growing its presence and its talent in Milford, as it seeks to help pharmaceutical companies develop the next great treatments for diseases. Finally, the Manufacturing Champion award, given to an individual instead of a company, goes to Yan Wang, a professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute whose decade of research into battery recycling has become all the more important.

In addition to honoring these companies, WBJ will host its Central Mass. Manufacturing Summit & Awards on April 25 at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester. If you’d like to find out more about where the industry has been and where it is going, I invite you to attend.

2023 Manufacturing Excellence Awards