Sinicon Plastics has been part of the Berkshire Innovation Center since the beginning. The company was one of our founding members, and its President, David Allen, was part of the group of regional business leaders who helped turn the original idea for the BIC into a reality. Over the years, we have worked with Sinicon in a number of different ways and watched the company grow into one of Berkshire County's most impressive manufacturers. Sinicon manufactures millions of highly engineered...

Several years ago, one of our members, Justin McKennon of Electro Magnetic Applications (EMA), was asked to establish a new division here in the Berkshires. At the beginning, it was essentially a one-person operation. Over time, I had the opportunity to watch that division grow, adding talented people from across the country while maintaining remarkably little turnover. The leader who once spent much of his day solving technical problems gradually found his responsibilities changing. Today,...

One participant recently described the purpose of TechAMP better than any brochure or curriculum guide ever could. He said the program helped him learn to "speak both languages"—the language of the shop floor and the language of management. As the Berkshire Innovation Center prepares to celebrate the graduation of the first cohort of the Technologist Advanced Manufacturing Program (TechAMP) on July 29, that simple observation captures much of what the past year has been about. When we...