Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Program connects old, new to boost manufacturing jobs

Program connects old, new to boost manufacturing jobs



Lightspeed, in Haverhill, helped the startup Tank Utility produce its smart meter.

LANE TURNER/ GLOBE STAFF

Lightspeed, in Haverhill, helped the startup Tank Utility produce its smart meter.



By Jon Christian   G L O B E C O R R E S P O N D E N  J A N U A R Y 1 2 , 2 0 1 6


A year after he founded his Somerville startup, Nick Mashburn had a product, a smart meter that notifies fuel delivery companies when tanks need to be refilled. He also had a customer, a Canadian fuel company that wanted 1,200 meters.


What he didn’t have was someone to manufacture them.


Enter the Manufacturing Initiative, a program that connects hardware startups with manufacturers. After helping to tweak the design of his prototype, the initiative put Mashburn in touch with Lightspeed Manufacturing, a Haverhill contract manufacturer that so far has produced and shipped 500 of the smart meters for Mashburn’s company, Tank Utility.



“It was really nice to be able to find folks that could guide us through that process,” Mashburn said of Lightspeed, “and who had the expectation that we would be manufacturing much, much more.”

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