by
Thomas Dworetzky, Contributing Reporter | June 23, 2017
Siemens Healthineers has announced plans to break ground on its $300 million expansion of a key manufacturing and R&D facility in Walpole, Mass.
Siemens AG managing board member and Siemens Healthineers supervisory board chairman Michael Sen, Siemens AG managing board member Lisa Davis, and president of Laboratory Diagnostics for Siemens Healthineers Franz Walt are all scheduled to speak at the ceremony, according to the company.
“With a 37-year history of manufacturing products in Walpole, we saw an opportunity to leverage the local talent in the community to further our growth and expansion plans,” Franz Walt, President of Laboratory Diagnostics for Siemens Healthineers, said in a statement
when the expansion was first announced in December, 2016.
The investment is slated to create as many as 700 new high-tech jobs in the region. This adds the approximately 50,000 U.S.-based employees. The company had 2016 U.S. revenues of $23.7 billion, including $5.4 billion in exports.
The company has invested roughly $35 billion in the U.S. in the past 15 years. This included over $1 billion in R&D per year, as well as over $50 million in job training.
In fact, Siemens job training programs were
lauded by President Trump when Siemens AG President and CEO Joe Kaeser met with him during a March 17 meeting at the White House with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other global CEOs.
"A highly-skilled manufacturing workforce is critical to Siemens in the United States, where we've been active for over 160 years," said Kaeser. " I appreciated the opportunity to discuss with President Trump how industry, academia and government can work together to help empower workers with the skills needed for success in today's advanced manufacturing environment and prepare them well for next generation of manufacturing."
The president appeared duly impressed with the Siemens approach to job training.
“The German apprenticeship model is one of the proven programs to developing a highly skilled workforce,” he said, adding that, “Germany has been amazing at this, and I’m glad that the leaders of so many companies represented today have recently launched successful programs right here in the United States. And we need that because we’re training people as the jobs are pouring back in — and they are coming back in big league.”
The Walpole plan calls for the investment to stretch through a four-year time frame. The effort “fits into the strategic growth plans for the company and allows us to increase our manufacturing footprint in the United States, the largest health care market in the world,” said Bernd Montag, chief executive officer, Siemens Healthineers. “The laboratory instruments and reagents developed and manufactured at the Siemens Healthineers Walpole facility impact patients and health care providers across the globe.”
