Just one year after a defense contractor started up operations in Waynesboro, it is ready to double its workforce. Wednesday, city leaders are praising the announcement by PPI-Time Zero and hoping to meet the challenge of building a high-tech workforce.
Decades ago, 3,000 people used to punch the time clock at the General Electric plant in Waynesboro. The facility sat empty or underused for many years, before being transformed into Solutions Place. Now it is home to several growing businesses and industries, including the high-tech sector.
PPI-Time Zero made its investment in Waynesboro just one year ago, hiring 55 people to run its new facility inside Solutions Place.
It is certainly not your father's assembly line at PPI-Time Zero, where advanced machinery builds computer circuit boards.
Dana Pittman, PPI-Time Zero president and CEO said, "We're actually placing parts that can be dispensed out of a salt-and-pepper shaker. It takes new equipment and better equipment to place those parts, and we're investing heavily to make sure we stay up with it."
PPI-Time Zero is planning to hire 50 more by the end of the year and hope to someday reach 200 or 300.
Pittman said, "We'll make a lot of people happy, and provide income for a lot of folks who really have the technical qualifications to be a part of our team."
Greg Hitchin, Waynesboro's economic development director, says filling high-tech jobs like these is a job in itself through workforce training programs, and the Advanced Manufacturing Center at Blue Ridge.
Hitchin said, "We're a manufacturing town, but manufacturing has changed so most all of today's manufacturing will be in high-tech, where it takes some skilled labor to run the advanced machines and that's exactly what we want. When these jobs come to town, they tend to stay."
That is partly because PPI-Time Zero does most of its work for the defense and aerospace industries.
Pittman said, "That technology, the design - if you will - cannot get into foreign hands, so domestic manufacturers are the preferred source for those."
PPI-Time Zero is not the only growth story inside Solutions Place. Earlier this month Killer B Motorsport set up shop. The fledgling company designs and builds high-performance auto parts.
