Worcester Business Journal

14 Worcester Business Journal | November 13, 2017 | wbjournal.com F O C U S I N N O V A T I V E W O R K P L A C E S in its history at the time. The facility, which initially focused on commercial manufacturing, was expanded last year in a $280-million project to include biologics development and clinical trial manufacturing. Bristol- Myers Squibb now has 715 workers at the 89-acre site. Nypro, a Clinton-based medical device contract manufacturer, moved into roughly 200,000 square feet at the former Evergreen Solar building in 2014. Up to 200 workers create diagnos- tics and pharmaceutical devices in clean rooms spread across half of the building. The building is close to the Nypro headquarters, where the company had outgrown its manufacturing space, and is a few minutes from Mount Wachusett Community College's Devens satellite space, where Nypro is a partner for engineering programs, Witkowski said. "Devens was an ideal location," said Jon Witkowski, Nypro's general manager. Little Leaf Farms built a 114,000-square-foot hydroponic farm- ing facility in 2016 it is already nearly doubling. The company was looking of Devens' new life Continued from Page 12 affordable utility prices and easy access to Boston and Worcester, said Sellew, the owner. Laddawn, a maker of packaging prod- ucts, moved into the old Devens library, wanting to be a little closer to the Boston area's labor force from its first headquar- ters in Sterling. A renovation and expan- sion has included a rock climbing wall, yoga space and bicycles for rent for the office's 110 employees. "Devens has been a terrific partner for us," said Owen Richardson, Laddawn's vice president of marketing and sales. Adding more space In all, Devens has more than 100 busi- nesses, and its vacancy rate is 5 percent, according to the Devens Enterprise Commission, which acts as the site's reg- ulatory and permitting body. Devens has surpassed 6 million square feet, with more on the way. Integra, a maker of biopharmaceutical products, is nearing completion on a doubling of its space, and Quiet Logistics, an online ordering and fulfill- ment company, moved from Andover in 2011 into the 411,000-square-foot space Gillette left. The company was attracted to Devens for its location between larger workforces in Worcester, Lowell and Fitchburg, and close distance among several airports, said Brian Lemerise, the Quiet Logistics president. Biotechnology is a focus in Devens' growth. Last fall, Devens won approval from voters in Ayer, Harvard and Shirley to rezone 33 acres to help accommodate a biotech building of up to 500,000 square feet. MassDevelopment sees enough poten- tial at the site next to Quiet Logistics, which has direct rail access, that it has undertaken a 429,000-square-foot expansion without any tenants lined up. Creating a Devens workforce To help more area workers get to Devens, a shuttle service was started in April from Fitchburg and Leominster. In the first week of operation in April, there were only 24 riders. That more than tripled by this fall. Only about 450 people live in Devens now, but that number will rise with a new 124-unit residential com- munity called Emerson Green. So far, 17 homes have been built in a tightly- knit neighborhood recalling old-fash- ioned town centers. Two 20-unit apartment buildings and a 58-unit senior housing development are planned. A potential exists for up to about 400 housing units in all. An albatross The seven-acre Devens site is at 60 percent of its full capacity, said Kezer. More than a dozen sites are available for development, and next year, clean technology company AMSC will vacate its 355,000-square-foot building. (Some parts of the site, particularly south of Route 2, are still used by the Army Reserve or Massachusetts National Guard.) The site's open space is popular with workers looking for a different type of experience on a lunch break than they'd get outside any office inside Route 128. More than 1,400 acres in Devens are protected open space, and Devens bud- gets annually for planting more street- side trees to improve aesthetics. One site in particular, a group of rundown brick buildings known as Vicksburg Square, has been eyed for redevelopment for years. Attempts to rezone the area from commercial to residential have run into opposition from voters. Tom Kinch, the Devens Advisory Committee chairman, called Vicksburg Square an albatross. "Something has to be done with it," he said at an annual MassDevelopment meeting in Devens in October. "It's the symbol of Devens." BY GRANT WELKER Worcester Business Journal News Editor Quiet Logistics Shipping company uses robots to compete with Amazon A t first, it looks to be an imagina- tion at work, or maybe the doings of ghosts: groups of tall shelves stacked with packages of cloth- ing and moving entirely on their own. But the 200 squat orange robots aren't that, or even the work of hidden engineers at a control panel. The robots work autonomously in perfect synchro- nization, never bumping into each other, even when they move within two inches of each other. They get orders, find the right shelf among 5,000, lift the shelf and nearly silently wheel it over to a worker to pick that item off the shelf and drop it into a box to be mailed. "It's truly amazing," said Brian Lemerise, the president of Quiet Logistics, a Devens company running two huge distribution warehouses ship- ping items exclusively for retailers like Bonobos, Bombfell and Tuft & Needle. Lermerise has seen the robots in action for several years, but even he hasn't found the operation has gotten old. The technology enables Quiet Logistics to be a major shipper amid a rapidly growing e-commerce market. A New York City customer could order a Bonobos shirt at 5 p.m. today and receive it tomorrow morning, Lemerise said, helping Quiet Logistics' retail partners stay competitive with giants like Amazon. Quiet Logistics was a 40-employee operation when it moved from Andover seeking more space in 2011. Since then, the company has opened a second Devens center and grown to 500 work- ers, a number ballooning each holiday season to 1,300. The firm completed 22 million shipments in 2016. Between the two Devens centers, Quiet Logistics has about 500,000 square feet — about eight football fields worth of space. There's only one good way to quickly get so many goods over such a broad space out the door: lots of robots. The 200-pound robots, which are about the size of a dishwasher but half as tall, use Wi-Fi to receive orders and communicate with each other, and track their location using a grid of small coded stickers placed every about every two feet on the floor. They automaticaly move to a charging station when they notice their power getting too low. The whole operation could almost seem intimidating if it weren't for the play-on-word names each robot was given through an employee contest, like 2Bot2Handle or Boticelli. Ironically, the larger of the two Quiet Logistics centers uses robots by a com- pany now owned by Amazon, North Reading-based Kiva Systems. After that 2012 deal, Quiet Logistics was given until 2019 before Kiva would stop ser- vicing the bots. Quiet Logistics wasn't deterred. It's simply started making its own through a related company called Locus. Locus, which sells its technology to other distribution companies, uses robots differently. Robots carry baskets workers fill once those robots stop at the right display. The robots then take the merchandise to be shipped. The Locus robots use the company's own technology and cost 40 percent of the cost of Kiva's, Lemerise said. They constantly monitor their surroundings so they never bump into their human coun- terparts always surrounding them. W W Brian Lemerise, president of Quiet Logistics

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