Virginia’s Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufacturing (CCAM) recently won a 2012 Manufacturing Leadership 100 Award (ML100) in the category of New Workforce. The awards are presented by Manufacturing Executive, a division of Thomas Publishing LLC of New York.

Created eight years ago, the ML100 Awards recognize excellence, innovation and transformational projects in the field of manufacturing. The New Workforce category seeks to honor companies that “have come up with innovative ways to bring new workers with critically needed new skills into the workplace, and to allow them to productively collaborate with and learn from existing knowledge experts. Winning projects, for example, will involve education and training, knowledge management and transfer, and collaboration with educational institutions,” according to Manufacturing Executive.

The award criteria is a near perfect description of CCAM, which brings together leading manufacturing companies and top educational institutions to collaborate and develop new technologies that result in a more efficient manufacturing process. Canon Virginia Inc., Chromalloy, Newport News Shipbuilding, Rolls-Royce, Sandvik Coromant and Siemens are a few of the market leading companies that participate in the program with the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech and Virginia State University. CCAM’s research efforts focus on developing solutions for surface engineering and manufacturing systems. Research is already underway in labs at UVA and Virginia Tech while CCAM's 60,000 square-foot, high-technology facility is expected to open in September 2012 in Prince George County, Va.

To learn more about Virginia’s internationally recognized R&D facilities and why companies choose Virginia for its access to cutting-edge research and technology, click here.