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From
modest beginnings in his parents' barn in 1942, Louis Filios led Westfield
Gage Company well into the 1990's and made it into one of the most
respected precision machining companies in the Aerospace Industry.
The Company's first
product was a plug gage used in manufacturing Pratt & Whitney piston
engines for the World War II military aircraft. The first employee Louis
hired was the local milkman. Pratt & Whitney was so impressed with
Louis that they soon supplied him with a machine from War Board assets and
asked him to start making parts. By the time the War ended, the Company had
new facilities on Church Street in Westfield.
By the 1960's a new,
larger facility on South Broad Street in Westfield was built, and Westfield
Gage continued its growth by furnishing precision parts up to 15 inches in
diameter for the space program, military and commercial gas turbine
engines, the cryogenics industry, and a variety of other aerospace,
industrial and medical applications. All the while the facility on Broad
Street continued to grow like a traditional New England home in the way it
treated its family of workers, and in the numerous additions which were
attached to the original structure.
The late 1990's brought
a new leader, Louis's son Fred, and a new realization - that the South
Broad Street facility was no longer large enough, expandable enough, or
flexible enough to sustain us in the new wave of manufacturing technology
and techniques of the 21st Century.
In December 2000 we
occupied our new facility in Southwick, Massachusetts, a few miles down the
road from South Broad Street, nearly doubling the manufacturing area of the
old facility. It provides a flexible manufacturing floor conducive to
cellular manufacturing, continuous improvement, and employee morale.
Louis Filios died in
2001 a nonagenarian who remained an entrepreneur his whole life.
Also in 2001, the
current management team and highly skilled workforce were reorganized with
the company name being changed in the process. We are now WGI, Inc,
although we continue to do business in the Overhaul and Repair Market as
Westfield Gage Company Overhaul and Repair.
WGI, Inc will continue
to meet the standards set by our founder. “Our Product is Precision.”
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