Ryan Mannion, Coghlin Companies Inc.
Making full-body scanners
Ryan Mannion has been working at Coghlin Companies for five years, accepting a job there straight out of college.
Mannion became enamored with the company ever since he got a tour of the company and saw the innovations for hardware companies the firm was deploying, and met with the CEO and President Chris Coghlin, a fourth-generation business owner.
“Some of the products we were working on were very cool,” Mannion said.
He said those innovations were impacting people’s lives in ways they wouldn’t normally notice.
Coghlin Companies provides contract manufacturing services to a diverse array of device and equipment manufacturers and select entrepreneurs. Mannion said the term contract manufacturing doesn’t quite do justice to full range of what Coghlin does to help partner companies scale up.
Ryan Mannion, 27
Business development specialist
Company: Coghlin Companies Inc.
Company location: Westborough
Lives: Boston
Education level: Bachelor’s degree in business
Salary: Mean annual salary for wholesale sales representatives in technical manufacturing in Massachusetts was $96,570 in 2017, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Some of the products the employees work with include body-scanners for security, automated warehouse fulfilment systems and medical devices, according to Mannion.
Mannion had worked in other industries with internships at an oil and gas company and a property management company, but neither were as fulfilling as working in manufacturing. He said he likes being able to work with new technologies.
As business development specialist, it’s Mannion’s job not to work directly on the production process, but to find companies who need to scale up and can use the services Coghlin has to offer. Unlike other contract manufacturers, Mannion said Coghlin is able to foster a stronger one-one-one relationship with its strategic partners.
He finds clients by creating a list of companies in growing industries and calls them to see what their needs are.
His advice to other young people getting into manufacturing or building a career in the sector is to be persistent, network with local firms to find opportunities and demonstrate your passion in the work.
