21 Sep Paddy White honoured with Lifetime Achievement Award
Paddy White was recognised for his outstanding contribution to Irish Manufacturing as he was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award by Chairman of the IMR Board, Will Barton OBE, at the 2022 IMR Manufacturing & Supply Chain Awards. Paddy was cited for his significant contribution to manufacturing and extraordinary entrepreneurial ability. He was considered an incredible role model for aspiring young manufacturing entrepreneurs.
After receiving the award, Paddy said:
“It was with total astonishment that I took the call from Barry Kennedy informing me of the award. As I said to him, I’m a very low profile guy who just wants to get on with building innovative products for our customers, whether it’s for the Medical field, for Space or for Electric Vehicles, each which brings its own challenges and requirements, and that’s where the innovation lies – by interlacing each of these products in one manufacturing process.
I also want to thank Dr. Will Barton, FRSC, MIoD, OBE, Chairman of the Irish Manufacturing Research Board, who presented the award to me. It was a great honour to receive the award from someone whom I admire as a Leader and Voice for Manufacturing.
Thank you.”
Paddy started his career teaching at the Dublin Institute of Technology, Kevin Street in 1978 before moving to Amdahl as operations manager for 9 years, followed by the next 6 yrs in Intel as Quality Manager. Those formative years positioned Paddy well for his first business venture as founder and CEO of Realtime in 1996 which is a volume rework, repair, and reverse logistics service provider to the electronics manufacturing industry.
Having caught the entrepreneurial bug Paddy went on to found other ventures such as Shimmer in 2009, a wireless sensor platform that allows for the capture and communication of a wide array of sensed data in real‐time, followed by Akuray Renewable Technologies Services. Akuray offers repair services and refurbishment to the renewable technologies market.
Paddy’s last initiative in 2018, the founding of Réaltra Space Systems Engineering (winners of the Product Innovation & Design Award) has been one of his proudest moments with their contribution towards the successful launch of the Ariane 5 James Webb telescope mission on Christmas Day 2021. The VIKI camera system designed by Réaltra and manufactured by Realtime was used to capture and broadcast HD video from the upper stage of the Ariane 5 launcher carrying James Webb, which provided live images of the stage, fairing and payload separation. This has brought significant impact not only for Realtime but also for the Space Industry in Ireland.
Congratulations Paddy!
The Awards, in partnership with Premier Publishing & Events, took place on Friday September 9th in the Kilashee Hotel and were hosted by Marty Whelan who gave a hugely entertaining and energetic performance and included an insightful special guest interview with Dónal Óg Cusack.
This was the 3rd edition of these prestigious Awards and in total there were 14 awards given out during the afternoon recognising the exceptional excellence of the Irish manufacturing industry.
You can find all the award winners on the night here.
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