Manufacturing Success: Can operators meet the moment?
Emerging sectors, such as electrification and digitalization, are reshaping opportunity in wire and cable. Here’s how some manufacturers are planning to meet demand.
By Mark Del Franco, Editor-in-Chief
A wave of opportunity from emerging sectors promises to transform wire and cable from a mature, volume business into a performance critical backbone of the energy and digital transition. These applications demand cables that can carry more power, more data, and more intelligence— safely and reliably—under harsher thermal, electrical, and cybersecurity conditions.
For manufacturers, that raises the bar from basic throughput to true operational excellence. Plants must master tighter tolerances, advanced insulation and fire resistant compounds, and higher test rigor to meet standards governing smart grids, high density data centers, and EV charging networks. At the same time, project timelines are
compressing, and customers increasingly expect consistent performance from multi plant, often global, supply footprints. That requires standardized processes, disciplined problem solving, and real-time KPI management across safety, quality, delivery, and cost.
Operational excellence in this context also means agility. As policy, technology, and load profiles shift, manufacturers must retool quickly, qualify new designs, and absorb new standards without disrupting service. The companies that can pair advanced engineering with stable, repeatable, and continuously improving operations will be best positioned to capture growth in these high stakes, emerging sectors.
Editor’s note: See Industry Insights on p. 20 for how one company has focused its R&D.
WJI reached out to several leading manufacturers and asked them, “What does manufacturing success mean to you?”
Beyond output, how Prysmian measures success
Milan, Italy-based Prysmian, the world’s largest wire and cable manufacturer, says it success is built on leadership, culture, and repeat business—supported by disciplined execution and a network that stays agile even as it grows.
Prysmian’s definition of manufacturing success starts with something deceptively simple: delivering consistent, reliable performance that keeps customers coming back. That mind-set shapes how the company acquires, integrates, and operates more than 50 facilities across North America in markets that range from traditional construction wire to offshore wind and data centers.
For Paul Furtado, Prysmian’s chief operating officer for North America, manufacturing success is not just output, but “quality of service” delivered in a way that is sustainable over time. That shows up as on-time, to-spec product and the kind of performance that earns repeat orders “day in, day out,” rather than one-off wins. Inside the plants, that philosophy becomes discipline in execution, strong local ownership, and a culture where leadership drives behavior, behavior drives culture, and culture drives performance.
North American plants, particularly on response times and service levels. General Cable, which brought North American relevance, added 20-plus plants, and a broad energy and communications portfolio when Prysmian acquired it, contributed experience, people, and process depth that the combined company has folded into its operations and R&D footprint.
Prysmian keeps score with a full slate of KPIs, but Furtado is wary of letting metrics “lead you down the wrong path,” so he calibrates success against a longer arc: where the business stands now versus say, in 2012, when Prysmian’s first major wave of acquisitions in North America began. The test is whether customers still depend on the company as a trusted partner—and whether plants can deliver the same level of performance month after month, even as markets shift around them.
Acquisitions as a two-way street
“The hard part is consistency,” Furtado explains. “It is one thing to turn around a single facility; it is another to achieve repeatable performance across dozens of plants with different histories, systems, and cultures. Furtado’s answer is to put accountability as close to the shop floor as possible, decentralizing decision-making so local teams can act quickly while still aligning with a regional strategy.
Balance, resilience, and the long game
Over the past 15 years, Prysmian has stitched together a North American manufacturing footprint through acquisitions such as Draka (2011), General Cable (2018), and more recently, the 2024 acquisition of Encore Wire. The company’s integration playbook is deliberately simple: “seek to understand,” protect what made the acquisition target successful, and then replicate the best practices across the network without imposing a single “Prysmian way.”
As Furtado explains, Encore Wire brought a best-in-class service model built on speed and agility, including a tightly integrated production and distribution process that set a high bar for responsiveness. Prysmian has been explicit about not diluting that advantage; instead, the company is using Encore’s approach to raise the standard across its
Prysmian’s North American network—50-plus manufacturing, distribution, service, and R&D facilities generating more than $9 billion in net sales—gives it a scale advantage in both product range and geographic coverage. That scale is not just about serving more customers; it is about building a portfolio that can flex as markets rise and fall. Data centers are surging, fueled by digitalization and cloud growth, and Prysmian can supply a wide range of cables and systems into those projects.
At the same time, there is a renewed push for electrification
Furtado
A Prysmian employee in Jackson, Tennessee, stranding optical fiber cable.
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