Firstronic

UP-DATE JULY 2020 - The Firstronic Story, How One US Electronics Producer Is Fighting – Mid-Pandemic -  to Get Back  

The Three Questions

Pre-Pandemic, Firstronic was a growing, innovative and high quality producer of electronics for key customers working  in Grand Rapids Michigan.  This young producer was supported by a few well-chosen suppliers, many domestic.  For more on Firstronic pre-pandemic, CLICK HERE.  

1.  As head of a manufacturing operation, which changes have you had to make because of the pandemic?  Do you feel that your mission has changed because of the crisis?   

Sammut:  It’s been extremely crazy as we were released as of late last week to open our plant in Michigan again for manufacturing starting today (5/12/2020).  So that was short notice and great news… but it created a lot of work to prepare.We had to shut down our Michigan plant as of March 23rd due to the Shelter in Place Executive Order.  We also reduced our operation in Juarez, Mexico to a “skeleton crew”.  We have some customers that are operating under exemptions (medical and industrial products) which we are supporting; however, demand is extremely low. 

As a result of the pandemic, we have been focused on securing more business for the medical electronics industry – we are currently working on a  “low end” ventilator system with a key customer, moving along very quickly through the prototype and FDA approval process. Pat Blanzy, Firstronic’s VP of Business Development, heads up the project.  The company is refining the design; the plan is to produce one thousand extremely robust units per week  priced at under $10,000 per standalone unit.  

2.        What should US companies work on more now?  R & D, lean manufacturing  methods, labor, robotics, IT, supply chain or something else?

                US companies should be working on “re-shoring” products from China and bringing more manufacturing to the US, particularly in support of the medical industry.  To support this shift of production to be more competitive with low labor cost countries, US companies need to invest in more automation, lean manufacturing processes/systems, etc.  In addition, the purchasing teams need to support this initiative by developing supply chains outside of China for as many components as possible – we are currently working to identify and qualify alternate suppliers globally to mitigate the risk.

3.  What do you think will happen next? We believe the virus is going to be around for a long time (until there’s a vaccine to eradicate it), so manufacturers are going to need to learn how to operate while mitigating the risk for their employees.  This means changing the layout of manufacturing processes to accommodate social distancing, adjusting or staggering the starting time of the shifts to minimize employee overlap, staggering breaks and lunches to reduce the number of employees in the cafeteria, providing PPE for all employees (masks, gloves, etc.), conducting thorough sanitization of all common areas often, etc.

            We are confident that the changes required to provide a safe work environment can be achieved without too much impact on work flow or efficiency.  This is imperative so we can get back to work and begin to ramp back up the curve where we left off – our first quarter of 2020 was a huge record and we were on track to have another very strong growth year; however, after the impact of the virus, we will be doing extremely well to reach our 2019 results.  Nevertheless, we still have a strong pipeline of incremental business which we believe will enable us to get achieve strong growth again in 2021.

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Patricia E. Moody

FORTUNE magazine  "Pioneering Woman in Mfg" 

Industry Week IdeaXchange Xpert

A Mill Girl at Blue Heron Journal, on-line resource for business thought-leaders and decision-makers, https://sites.google.com/site/blueheronjournal/,%25C2%25A0%25C2%25A0tricia@patriciaemoody.com, patriciaemoody@gmail.com, pemoody@aol.com