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MiMfg Magazine
November 2019
2019 John G. Thodis Michigan Manufacturer of the Year • Small Tier
John Sammut
Firstronic LLC • Grand Rapids
In a hyper-competitive industry with competition
in every city, across the country and around the
world, the successful manufacturer is a confident
manufacturer. Few leaders exude the confidence in
their team’s capabilities like John Sammut.
Since taking over Firstronic LLC eight years
ago, Sammut’s leadership has allowed the company
to quadruple its Michigan jobs to 200, transition
from a business with nearly all domestic sales to one
exporting more than 50 percent of its production,
and invest more than $5 million into the Grand
Rapids-based electronic assembly operation.
“You can never set the bar too high. If you want
to hit the moon, you have to shoot for the stars. You
need a high level of goals, expectation and vision,”
explained Sammut. “You’re always going to have
challenges and they may even look insurmountable
as you face them, but if you are looking at the end
goal and focusing on what you want to achieve and
not the obstacles in your way, you’ll eventually
overcome it. The challenges don’t last forever.”
Among the challenges facing Sammut when he
took over was the company’s high reliance on its
automotive sector customer base, the huge gap in
size and scope between them and even their nearest
competition — many of its competitors being 10 or
even 100 times its size — and the need to balance
technology and automation with manufacturing’s
continuing need for skilled talent.
By diversifying into the industrial, medical
and LED lighting sectors, Firstronic reduced its
dependence on the automotive sector by one-third.
“We are regularly up against very large competitors
and, in order to stay competitive in manufacturing,
you really have to be driving for diversification,
continuous improvement and overall excellence,”
said Sammut. “We’re constantly looking for ways
to achieve higher efficiencies, better quality, lower
costs, creative ways to solve problems and, at the
end of the day, it creates so many opportunities for
growth here.”
By putting everything they are into everything
they do, Firstronic remains on the cutting edge and is
developing trend-setting technologies along the way.
And the world is noticing.
Firstronic has received a litany of awards
including an Industry Week Best Plant award,
EMS Company of the Year by leading industry
publication Circuit Assembly Magazine, Global
Trader of the Year by Automation Alley, one of the
Michigan Economic Development Corporation’s
“Michigan 50 Companies to Watch,” the Small
Business Administration’s Regional Exporter of
the Year and a finalist for the Automotive News
PACE Award for new technology — all the while
fighting in a land of giants.
To ensure, continued success and continued
growth, Sammut surrounds himself with a top-tier
team — his “A-players” — skilled, young workers
with a passion and drive to be the best.
“At the end of the day, this industry is all about
people. What differentiates us is having really
excellent people in all areas,” Sammut reiterated.
“We want self-starters who think out of the box,
who are driven to the highest level of quality and
performance and, despite maybe less experience,
they will push the envelope and pave the way for us
to do things that no one else has done.”
To understand Sammut’s search for talent, one
needs to look at where the industry was when he
took over. During the last two decades, the North
American electronic manufacturing industry was a
fraction of what it once was as virtually all consumer
and high-volume electronic products moved
overseas. This left the trained, qualified employees
in Michigan to leave the state in search of new jobs.
In order to survive, Sammut maximizes the use of
highly automated processes along with well-trained
employees with a high degree of flexibility. By
cross-training employees to achieve as many
industry certifications as possible, Sammut has a
team whose flexibility is second-to-none.
“I’d put my team up against anyone else in the
industry. They are high performers who can keep us
competitive,” said Sammut. “As we enter the next
decade, I expect Firstronic to be a leader in Industry
4.0 and that means having a fully integrated,
automated assembly process. In an industry that
is very large, we remain relatively small compared
to our peers but we are confident. It’s all about
being confident. We can lead the way.”
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