The 10 Most Promising Contract Manufacturing Companies 2021

VOL 05 I ISSUE 01 I 2021

T H E

Digital Approach The Need to Embrace Digitization

Most Promising

CONTRACT Manufacturing Companies 2021

VOLLRATH

Jean Horvath, Vice President of Custom & Specialty Products

MANUFACTURING SERVICES Small Business-Style Service & Big Business-Level Expertise

Editor’s Desk Tough Nut in Manufacturing

F

or most of the entrepreneurs and business owners, manufacturing process is dreadful. That’s where contract manufacturing companies take the lead.

They are a team with a thorough understanding of the manufacturing process, program, and its optimization.

By joining hands with contract manufacturing companies, businesses can invest their time and efforts somewhere else.

Due to contract manufacturing, the production of the machinery or any equipment, and other major assemblies, has become simplified. It won’t be wrong to assert that contract manufacturing has the capability to attract a lot of customers, as these companies are highly skilled in machinery and everything related to manufacturing and give a competitive edge over the market.

Already the times are tough due to the ongoing pandemic situation all over the world. Holding on to the companies has become tough as well. Responding to these needs contract manufacturing companies are enabling small companies to survive by offering them the contract for manufacturing. This gives the chance of adaption for everyone in the industry, keeping the environment positive in such turbulent times.

This new world of post-covid gives more importance to the contract manufacturing companies as they have already adapted to the technological updates by attending virtual meetings, increasing communication with industries to offer the manufacturing contracts to the clients. Contract manufacturing companies works on the trust between Contract given to the companies and the Clients. This shows professionalism in managing the challenges and ensuring reliability in the industry. It works completely on the key to long-lasting business relationships between contracts and its clients.

Manufacturing along with experience is the way to deliver solutions right from manufacturing to production and final

product. Today, by rapidly adapting to the demanding technological environment, contract manufacturing companies are ready to provide flexibility and innovative solutions quickly to meet the needs of their clients. The clients, the people, and domestic and international industries depend on these companies and their steady growth of manufacturing products and services. As a result, they live up to all their expectations and promises with excellence.

Because of their highly trained workforce, completing the targets never becomes a challenge for them.

The future of contract manufacturing companies clearly states that their priority is their clients and the needs of the industries. These companies achieve the full development of the required output because of their quality of teambuilding. It is this quality of long-lasting teamwork and resilience that make them stand out in the global market.

With an intent to admire such companies, Insights Success has compiled a list of The 10 Most Promising Contract Manufacturing Companies 2021, which are making the impossible possible.

Vollrath Manufacturing Services (VMS) is exceeding all expectations by being on the cover of the edition.

Vollrath is offering custom manufacturing and engineering design consulting, standard and madeto-order parts, and custom tool fabrication from primarily serving the commercial foodservice industry to a breadth of others. Jacob J. Vollrath founded the Sheboygan Cast Steel Co. in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.

Lastly, you will also be glad to read the CXO standpoints written by the industry experts and the creative articles drafted by our in-house editorial team.

Let’s Engage!

Sourabh More sourabh@insightssuccess.com

C

COVER STORY

O N T E N T S

10

Vollrath Manufacturing Services Small Business-Style Service & Big Business-Level Expertise

28 ARTICLE

16 Digital Approach The Need to Embrace Digitization

18

Leader's Viewpoint Matija Zulj

24

FAMAR

PEKO Precision Products

Providing Excellence in Contract Development and Manufacturing Services

A Trusted Contract Manufacturing Partner for Industry Leaders

Editor-in-Chief Hitesh Dhamani Managing Editor Anish Miller

Executive Editor

Assistant Editors

Sourabh More

Jenny Fernandes

Visualizer

Art & Design Director

Associate Designer

Co-designer

David King

Asha Bange

Kartik Balapurkar

Shubham Dali

Senior Sales Manager

Business Development Manager

Kshitij S

Peter Collins

Marketing Manager

Sales Executives

John Matthew

David, Martin, Akash

Technical Head

Business Development Executives

Jacob Smile

Steve, Joe, Aidan, Binay

Technical Specialist Aditya

Digital Marketing Manager Marry D'Souza

SME-SMO Executive Amol Wadekar

Research Analyst Frank Adams

Database Management Stella Andrew

Circulation Manager Robert Brown

Technology Consultant David Stokes

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Featured Person

Brief

CoreRX corerxpharma.com

Todd Daviau CEO

CoreRx is a company that started with an idea to integrate scientists into the manufacturing process in order to provide the most cost-effective, optimal solutions for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.

FAMAR famar-group.com

Ian Cooper CEO

Famar is a European provider of pharmaceutical manufacturing and development services with a legacy of 70 years of technology expertise.

Hollingsworth hollingsworthllc.com

Stephen Barr CEO

The history of Hollingsworth dates back to 1925, when the company E. L. Hollingsworth was founded in Flint, Michigan as one of the world’s first expeditors of automotive parts.

Maryland Packaging marylandpackaging.com

Scott Cuviello VP of Operations

Maryland Packaging helps businesses grow their food production.

MaxPax maxpaxllc.com

Amanda Strong HR Generalist

MaxPax can help you reduce your packaging, production, warehousing and freight costs.

OraLabs oralabs.com

Gary Schlatter CEO

OraLabs manufactures, markets, and distributes consumer products. Categories include Lip Care, Over The Counter (OTC) Drugs, Oral Care, Skin Care, Sun Care, Personal Care, Hand Sanitizer, & Hair Care.

PEKO Precision Products Inc pekoprecision.com

Sco Baxter Marketing and BDM

PEKO participates in a full range of manufacturing aspects from innovative technology solutions to electro-mechanical product manufacture, including vertically integrated contract manufacturing.

Servetronics servetronics.com

Steve Fehr VP of Operations

With 40 plus years of experience in all aspects of the business, the Servetronics team has developed the foresight to anticipate and alleviate almost all production issues.

THE VOLLRATH CO., LLC vollrathco.com

Jean Horvath VP of Custom & Specialty Products

For nearly 150 years, Vollrath Foodservice has been on a mission: to improve how people experience a meal, no matter where it’s served.

Vexos vexos.com

Paul Jona CEO

Vexos can efficiently compete in today’s marketplace, primarily focus within automotive, industrial, networking, communication, medical and security market segments.

Company Name

COVER STORY

Small Business-Style Service & Big Business-Level Expertise

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“The way we see it, our customer's challenges are our challenges,” says Jean Horvath vice president of Custom and Specialty Products, a division of The Vollrath Company. “That's why we provide an unparalleled level of commitment to each project, integrating ourselves into our customer's team as needed, and pursuing the best possible solution as if the project was our own. The heavy lifting is ours, but the success is theirs.”

Vollrath works with its customers to make the impossible possible when it comes to industrial product solutions. Customers have complex and challenging needs, and the company's job is to deliver solutions that exceed expectations. The team of experts includes sales, project management, engineering and operations that work together to create a custom-fit, end-toend approach for each customer.

Vollrath Culture & Global Presence In 1874 Jacob J. Vollrath founded the Sheboygan Cast Steel Co. in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. At the time, it produced railroad frogs, small cast parts for the furniture industry, cooking ranges and agricultural implements. In 1900, the focus switched to cooking utensils and enamel cookware, which was the beginning of Vollrath's journey to becoming an industry leader in commercial foodservice.

team knows that the earlier they are pulled into the design process, the more likely they can help avoid costly implications for the customers.“If we are part of the early design discussion, we can make recommendations that will improve the viability of the component and even lower the overall cost if there is flexibility to modify the design for manufacturability. We can help customers understand the cost tradeoffs for given specifications,” says Jean.

Company Quality & Working at Vollrath

Over the years, the company continued to grow and acquired other companies to expand its market reach and product offering. This trajectory of growth included the Vollrath Manufacturing Services (VMS) division, which expanded its offering of custom manufacturing and engineering design consulting, standard and made-to-order parts and custom tool fabrication from primarily serving the commercial foodservice industry to a breadth of others.

Today, the Vollrath Company is a medium-sized global manufacturer with 11 facilities spread through the United States, Europe and China with over 1,250 people employed globally. As a company with deep roots in the American Midwest, Vollrath is proud that more than 80% of its product line is manufactured and assembled in the U.S. The current owners are women of the sixth and seventh generation of the founding family that naturally continue to promote the values that have been guiding the company since its beginning. Being family-focused is at the core of the company's culture that puts its associates front and center. Vollrath's commitment to the collective good of its customers, the company and the community is the secret to its success.

All Vollrath manufacturing facilities are ISO-certified and the team is knowledgeable about UL, CSA, NSF, ETL and CE standards. A quality engineer is part of the project team to ensure quality is front and center throughout the project.

As part of every project review, the component is evaluated through a detailed DFA/DFM process to ensure that the project is manufactured in the most cost effective and efficient way. The organization provides its customers with PPAP parts before production to verify that everything is exactly the way they expect it to be.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Vollrath continues to observe the recommendations that are in place, including having employees work and conduct meetings remotely when possible, prohibiting all nonessential business travel, and encouraging people to stay at home if they feel unwell.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Vollrath has remained open and operating with its sales and customer service teams available to address questions and concerns from customers. The company has continued to be a reliable supplier to its customers throughout the pandemic.

Productivity with Balance

Putting the Customer First The manufacturing process is complex and can be impacted by many factors including part complexity, raw materials, critical dimensions, tolerances and aesthetics. At VMS, the

At VMS, every project is assigned a dedicated project manager to ensure a successful outcome for each client. He or she oversees coordination of all the resources and inputs to create custom solutions for the customer – often bringing

Jean Horvath Vice President of Custom & Specialty Products Vollrath Manufacturing Services (VMS)

ideas to consider that they did not know were possible.

Many times, the company can leverage technology or products from other parts of the business or leverage its manufacturing capabilities to uniquely create a solution.

With a constant overview of the project, the project manager develops the overall timeline, monitors its progress, and ensures that nothing falls through the cracks.

He or she also acts as the dedicated point of contact for the client and is the liaison between the client and the internal team and coordinates the activities of all the internal resources to ensure the product launches on time and within the cost target. It is a fundamental role that is often overlooked in the manufacturing industry, despite its significant and proven value.

Authentic Manufacturing Process Every new product project runs through a quality management system where the team monitors process variations to ensure that the company is meeting customer requirements and identify areas for continuous improvement. At Vollrath, the company uses the Process Validation Methodology (PVM) process, which combines the outputs of Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) and Production Part Approval Process (PPAP) into a centralized document suitable for it and its customer's needs. It also uses electronic data collection in each of its manufacturing locations to ensure conformance to product specifications. “We will provide our customers with PPAP parts as part of our NPD process to ensure that everything is exactly the way the customer expects it to be,” says Jean.

A Strategic Thinker Known for Values & Work Culture Jean Horvath is Vice President of Custom and Specialty Products, a division of The Vollrath Company. She's held this position since 2013 and has helped diversify VMS's portfolio into dozens of new industries. She holds an MBA from Loyola University - Chicago and a Bachelor of Science in economics from the University of Wisconsin Madison.

After spending most of her career working with independent entrepreneurs as well as partnering with multimillion-dollar brands, Jean knows what truly drives profitable businesses, strategic partnerships and long-lasting customer relationships. She manages a fully integrated team of sales managers, project managers, designers, engineers, and operations to provide customers with tailored and costeffective product solutions.

Driven by Teamwork & Reliable Process Relying on individual heroics can be an issue that plagues organizations. If every project takes individual heroics to get across the finish line, then the assumption is that they do not have the processes or resources in place that are necessary for reliable, repeatable development and results.

VMS's new product development process is proven, and team based. It ensures that all the necessary resources and functions are included for every phase of a project. The gated process is robust and ensures each project is evaluated at key points in its development, so issues and concerns are caught and addressed early on by the team.

At Vollrath, business revolves around a lot more than simply manufacturing industry-leading products in an environmentally responsible way. Running a successful operation includes an intentional focus on social sustainability, which means serving people, be it customers, employees and ownership, or the entire community.

Vollrath is an award-winning employer who prides itself on being one of the healthiest companies in the United States.

It offers its associates a variety of programs and incentives to live a healthy lifestyle and a happy life. A wholesome work-life balance with a focus on finding passion and joy outside of work is not just encouraged but reflected in the culture values that the entire organization lives by.

Treating all people with respect is another core value that permeates the company and promotes inclusion and diversity at all levels inside and outside the company. While at work, everyone is expected to take ownership and accountability for the overall good of all stakeholders and the company itself.

Award-Winning Products & Services VMS is a domestic industrial product solution company with the experience, expertise and capabilities to produce complex, highly engineered products and solutions. It offers a unique breadth of in-house processes, including anodizing, deep draw stamping and annealing, metal

spinning, metal stamping, metal fabrication, precision plastic injection molding, and high-quality acrylics; along with several secondary operations and turnkey solutions such as custom tooling, packaging and inventory management. A wide selection of metals are sourced milldirect from both domestic and international suppliers by VMS's dedicated sourcing teams, which gives its customers the advantage of the purchasing power.

Purpose – To Help Customers Vollrath focuses on continuing to grow its customer base, expanding into new industries and investing in manufacturing capabilities to directly align with new customer needs. It recognizes that it offers a unique package of skills, experience, and capabilities that can support diverse customers and industries.

Client's Review “Success with a fast growing startup like KETOS could only occur when key ingredients are prioritized by a manufacturing partner: flexibility, accuracy, product quality and strong communication to operate as an extension of our team,” - Meena Sankaran, KETOS Founder & CEO

The Need to Embrace

DIGITIZATION

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Digital Approach

E

arlier, a single company used to take care of all the tasks involved with building a product. That is not the case anymore. Now, we see various components being dependent on contracts or suppliers. Some companies just hire other manufacturing companies on contract to produce specific parts of a larger production. For example, car manufacturers do not create every piece in-house. They contract other companies that produce specific parts like engines, and other body parts. Later they are used for the larger production. Contract manufacturing has gained traction after industries have revolutionized.

Today, contract manufacturing companies are the ones who oversee the production process and build the product for other companies. It is because of them other companies can focus on the things they do best like selling, marketing, and customer service.

Life of businesses has become much easier with the diverse pool of services these companies have to offer. They are a skilled team with their talents of creating custom tools and equipment, turning any business more profitable. It brings life to machinery products with the introduction of a new and advanced manufacturing market. They are in the phases of designing, producing, motion-control, sensors, and related materials and turning raw materials into full-scale products.

As they say, there is always room for improvement. In the case of these manufacturing companies, they can improve a lot with today’s fourth industrial revolution – The Digital Revolution. Now, the wave of digital transformation has arrived.

Know Where to Go With the changing times of the digital world and advanced technological tools, companies need to position themselves with efficient and simple innovative solutions. Looking at the global increase rate of population, there is always a fear of an increase in demand and a decrease in supply.

Digitalization of manufacturing processes with the latest technological and innovative tools will enable to maintain that balance without sacrificing quality.

As the pandemic threat is still ongoing around the world, manufacturing companies and manufacturers are adapting to virtual meetings and operations. Digitalization ensures solutions to many more of such problems. Today, manufacturing companies understand their role to meet the needs of the industries and clients. It is rapidly adapting to these ever-changing digitalized solutions worldwide. With the digitalization of services, it is continued to grow and expand its market reach and product offerings.

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Benefits of Digitalizing Manufacturing Ÿ Cost Savings – Think of all the workload associated with the manufacturing companies like labor, training, machinery, and more. Most business does not have the advanced tools to grow their company. Introducing the advanced digitalized and advanced tools enables companies to improve their business in the long run indirectly saving the cost of the companies by more profit. Ÿ Quality Assurance – Only the top-quality manufacturing company makes it to the top in the market. Having advanced mechanics sets the companies in improving the quality of manufacturing.

Get Bigger and Better The manufacturing sector is complex. It is impacted by many other factors like raw materials, dimensions, and complexity of the client's needs. Manufacturing companies can create custom solutions for the customer and with the help of technology, ideas can be brought to reality.

Digitalization is fundamental and is often overlooked in the manufacturing industry, despite its significant and proven value. It offers a unique set of skills and capabilities that can support diverse customers and industries.

Manufacturing industries are transforming with digitalization in the sectors of Clothing and Textiles, Petroleum, Chemicals, Electronics, Computers, Transportation, Metal Production, and many other industries with their digitalization of services and products.

Stay Agile with Each Other The goal is to continue to grow with the customer and expanding, and investing into new manufacturing challenges. Manufacturing companies understand their capabilities to support diverse customers and industries.

Above all, the key to a successful company is team-building quality and understanding each other. The team of managers, engineers, other manufacturing unit should have good communication among themselves. This brings flexibility in all aspects of the company and helps in achieving the company’s goals.

The End-Word Furthermore, digitalization enables to deliver the advanced manufacturing process. It is easy to use and requires the available data in the company to the companies. It gives companies useful information, instructions, along with warnings about any dangers. The benefits digitalization brings for manufacturing companies are huge. There are still a lot of challenges and digitalization is set to solve most of them with innovative tools for the manufacturing industries.

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Ian Cooper, CEO,

FAMAR

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The 10 Most Promising Contract Manufacturing Companies, 2021

Providing Excellence in Contract Development and Manufacturing Services

W

ith changing times due to the pandemic, pharma companies are increasingly positioning themselves to respond to needs and provide clients with efficient and simple solutions. Consumer demand is simple: they want less expensive, well-made drugs available when needed. Outsourcing enables pharma companies to reduce costs without sacrificing quality.

As coronavirus has spread around the world, it has created profound disruption across communities, patients and clinicians, the way companies work, and how they engage to support stakeholders across the ecosystem. It has severely disrupted all industries around the globe and the Pharma industry is no exception.

FAMAR has quickly adapted to a new way of doing business with its customers, as imposed by the restrictions to contain the spread of the Virus, introducing strict protocols to keep our people safe and our operations running. In FAMAR this also has meant adapting to virtual customer meetings instead of face-to-face meetings, increasing the frequency of its communications with clients, so that it ensures continuous alignment on the clients supply priorities, by anticipating any potential supply problems to address them so as to avoid them becoming an issue for its clients’ patients.

Ian Cooper, CEO of FAMAR believes the trust and mutual respect between CDMOs and their clients is strengthening www.insightssuccess.com

through this pandemic, where the CDMO has been able to show their professionalism in managing this crisis and ensuring reliable supply to the needs of the clients. Ian says that Business relationships that are solid, long-lasting, reliable are even more strengthened in the times of pandemic. And he says that this is what clearly characterizes the relationship between FAMAR and its clients.

Leading Service Provider in Healthcare FAMAR was founded in 1949 in Greece and is today one of the leading European companies providing services for the development and production of pharmaceutical and health care products (CDMO). Today FAMAR has 6 production centers and 2 R&D units for pharmaceuticals, medical devices and health care products in Greece, Italy, and Spain.

It produces annually 1700 unique product codes for more than 120 clients - pharmaceutical and health care companies. It also has the largest distribution network exclusively for pharmaceuticals and medical devices in Greece - with a share of more than 60% of the total market.

The company has 1850 employees, and it positions itself as one of the leading service providers in the health care and pharmaceutical industry, leveraging the experience, extensive market know-how and the talents and passion cultivated in its corporate culture for its people.

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Emphasizing on Quality and Technical Expertise FAMAR is a European provider of pharmaceutical manufacturing and development services with a legacy of 70 years of technology expertise. In FAMAR it strategically emphasizes on continuous investment in quality, technical expertise and equipment, sustained enrichment of its service portfolio and a strong and flexible structure that ensures a steady growth of drug development and production services for more than 120 clients for 80 markets worldwide.

Building on its experience, FAMAR is reliable partner to deliver flexible solutions, from development to production and distribution.

Providing Flexibility and Innovative Solutions Today, more than ever, FAMAR is rapidly adapting to an ever-changing and highly demanding pharmaceutical environment, providing flexibility and innovative solutions to quickly meet the needs of its clients. As a CDMO, it recognizes the vital role in the production and supply of medicines to patients in need worldwide. Its clients, its people, its local and international health systems, and society depend on the company and its steady supply of drug development and manufacturing services and that expectation is its promise, its mission, its point of excellence.

Good Vaccines Distribution Practices Currently, in Greece, due to its position as the leading 3PL dedicated to Pharmaceutical distribution, FAMAR was selected by the Greek government to be the partner that will handle the distribution of pandemic vaccines to all remote areas in Mainland Greece.

The distribution of the vaccines to the most remote locations is indeed a technical challenge due to the very demanding storage and transport conditions but also due to the critical importance of the cargo to the fight against the Covid19 pandemic. FAMAR is probably the only player in Greece able to perform such mission with strict compliance with the Good Distribution Practices due to the quality and size of its fleet, the highly trained work force accustomed to handle high value lifesaving pharmaceuticals, and the impeccable track record provided by its Quality System, a safe assurance to its Clients, Authorities and to the population in general who is counting on these medicines to progressively return back to a normal life.

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Famar provides excellence in contract development and manufacturing services, offering flexible solutions with the customer always at the center of our hearts and minds.

Investing in High Potent Capabilities FAMAR is not only heavily investing in its newest High Potent capabilities (Safebridge Cat 3) to ensure proper containment of the active ingredient and protect its scientists, but is also keeping in mind this approach of coordinated end to end development of harder to make medicines. It is certain that its Clients will appreciate and take great benefit from the end to end integration from formulation and analytical development, through clinical batches to scale up and commercial manufacturing.

Ensuring Strength, Reliability and Resilience FAMAR’s future aspirations is what its vision clearly states.

It is the priority of FAMAR, its shareholders and the management team. The company aims to achieve full recovery and development of its business in total to reposition itself as the leader in the CDMO market. Its highly skilled employees are fully committed to serving its clients and their patients through this last year’s renaissance of FAMAR. Definitely this time due to the Covid pandemic, the disruptions, and difficulties in all markets in general, are very challenging, but FAMAR has shown its strengths, its reliability, its quality of services that characterize its longlasting business relations and a resilience that differentiates it and make it stand out in the global CDMO market.

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Sco Baxter, Marke ng and Business Development Manager PEKO Precision Products Inc

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The 10 Most Promising Contract Manufacturing Companies, 2021

PEKO Precision Products

A Trusted Contract Manufacturing Partner for Industry Leaders

T

he heart of successful contract manufacturing is building a team that takes the time to thoroughly understand the customers’ products. The team of Program Managers, Manufacturing Engineers, Planners, Quality Engineers and other manufacturing and engineering personnel should have good communication between all of them. These team members must be able to communicate the customer needs to manufacturing processes. They should be able to monitor cost, quality, and delivery with the flexibility to adjust for optimization. The team of PEKO Precision Products ties all three aspects of cost, quality, and delivery together efficiently for complete customer satisfaction and aligns with the company’s goals.

Scott Baxter is PEKO’s Marketing and Business Development Manager. Like most managers at PEKO, he holds a degree in engineering and applies it to his normal business roles. His mission is to ensure that the company is connecting with customers that are looking for contract manufacturing and product development services for their machinery, equipment, and major mechanical assemblies.

In an interview with Insights Success, Scott Baxter shares the journey of PEKO Precision Products and about its contribution as a contract manufacturing company.

assembly equipment for local automotive companies and precision assemblies for imaging companies. Since then, the company has broadened its base of customers to national levels and beyond.

Describe the company and its lucrative contract manufacturing services to its clients.

PEKO provides full-service Contract Manufacturing of Machinery, Equipment and Major Assemblies. The focus of the company is to bring machinery products to market. We begin with the New Product Introduction stage. This includes phases like Design, Prototype, Alpha/Beta build, Pre-Production or Pilot Builds and ultimately full-scale production. Most common production annual volumes for the types of equipment we build for OEMs is in the dozens or hundreds, usually at price ranges from $10,000 to $300,000 per unit. Machinery and equipment in our specialty often involves a high level of metal manufactured parts (frames, sheet metal, machined parts, etc.), motion control, sensors, mechanical electrical assembly, and related items. Specialized assembly cells are created for each customer to optimize manufacturing costs and output.

Kindly provide an insight of your company’s solid quality program.

Below are the Highlights of the Interview: What led to the inception of PEKO Precision?

PEKO began its life as a small tool and die shop in 1966.

Three skilled craftsmen took their talents of creating custom tools for local manufacturing companies and turned it into a lucrative endeavor. Once established, the company focused not only on producing custom tools and parts but ventured into more comprehensive solutions for its customer base.

By the early 1980’s, PEKO was producing test and

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The Quality infrastructure is second to none at PEKO. A wide range of customer industries and profiles has helped us craft a strong and reputable Quality Management System. Within the overarching Quality Management System (QMS), each customer has a set of requirements from print tolerances to manufacturing/process specifications to regulatory compliance that need to be addressed. The Quality team translates these from customer to PEKO and integrates directly into our QMS. This puts Quality at the source which profoundly reduces debug and

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As a leading company in the contract manufacturing, what advance technologies are you leveraging to make your services more productive and approachable?

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PEKO Precision Products, Inc is a Contract Manufacturing company that specializes in Manufacturing and Designing equipment, machinery and major mechanical assemblies for a robust customer base since 1966.

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other problems at the final assembly stage. After final assembly, a final inspection or Factory Acceptance Test is performed to ensure ultimate Quality leaving the plant.

Does the company provide creative solutions to its clients to help and manage change?

The biggest advancement is the use of Robotics and embracing Industry 4.0. Without divulging too much information, we have successfully utilized robotics in some instances achieving >300% productivity gains.

Taking into consideration, the current pandemic, and its impact on global economies, how are you driving the company to sustain operations and ensuring safety of your associates and employees at the same time?

As an essential manufacturer, we are taking all precautions recommended by the CDC and local officials. Luckily, our manufacturing processes allow us plenty of socially distant space.

What are your company’s future aspirations? What strategies are you undertaking to achieve those goals?

The company is planning a 10% year-on-year growth curve.

PEKO’s strategies includes building on successes in machinery and equipment manufacturing. Improved marketing and sales efforts will attract and onboard machinery OEMs in North America and Europe that seek to find a US based machinery/equipment contract manufacturer. A secondary strategy is to attract lower complexity/higher volume equipment for manufacturing with specialized assembly cells to stay competitive with this segment.

Change management not only requires creative solutions but it also requires deep understanding of the customers’ product and team. Change can come for so many reasons and in so many formats that change management becomes an absolute critical process aspect, otherwise failure will be imminent. Processing and managing change require a combination of standard and custom protocols. We have created a proprietary change management process with ECNs and feedback loops internally. Furthermore, customized change management protocols are also implemented as an amendment to our standard protocols on a customer-to-customer basis. This allows for customers own processes to be integrated with PEKO processes. The outcome here is that the customer can make changes as they please and are accustomed to, while PEKO can integrate into our own system while still honoring customer requires.

This leads to high efficacy and customer satisfaction.

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Leader's Viewpoint

Matija Zulj CEO & Founder at AGRIVI Determined to solve the global food production issue, he abandoned the safety of the ICT sector and went into developing farm management software solutions. Eventually, his determination, hard work and commitment paid off: nowadays, AGRIVI boasts the most successful global farm management app, solving the issue of food traceability.

How was AGRIVI made?

After a successful seven-year career in the corporate ICT world, AGRIVI founder Matija Žulj decided to try his hand at something different. He opted for an industry, to which he believed he could contribute considerably more and which would make him more content. Thus, he committed himself to solving the global issue of increasing the food production's efficiency and sustainability. To better understand farming, he decided to become a farmer himself and set up a blueberry plantation. Soon afterwards he faced the farmers' day-to-day reality – the knowhow and advice on growing blueberries were far from easily available, and the market at the time lacked a simple, affordable software solution that would help him track his production and make data-driven decisions.

That is how AGRIVI came to be, going from being a Croatia-based startup, whose goal was to support farmers and food producers in making their production more efficient, to launching what is today one of the most successful farm management apps globally. Currently, the AGRIVI solution is present in more than 100 countries, while the company has offices in Zagreb, Warsaw,

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Bucharest, and London. The AGRIVI farm management software is used by farmers of all sizes, agribusinesses, agricultural banks, and other stakeholders in the food and agriculture industry, and has been localized in more than 15 languages.

In just a few clicks, the AGRIVI solution allows its users to obtain information on all production stages, as well as plenty other useful information needed for production planning and timely implementation of the agritech measures. These days, AGRIVI cooperates with the top global corporations in the industry, including the US-based Driscoll's, the world's largest berry company, Switzerland's Nestle, which uses the AGRIVI solution to ensure the quality of the fruit for its children's food factories, and Helvetas, which relies on the software in question to ensure rice production's traceability for more than 4,000 small farmers in Asia. According to the leading market research companies, AGRIVI is continually one of the top agritech companies globally, and last year it was named Europe's top fast-growing food-tech company.

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Digitization prevents average farmers from experiencing triple loss annually Matija believes the future of food production, as well as its quality and profitability growth, lies in digitizing agricultural processes, which is something AGRIVI does.

The company's technology supports managing the entire production, enables compiling different analytical reports, and has built-in advanced predictive algorithms, which help with decision-making regarding optimal plant treatment schedule. Thanks to its large database, the solution provides the farmers with suggestions based on other users' best practices.

Furthermore, the solution enables its users to deliver one of the most advanced agricultural production's traceability reports. For any given crop, there are 20 key pieces of production-related information, and the reports are constantly available to both farmers and their buyers.

The AGRIVI solution is available on every user's smartphone. It is easy to use and only requires the discipline to enter the predefined data available to the farmers. Everything else is done by the platform itself – the farmers are given information, instructions, and warnings.

Digitizing agriculture brings substantial benefits to the farmers, as it prevents the triple loss that average farmers suffer annually. The first loss takes place during the production planning stage, as without the precise data on soil quality and actual crop needs, the farmers are unable to optimally calculate the necessary inputs for the season. The digitization can reduce these losses by up to 30 percent. The second loss happens during the production stage, mostly due to misjudgments in implementing certain agrotechnological measures; yield losses caused by pests and diseases amount to 20 – 40 percent annually. The digitization reduces deviations from optimal deadlines, thus considerably reducing the losses in question. Finally, the third time the farmers experience losses is when pricing their products, due to their inability to provide detailed information about all the production stages – their buyers view this information as a guarantee that it is worth paying more for the farmers' products. With digitization, the farmers' income goes up by 50 – 100 percent. Plus, it is the only way to quickly increase the competitiveness of agriculture.

Importance of food traceability The global coronavirus pandemic has greatly affected the entire world, highlighting the importance of food production safety. Production traceability is one of the biggest advantages of the AGRIVI business digitization, as it gives us a fully transparent production of the food we consume.

Consequently, food safety is increasingly becoming the dominant topic across the world, and people's awareness of

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the importance of a healthy diet is rapidly growing, with surveys suggesting we are prepared to pay more for healthy foodstuffs. Even though various certificates are being developed to try and standardize food's origin and method of production, the bottleneck that is preventing us from making any real headway is the lack of information about the foodstuffs we consume. Still, advanced digital solutions, such as those by AGRIVI, are giving the farmers a real chance of solving this issue.

www.insightssuccess.com

Matija Zulj CEO & Founder at AGRIVI

www.insightssuccess.com

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