SPI Newsletter

SPI

NEWSLETTER

MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT

BUSINESS UPDATE; VP OF SALES & MARKETING

SUMMIT EMPLOYEE SPOTLIGHT

POSITIVE LEADERSHIP

WELLNESS CHALLENGE

PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

Hello, hola, nı hao, and xin chào to our Summit team around the globe! Thank you for your dedication and your contribution to the success of our team.

It is hard to believe we are already halfway through 2023! This is an exciting and busy time at Summit.

Our three new plants will begin production this quarter. Plant 20 in Lawrenceburg, KY will make its first parts in August, Plant 22 in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam will make its first parts in September, and Plant 21 in Leon, Mexico will make its first parts in October. If you have an interest in working in these locations, speak to your HR manager and keep your eye on new job postings. Summit’s business is growing providing job security and career growth for our team members.

As discussed in my Q1 letter, this year we are focused on improvement and “back to the basics”. This means each of us, every day executing, our core, standard systems and processes. This approach will guide us in four areas of improvement.

Operational excellence in our manufacturing plants and achieving our operational targets related to safety, quality, delivery, and cost

Material cost reduction from our supply base and through VA activities

Cost control in the plants and the tech center – carefully watch our spending Logistics and inventory cost reduction

I’d like to recognize operational excellence from teams across the company.

Safety: The following locations had zero recordable incidents over the past 12 months: Plant 13, 15, 16, 19, sales office, tool room, warehouse, and technical center. Fantastic performance!

Quality & Delivery: The following plants as of June have all “green” (highest performance ratings) with their customers for quality and delivery. Plant 1, 3, 8, 16, 17, 18, 19 Great job!

And, congratulations to P17 on their plant specific Supplier Quality Excellence Award from GM for their 2022 performance.

Cost:

The following plants as of June year to date have labor potential over 90%. Plant 1, 8, 13, 16, 19, 15, 17

The following plants as of June year to date have internal defect parts per million (PPM) under their plant specific target. Plant 8, 13, 16, 19, 15

The following plants as of June have their raw material DOH under their plant specific target. Plant 1 and 18 Fantastic teamwork!

P20-Kentucky

P21-Mexico

P22-Vietnam

PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

Article on Positivity

We have been focusing on positive leadership and expressing gratitude across the organization.In December of 2023, Summit held a training for 80 managers from all North American locations, led by University of Michigan professor Emeritus Kim Cameron on the principle of his book, “Positively Energizing Leadership” by Kim Cameron. HR can loan you a copy of the book if you are interested in reading it.We encourage all our team members to express gratitude to each other to recognize a job well done. Ways to express gratitude at Summit include writing a note on gratitude board located at all locations, giving a thank you note, (cards available at the gratitude boards or from HR), simply saying thank you, and giving a high five. If you lead a meeting, start it with a gratitude statement that rotates among the meeting attendees. Studies indicate that expressing gratitude benefits both the giver and receiver with improved emotional and physical health and shorter recovery times from illness. From an organizational perspective, expressing gratitude along with positive leadership practices produces higher team member retention, quality, productivity, customer satisfaction, and innovation.

Article on Leadership Principles

Summit encourages all team members to be leaders and to exemplify our leadership principles.

Leadership Principles

1. Promotes a Safe Work Environment – Commits fully to eliminating hazards, protecting employees, and continuously improving workplace safety and health. Visibly demonstrates and communicates his/her safety and health commitment to employees and others. Sets an example through his/her own actions.

2. Company Business Perspective – Recognizes that Summit Polymers is a business and understands that all decisions, behavior, and actions should support the best interest of the company. Understands the company’s performance objectives, his/her supporting performance objectives, department priorities, and the company’s operating principles and processes.

3. Develop People – Trains team members to ensure they have the required technical and management skill needed to succeed in their current role and continues to bring in (as needed) and develop high performing team members to ensure the succession plan is full. Recognizes the talent of team members and equips, enables, and empowers them to achieve objectives independently. Ensures work is challenging and value added.

4. Managing & Measuring Work – Ensures team members have a full workload. Clearly assigns responsibility for tasks and decisions. Sets clear objectives and measures. Monitors process, progress, and results. Designs P-D-C-A including reviews into work to ensure successful delivery and quality on deliverables and objectives. Sets the example for work ethic.

5. Planning – Accurately scopes out length and difficulty of projects and program work. Breaks work down into the process steps and develops schedules. Anticipates problems and adjusts. Ensures the team meets the objectives.

6. Priority Setting – Spends his/her time and the time of others on what is important. Zeros in on what is critical and puts the trivial aside.

7. Problem Solving – Builds a culture and practice to surface and solve problems whether they are manufacturing or engineering quality problems, business process problems, customer relationship problems, etc. Understands that surfacing problems requires “Go and See”. Uses the Practical Problem Solving methodology to find the root cause and implement and evaluate countermeasures. And then, ensures standards and processes are put in place to prevent the problem from happening again.

8. Continuous Improvement – Builds a culture and practice of eliminating waste in systems, processes, and work. Looks for improvement opportunities to reduce cost and improve quality through automation, improved efficiency, global perspective, etc. Consistently, achieves performance metrics, then, determines how and makes a plan to do even better.

9. Initiate/Influence – Recognizes opportunities and problems and takes leadership action with his/her own team, cross functional teams, and teams that may include suppliers or customers to drive company performance. Bottom-line orientated, steadfastly pushes self and others for results.

10. Listening – Practices active listening has the patience to hear people out and can accurately restate the opinions of others even when he/she disagrees.

11. Lead a Customer First Culture – Understands people like to do business with people they like and trust. Engage in a positive manner with our customers. Meet their expectations on quality and delivery. Solve problems for them, present fact based solutions options. Keep confidential Summit information inside our company and do not disparage or speak ill of the customer to your teammates.

12. Positive Leadership – Positively engages team members, motivates people, and builds a culture defined by teamwork and a commitment to get the job done for the company and our customers.

13. Ethics & Values – Supports the Summit Code of Conduct. Leads by example and conducts him/herself with honesty and integrity.

14. Shop Floor Focus “Go & See” –Understands that the “shop floor” is where value added activities take place. This may be the actual shop floor or it may be anyplace where company processes and activities are taking place. The shop floor is constantly changing.

Understands that he/she must be on the shop floor to understand the current condition and to address problems.

15. Fact Based Decision Making – Makes decisions based on facts and data.

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Cody is always willing to cover when we are short staffed. He comes in early, stays late, and does what is needed everyday. His contributions on 3rd shift support plant operations throughout the other shifts.

Crystal goes above and beyond her normal job duties. While doing her job as a material handler, she also assists in the molding department. Crystal is known for having a good attitude and getting the job done.

Josh goes above and beyond daily, ensuring that any issues that arise in molding are fixed in a timely manner. Josh will work extra hours at night or on weekends, without being prompted, based on the urgency of the issue. His previous experience in maintenance and tooling make him a valuable asset to Engineering and Plant 6 as a whole. We greatly appreciate his hard work and look forward to his continued growth.

Dennis has been dedicated to SPI for 20 Years and continues to work hard every day. Dennis brings joy to the office with his bright personality.

Ashley goes above and beyond her job daily. She is willing to stop what she is doing to make sure the plant as a whole is successful. We would not be where we are today without her dedication and determination.

Yulan joined P13 in 2008, as an Assembly Operator. She has since grown into a supervisor role through her hard work and excellent performance She is not only proactive and vigorous in her job, but is always willing to help others.

Since Rene joined Summit's Finance team, he has been a key player in working with management to correct several finance metrics. He has helped improve the accuracy of P15 QOS numbers.

Cody Noteboom, Paint Supervisor, P1

Crystal Shadix, Material Handler, P3

Josh Sexton, ME, P6

Dennis Edwards, Launch Champion, P8

Ashley Varela, Financial Manager, P9

Li Yu Lan, Assembly Supervisor, P13

Rene Flores, Finance Manager, P15

Born in Detroit, raised in the suburbs, the son of an Engineer at Ford Motor Company; I was seemingly destined to work in the Automotive industry. After graduating from Novi High School in 1988, I attended Lawrence Technological University, receiving my Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, and my Master's degree in Industrial Operations.

I joined Summit Polymers almost 3 years ago now. Although my postdegree career had always been focused on the Electronics side of the Automotive business; the customers and the skillset required to succeed in this business are ubiquitous. I’ve held roles in Engineering, Program Management, Purchasing and Sales. These roles were at US and Japanese Suppliers, and at Ford directly.

All of this has given me a well-rounded background, coming full circle back to Sales since my first paying job was selling shoes at a local shopping mall where I grew up!

My 30+ year career in the automotive industry has also given me the opportunity to travel and experience the world, accumulating well over 2 million flight miles on Delta alone. Trekking the globe through business, I found England to be one of my favorite countries to visit, with a millennium long history easily accessible on a daily basis while visiting. Japan has always been my favorite destination to visit in the Asian region with its unique culture, history, and its amazingly varied cuisine.

I believe strong, personal relationships are the key to successful sales growth in our Automotive world. In this ultra-competitive global business environment, personal relationships are truly what closes any deal. I can assure you that the global SPI team has the established relationships in place to propel our business forward. Under Andrea’s leadership, the opportunities for Summit’s profitable, organic growth within our existing customer base is immense. New customers and constantly emerging OEM’s are also on the Sales team’s radar, and they are being vigorously pursued.

Our existing customer base of Ford, General Motors, Stellantis, and Nissan control close to 50% of the US Automotive Market combined, which affords us a consistent stream of conquest and defense opportunities to pursue and grow our business. The SPI Sales team is also working to expand our sales beyond our existing product line of Consoles, I/P Trim and AC Registers, to include large Door panels and Hard trim.

For the remainder of 2023, your Sales team is laser focused on retaining our defense business with our largest customers. Understanding future opportunities in 2024 and beyond, we will position Summit Polymers to succeed and exceed our growth targets into the future.

Yuying Song, Assembly Operator, P16

Yuying has many skills and is familiar with all the OISs. During new program launches, she is always the one selected to support and help identify solutions in Assembly. She truly enjoys working at Summit.

Santiago Jasso Tovar, Utility EHS, P17

Santiago always arrives at work on time, he supports various departments and has excellent performance. Santiago entered Summit as a janitor and has since been promoted to Utility. Santiago loves spending time with his family.

Tim Bell, Maintenance Tech, P18

Tim reports to work every day with a positive attitude and takes great pride in his work. He is quick to tackle his job responsibilities and is always willing to jump in and help.

LÊ PHƯỚC HẬU, Automation Engineer, P19

Hau worked closely with IT and Molding to develop a PLC program for downloading production reporting data. This saves a significant amount of time for Molding and Finance teams. He was also crucial in assisting all departments with preparation for both phases of our ISO14001 Audit. He did great work on both! He is social, energetic and loves to travel!

Kris Colvin, ME Molding, P20

Kris has provided support to the molding departments in both plant 06 and plant 09 during his time with Summit He's always kind and willing to help the team.

Gabriel Torres,Maintenance Manager,P21

Gabriel has been a key contributor since the planning of P21. He has been the support for all the departments during start up. Gabriel loves go to fishing and spend time with his son.

Steve Hay, Engineering Technical Manager, TC

Steve uses his considerable expertise in design, molding, and tooling to help others whenever and wherever he can. A good eaxmple is developing the SPEED process that Summit uses to qualify new tools and processes. Steve's favorite hobbies are furniture building, bike riding and golf. He also enjoys learning new skills and hobbies.

Positive Leadership Reminders

1. How are you showing your appreciation for your team each day?

2. How are you serving and supporting your team?

3. Are you coaching or criticizing? Be a positive force!

Make sure to check the Dayforce HUB regularly for news and other updates!

Starting Q3 we will be beginning our Wellness Journey as a company!

July 1st will mark the start of our Mileage Competition! Walk, Run, Bike, Swim etc, to complete as many Active miles as possible throughout Q3. Track your progress. Each location winner takes home a prize!