Top Shop Leader Focuses on Its People as Key to Success

Originally incorporated in the late 70s, Avtec was purchased by the owners of Nico in the mid 1980s, and is now part of the larger umbrella company, The Lindgren Group (TLG). Between the two companies, the finishing capabilities are expansive, and industries served include aerospace, defense, agriculture, general manufacturing and firearms manufacturers. They also do some medical device work and pick up jobs across virtually any industry as a job shop.

With more than 200,000 sq. ft. of manufacturing space across the organization, Mike Roberg, president and CEO of The Lindgren Group, estimates the shops encompass 85% of metal finishing technologies. Avtec currently has about 125 employees and offers anodizing and hard coat, electroless nickel, co-deposited Teflon electroless nickel, nickel boron, black oxide, electropolish, chromate on aluminum and zinc die cast and passivation. In addition, the company offers blasting, dry film and a full masking department. Roberg says these are the higher value-added finishes their customers are seeking.  

What differentiates Avtec, he says, is the company’s commitment to quality. “Customers are apt to pay for quality, and we can not only sell that but deliver.” The shop is ISO and Nadcap certified and holds supplier approvals from top manufacturers from aerospace to defense and heavy equipment companies.

Lab manager Travis Johnson was named in Products Finishing’s 40 Under 40 in 2022 and has led a variety of internal improvement initiatives. His contributions have included implementing a fully automatic bath control plan for the electroless nickel department, addition of automatic pH control for critical process steps in the plating department, adding new XRF equipment, maintaining laboratory control records in accordance with international standards, and training new chemical staff. All these efforts have led to Avtec being named a Top Shop once again.

What Lies Ahead for the Industry

Roberg says a challenge facing not only Avtec but the industry overall is that regulations will only become a heavier and more costly burden for companies like his in the future. But he also knows that the work that is produced by Avtec and its peers is critical to the strength of the economy. 

“Manufacturing can’t exist without metal finishing, painters and platers. And we can’t exist without manufacturing,” he says. And he worries that the U.S. could lose the business. “What’s going to drive manufacturing and finishing businesses to stay here is going to be having an affordable source of labor, otherwise we’ll drive the business overseas again,” Roberg says. According to Roberg, Avtec finds manufacturing staffing in North America today is “razor thin,” without a big pool of candidates that want to do the work.

But the cost and challenge of staffing and overall higher cost of doing business in the past few years is what keeps him up at night.

“I think a lot of people outside the industry look at plating and finishing shops and think you can get a guy to come in and hang parts, but it’s not that way anymore.

“It’s costing us 30% more to do business today than it did five years ago,” Roberg states. “Along that line, employee development and retention is key to our industry specifically.” And, as Roberg says, without trade school or university plating programs, finding employees has been a real challenge.

“We noticed a number of years ago that we had a lot of impending retirements across the business, so we started our own Plating U internally,” Roberg says. This allows the company to hire candidates with mechanical aptitude directly from high school or college and educate them on the industry inhouse.

Roberg says Avtec also pays competitive wages, and is a non-union shop, which helps with employee recruiting and retention. “We do semi-annual reviews, quarterly bonuses based on profit and key performance metrics, quality and on-time delivery, and we measure the shop employees’ satisfaction during the review process. We ask what improvements they’d like to see us make, and we do what we can to respond to them and implement them because most of the time it’s a win for everyone.”

One specific concern Roberg has is the lack of employees that seem interested in leadership roles. “I’d like to see a national campaign to encourage the younger generations to take leadership roles, or there won’t be enough people to run our companies,” he says. That was one main impetus for the formation of TLG, so they could consolidate key business functions including sales and quality assurance. “I’ve got a few supervisors in their early 30s that don’t want to apply for department manager jobs because they say they don’t feel ready,” he shares. “But we encourage people all the time to take the next step in their development. It seems that they’re afraid of failure and decision making, but I tell them I’m more disappointed that they aren’t taking the chance. I’d rather them make a decision and have it not be the right one and learn from it, taking calculated risks. I trust that I’ve given them the background to make decisions and that they have the experience to do it, they just don’t seem to want to.”

The good news is that even if they don’t want to be supervisors right now, many of the more experienced employees are comfortable stepping into training positions. Avtec has a formal training program where employees transition through the company and get increased responsibility as they complete each phase.

“We have an employee roster, which I call a versatility chart,” Roberg shares. The document maps out all the capabilities of each employee on various processes and equipment. “We developed it several years ago and it was key during the early days of Covid because we could move the people to the work we had while maintaining social distancing and running with fewer people. Cross-training is huge across the organization. Roberg says all front office employees are trained to do each of the roles. “That’s the secret to our success, our people. You can always find a way to do capital improvements and find new investments, you can put in new plating lines and equipment, but the people are the key.”

And the focus on people is what will keep Avtec growing in the future.