MiMfg Magazine
INDUSTRY
22
August 2019
Member
Spotlight
John Barnett
Reed City Group
Member since October 2012 • Employs 102 Michigan workers • Learn more at reedcitygroup.com
Manufacturers won’t get anywhere without
having faith in themselves. When it’s just you and
your team competing for customers, suppliers,
funding, properties, research & development and
talent, if you lack confidence and the will to succeed,
nobody else is going to help you get there. The
willingness to invest time, money and resources in
people, equipment, location upgrades and everything
else is a quality common across the spectrum of
industry success stories.
“You need to listen to your gut and you can’t fear
making the big decisions or the hard decisions,”
explains John Barnett, president & CEO of Reed
City Group. “Leadership can be a lonely place, but
everyone from the management team to the facility
floor is relying on you to believe in them and
believe in the company vision.”
Reed City Group, a national powerhouse of
mechanical and hydraulic engineering located in
the community of the same name, was founded as
a tool & die shop in 1959. Through good decision
making and well-thought strategies, the company
grew organically and expanded to add production
molding and additive manufacturing along the way.
“For a long time, we were farmers rather than
hunters — we didn’t go out looking for new
customers, we focused on relationship-building
with our current customers and deepening our
existing skills to become experts in a few key areas,”
said Barnett. “That worked for a while, but now
it’s helped to get us where we are today. We can
be hunters now. We have the confidence to go out
and sell ourselves — we have the reputation now,
we have the expanded product lines, we have
Leadership can be a lonely place,
but everyone from the management
team to the facility floor is relying on
you to believe in them and believe
in the company vision.
strategies for expansion, and we’re looking into
the core investments to keep moving forward.”
The investments made by Barnett and the Reed
City team include developing a mindset common
across the company’s culture, locating the right
talent in the right way, and never settling —
always improving.
• Culture: For Barnett, you’re either a “why we
can’t” or a “how we can” type of person and
Reed City has made the effort to instill a “how
we can” mentality throughout their workforce.
Focusing on integrity, honesty and the strong
work ethic of the community — the company’s
main source for talent — Barnett and the
leadership team strive for every person to be
invested in the company’s strategic vision.
• Talent: Believing in the development of
homegrown talent, Reed City works with local
schools to provide mentorship to students and
community groups to promote career awareness.
Resources like the Going PRO Talent Fund
has helped them to replace an aging workforce
with skilled workers capable of managing the
company’s new technology.
• Continuous Improvement: Recognizing that
competing in an increasingly global world means
never settling, Barnett and his team work to
control the controllables and make decisions in
a data-driven way. From understanding costs,
optimizing processes, cutting down on scrap,
reducing lead time and automating where
possible, every decision becomes a push toward
a better future for the company.
“Our team is driven for greatness; we’ve all
walked this path together and there’s a trust and
transparency that I think makes us unique,” Barnett
says. “They are problem solvers and incredibly
capable. Our customers see the depth and breadth
of our capabilities — and our willingness to invest
in this company and in each other — and I think
that’s why they continue to come back.”
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