124. Teamwork, Love, and Lean: The Leadership Philosophy Behind Altek’s Success

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Most machine shop owners will talk your ear off about spindles and tolerances. Ask Mike Marzetta what makes Altek work and he says the word love. Not as a slogan. As the actual thing holding a 200-person advanced manufacturing company together.

Mike runs Altek in Spokane, a shop his dad started 50 years ago that’s grown into full contract manufacturing: machining, injection molding, assembly, testing, finishing, even its own R and D. But the throughline of our whole conversation isn’t the capability list. It’s culture. Mike wrestled at the Division I level and was an All-American, and he runs the company like a team, camaraderie first, because he’s seen what happens when you have all the talent and none of the trust.

We get into the hard business calls too. How he watched commodity work migrate offshore in the early 2000s and dragged a reluctant shop, and his own father, toward AS9100 and FDA certification. How he co-founded a consortium to brand all of Spokane as an advanced manufacturing hub instead of marketing Altek alone. And how betting heavily on the 737 has meant riding out five white-knuckle years of ramp up, ramp down, ramp up.

Then there’s the people playbook, which is the part I’d steal. Annual all-hands summits modeled on an end-of-season sports banquet. Lean initiatives where the team fixes its own sandbox instead of getting told what to do. And a recruiting edge in a labor shortage that comes down to something almost embarrassingly simple: people tell their friends it’s a good place to work.

Oh, and he built a whole STEM robotics company, Minds-i, on the side, just to make a difference and have fun. This one’s a gem.

What’s Covered in this Episode

• (0:00) Mike on the students his Minds-i kits pushed toward engineering careers
• (1:10) Meet Mike Marzetta and Altek: close to 200 people, 150,000 sq ft, too many machines to count
• (5:14) The origin: a tool and die maker who stopped in Spokane on the way to Boeing
• (7:36) The pivot to AS9100 and FDA certification that reshaped the business
• (8:57) Check out the Hennig Workflow Automation System
• (9:49) Taking over as president and replacing commodity work faster than it left
• (14:13) Betting on the 737 and riding out five rough years for the airframe
• (15:11) Branding Spokane: co-founding INWAC and marketing the region together
• (17:19) From a workforce round table to INWAC to NEMA
• (20:42) Minds-i: the passion project born from two core values
• (22:42) Inside the kits: drones, self-driving rovers, and real STEM curriculum
• (26:40) Take your shop to the next level with DN Solutions machines
• (28:45) Running the company like a sports team: camaraderie over pure talent
• (32:27) Why the word love belongs in a machine shop
• (33:17) Recruiting in a labor shortage by treating people like people
• (34:45) What the culture looks like on the floor, from fist bumps to plant tours
• (38:11) Lean and Six Sigma: give teams the tools to fix their own sandbox
• (40:16) Annual summits modeled on the end-of-season sports banquet
• (43:02) Homegrown leaders and how one bad apple can wreck a culture
• (44:30) Why we created Hire MFG Leaders and why you should use it
• (45:00) Two and a half generations of Marzettas and what succession looks like
• (46:38) The biggest hurdles: COVID and too many eggs in the 737 basket
• (48:01) Washington’s taxes and the Work Share program that saved jobs
• (50:48) Today’s challenge: holding quality and culture while ramping up fast
• (53:42) An excellence award and the R and D behind it: in-mold electronics, structural molding

Resources Mentioned

• Hennig Workflow Automation System
• DN Solutions
• Hire MFG Leaders
• MINDS-i Education

Connect with Mike Marzetta

• Connect with Mike on LinkedIn
• Altek