How Matric Group is Reimagining US Manufacturing for Tomorrow's Challenges with Patrick Stimpert

Manufacturing excellence demands continuous adaptation, a truth Patrick Stimpert from Matrix Limited embodies as he shares his company's remarkable journey during our conversation at APEX 2025.

Following a standout year, Matric has  expanded their manufacturing footprint by 30%, completely resetting their converted school building facility with a strategic horseshoe workflow design. What makes this transformation special isn't just the physical changes, but the cultural buy-in that's emerged. "I'm not having to do it all," Patrick notes with satisfaction, highlighting how team members now drive improvement rather than simply following directives.

Facing today's manufacturing talent shortage head-on, Matric has pioneered a two-track approach: funding higher education for professionals while creating internal pathways for young people seeking alternatives to college debt. "The younger generation just wants to learn," Patrick observes, describing how they've built career development ladders that allow employees to advance as far as their ambition takes them. This forward-thinking approach not only solves immediate staffing needs but cultivates future leaders and innovators.

Despite economic uncertainty and potential tariff complications, Patrick delivers a powerful message for manufacturers: "Doing nothing is worse than doing something." He advocates for proactive planning and decisive action rather than paralysis in the face of change. When asked about AI's role in manufacturing, his answer is practical rather than theoretical – purchasing automation represents the most promising application, potentially eliminating the repetitive "digging ditches" work that occupies buyers across the industry. 

EMS@C-Level Live at APEX is sponsored by global inspection leaders Koh Young (https://www.kohyoung.com) and Creative Electron (https://creativeelectron.com)

EMS@C-Level is hosted by global inspection leaders Koh Young (https://www.kohyoung.com) and Global Electronics Association (https://www.electronics.org)

You can see video versions of all of the EMS@C-Level pods on our YouTube playlist.

Transcript

Meeting Patrick Stimpa at APEX

Philip Stoten 0:08

Hello, I'm Philip Stoughton. I'm at APEX 2025. I'm on the Creative Electron booth and I'm joined by Patrick Stimpa from Matrix Group. Thanks for joining me. Pleasure to chat to you, as always. Yeah, thanks for having me again. You're a bit of a go-to guy for me in terms of operational excellence. You're a bit of a go-to guy for me in terms of operational excellence. When you look at what you've been doing between when we last met and now, how have things moved on? How have you kind of shifted things? I know you don't like to stand still. You like to move forward. It's all about that lean Kaizen process.

Patrick Stimpert, Matric Group 0:42

Yeah, we had a phenomenal year last year and to build on that, we put in an addition. So increase the business, increase the footprint by 30 percent, wow. And so, like I've always said, hey, you know, if you're a lean manufacturer and you're not willing to reset your plant, then the people will never buy into it. So we're resetting the whole thing, getting it right, making sure it's a full pull concept, make sure people have enough room to breathe and do the right things, and make sure we're set up with the right parts in the right time and all the rest of it. So I'm pretty excited about that. What I'm really excited about is, this time around there's been that buy-in culture to it and so I'm not having to do it all, and I love that part of it.

Philip Stoten 1:16

Yeah, absolutely. It makes all the difference. Last time I came up it felt like you'd really got the SMT lines humming. You'd got the layout there right, but, because of the way the building had developed, maybe stores and maybe some other areas weren't where you want them. Are you bringing it all into a single flow?

Patrick Stimpert, Matric Group 1:34

Yeah, this setup, this time with the addition, and it's a pretty long gated building. I mean we converted the school building into a manufacturing place so it's pretty long elongated. But I think we have a really good horseshoe design to come in and come out, the same doors, use those same people over twice in those processes.

Education Strategy for Talent Development

Philip Stoten 1:53

So I'm pretty excited about all of that and you're a school, but you've also set up your own school to educate future engineers, future operators, because it's so hard to get talent. Tell me a bit about the strategy there.

Patrick Stimpert, Matric Group 2:06

Well, so it's twofold. That professional level, we will pay for any school that they want to go to. That supports our business. So we have a lot of our professional engineers in that department that we have paid for their education. You get an A, we're going to pay for it, right. You get a B, we're going to talk a little bit about how much we're going to pay for it. We're going to see. You might want to try a little harder for us. But on the other hand, really, the young kids coming through, I think, have given up on college. I don't think they went the long. I don't think they want that four-year delay in moving on with their lives and understanding how important it is to own the car and find a way to get a house and do all those things and not carry that huge debt.

Philip Stoten 2:50

Yeah, that shooting debt's a bind. You know Biden was going to get rid of it and then he wasn't, and it's just a lot.

Patrick Stimpert, Matric Group 2:56

Well, I would have been okay if they paid back my half a million for my two girls. But I'm pretty sure that wasn't going to happen. But I'm pretty excited about the younger generation that just wants to learn and coming out of college. We have to teach them everything anyway, so might as well just create our own school, our own programming, our own career development ladders to get people up and moving in the right direction and let them get to how high they want to get in the organization or what they all want to do.

Philip Stoten 3:23

Yeah, yeah, that's pretty good, yeah, and it's great because people, people will shine. People will pop out of that group that are that are future leaders in the organization. People will pop out that are fiercely inventive and fiercely creative solution providers on an engineering basis. It's. It's kind of exciting to see people going through those eureka moments when they're in an EMS facility.

Patrick Stimpert, Matric Group 3:47

Yeah, it's not for people that don't want to be on their feet and move and that tomorrow's going to change and you might as well be ready for it, and if you're going to complain about it, it'll just kind of wash over you like a tidal wave and then you'll be discouraged. So you've got to be willing to. Hey, tomorrow's a new day, it's a new challenge, and one thing I've always been really proud of is, like you know, rick and Brad and those guys that own the company they come in. Tomorrow's the next, it's another day. Today was tough, but there's another day tomorrow.

Tariffs and Preparing for Change

Philip Stoten 4:17

Yeah, I think that's essential. And you talk about change. We're in a position of turmoil where we've never seen so much change. We don't know what's happening with tariffs. We don't know what's happening with geopolitics. We don't know what's happening with the economy. So the fact that you're growing and you're doing well as a business bodes well. Do you think the tariffs are going to create additional opportunities for companies that manufacture in the USA?

Patrick Stimpert, Matric Group 4:41

Well, so now you've hit on something, because that was was what I came out here to do is to see what people were going to do and what they're not going to do, and they don't know. And I'm walking away with this advice to everybody Doing nothing is worse than doing something. Yeah, because I believe the people that are going to do nothing and think that you know this current administration, they have no political headwind, nothing's in front of them, so it's not like this is not going to stop, and so if you don't have your business and it's not profitable two years from now, you did that to yourself. Yeah, and so that is kind of the reoccurring thing I'm hearing yeah, and a lot of the vendors are like I don't know about the steel, aluminum and all that other stuff, and I'm going well, start a war room, start talking, figure out what you're going to do. Yeah, have a plan. Yeah, have a plan and then deal with that plan and execute and move forward.

Philip Stoten 5:33

Yeah, and if something changes, adapt that plan. But have a plan, for God's sake.

Patrick Stimpert, Matric Group 5:36

Yeah.

Philip Stoten 5:37

No, you're absolutely right. So I think, when you look at what you're doing in terms of operational excellence, one of the things I love about you is you're innovative. I think talent is another part of it, but I think a third part of it that we've discussed before that you really understand is the value of strategic partnerships, the value of selecting some of those key vendors and actually really getting inside their heads in terms of what they're developing. Tell me a bit about how you look at that process.

Patrick Stimpert, Matric Group 6:05

Well, yeah, we don't go into any vendor buy unless it's a partnership, and what I mean by a partnership? I can call you on a Friday night and things are tough. I need an answer and I want to know who or somebody is going to be there to help us out. Or do I need to go hook up a special standalone network to let you dial in and do whatever you need to do to make this work? I probably shouldn't have said dial in at my age.

Patrick Stimpert, Matric Group 6:27

That kind of says it's a bad thing, but you know that's part of that whole relationship would not be where we're at and have the success we've had the last couple years with growth and and maintaining our customer base and growing our customer bases and going down different channels of business without those partners willing to step up, because it's I, I think you know just some of our key ones, like, oh you know, panasonic. They have drawings, I think, still in their building that I drew and I said this is the line we're going to design. Yeah, and this is what I need out of it and this is the tag time. You've got two weeks to figure it out, because I owe my customer an answer and I need to get some pricing done, and that core group of people have done just a phenomenal job, even though, like I said, I've said this before they think I'm crazy, but I'm okay with that, and they show up no-transcript.

Inspection and Quality Control Systems

Philip Stoten 7:34

I remember you saying no chairs on the SMT line. You're adding some more CoYoung in the THT area. That'll be another source of data. That'll give you another thing to synthesize to get back to root cores. That's a pretty exciting addition.

Patrick Stimpert, Matric Group 7:49

Yeah, I think that was the next step in our optics journey was to really take care of topside, bottomside inspections coming off of the wave flow, and we have a really good partnership with Ursa and those guys that I think they make one of the best phenomenal machines that you need to really run fast and be correct in what you're doing.

Patrick Stimpert, Matric Group 8:11

But yeah, now we have to kind of make sure everything coming off those lines that we're looking at bridging and we're looking that we did get all the solder joints correct and that all the parts are there and we didn't knock any SMT parts off or anything like that, how that's going to look in the future and how that flows downstream. Now we're still going to do clip and check. That's not going away because we value the way our boards look and when they leave our organization, that somebody looked at those and we didn't just produce a bunch of things and something's wrong and so, yeah, okay, maybe it is IPC spec okay, or 610, right, but that's not what we do as an organization. I think our customers take pride in knowing that we personally look at things and we make sure it's going out the door correctly.

Philip Stoten 8:54

I think it's really interesting. I was talking to someone, I think, yesterday about the amount of synthesized data they're getting from inspection. They're not just using all the optical inspection, they're also using x-ray inspection data and they were asking the question with all this data. So, using that x-ray inspection data and they were asking the question, with all this data, can I do maybe a smaller final test, a narrower final test on all the boards that came out good on those and maybe do a more full final test on those that have maybe been through rework or something? And it's interesting that maybe it can create some operational efficiency at the final test area because you are doing such good inspection yeah, you're right on certain classes, but I mean the aerospace medical, all that you're just yes, no, never happened because there's a test and the sooner you get your hands around inline ICT testing and all the rest of it, the better that is anyway for your business the risk, the reliability, all those things that are important to running a profitable business.

Patrick Stimpert, Matric Group 9:52

Yeah, because you know we do some life safety devices and of course we're going to hand touch those and, yes, we're going to test and we're going to make sure we're producing the right COCs and all the rest of that. But once you get into the class two or if you kind of dabble in the commercial to light industrial now there's some room there to talk about what that really looks like and that you're not having a danger downstream in that process.

Philip Stoten 10:19

So it makes sense, doesn't it? Last question, and I think it's an inevitable question that would be asked at Apex, because the two letters are everywhere AI in manufacturing. It's moving really fast in the consumer side of AI with ChetchEBT, claude, all those things, and they're just getting better and better. We're at the very start of that same journey, perhaps with manufacturing. When you came here, were you curious about what it could do. Have you seen any good answers? Have you seen any AI solutions that have real KPIs, real return on investment?

Patrick Stimpert, Matric Group 10:56

I think in our industry unless our industry has some very old-school things, that I don't think are gonna change.

Patrick Stimpert, Matric Group 11:03

I don't know if AI's. I would love AI or something to take and dabble into purchasing. Yeah, because that is by far in this. You know, you see thousands of people here and I guarantee everyone has the same question I have why are we still buying one of one and one of two and two of two, yeah, and why can't I set up something to just go fast, quick, with? All of you know the arrows, the digis, all those guys. I just want to know who's got it cheapest. I want to go, I want to make sure it's the right manufacturer, that I want ID and I want to make sure that you did your due diligence, that it's not a bad part or it's a bad code date or whatever it is. I think if somebody takes AEI and goes with that, I'll help with join in. I will put money in that, just because I know everybody in this room has a room full of buyers that do the same thing and dig ditches half day after day after day, and I think you wanna start there and that's data driven.

Philip Stoten 11:52

That's a lot of data work, oh yeah.

Patrick Stimpert, Matric Group 11:53

I mean right now. That was our number one focus the last couple years is we now have a waterfall report that we go out every day and go look for words in stock, what's not in stock, if it's the right manufacturer, if it's the right code date, right To make sure somebody hasn't put some counterfeit stuff in there, and we're pretty proud that we got to that point. But that was a lot of work with basically very limited help from those vendors that you know sell a lot, a lot of stuff. And then if you throw the brokers in there, who all got yachts after the last couple of years would love to get some time on some of those right.

Philip Stoten 12:25

Well, they've got yachts, and a lot of them have got motor yachts, but they can't afford the fuel this year, that's true, so it's a tough time.

Philip Stoten 12:31

Yeah, I think it's a fascinating area and I think it's an area where we will see development and it would be a real sweet spot for AI and then maybe further down the line, we can look at all the great stuff you're doing and think about how we can commercialize that in an AI environment. Patrick, it's always a joy to chat. You are my go-to guy for new ideas in operational excellence. Thanks for talking to me.