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Portescap's Look into the Past, Present and Future
The Past
From Portescap’s inception in 1959 to 2000 there were countless innovations and moves all over the world. It goes without saying that the start of our continuous improvement business system, could not have flourished without the vision created during this time. In March 20001, American Precision Industries (API), later to be named Portescap, was acquired by Danaher. In 2000, Danaher had established a business system that had been in motion for 20 years. The business system stemmed from operational improvements to business improvements. In July 2016, Danaher successfully completed a separation of Fortive Corporation contacting the Test & Measurement segment, Industrial Technologies segment (other than its Product Identification platform) and Retail/Commercial Petroleum.3 The split for Portescap served as an opportunity, as Danaher President and Chief Executive Officer Tom Joyce said, “to serve customers and to deliver on strategic priorities by investing in high impact organic and inorganic growth opportunities 3."
As Fortive developed the focus of the core business of professional instrumentation and industrial technologies, there was an opportunity to have the automation specialty group to pair with a lead global designer, producer and marketer of a wide range of electromechanical power transmission and motion-control products, Altra Industrial Motion. In August of 2018, Portescap merged with Altra Industrial Motion to continue to drive improvements within all business units using the lessons from the Danaher and Fortive business systems.
The Present
Portescap's drive to succeed is baked into the culture. There are daily and weekly meetings within almost all teams to talk through challenges and what it takes to win for today and beyond. We focus on simple and rooted customer facing principles: quality, delivery, cost and innovation. We host kaizen events focused on 3-5 days of deep transformational thinking and improvements. In 2019. We are hosting a General management kaizen where we will have 4 teams focused on operation, finance, engineering, and production, sales and inventory. In the summer of 2018, Portescap went through a full facility upgrade to the lights, floors and walls (as seen above). With the merger of Altra Industrial Motion we have adopted the Altra Business System. With the deep legacy of Fortive and Danaher Business systems, we will use our experience and expertise to improve our playbook for success.
The Future
Portescap will continue to function as incredibly customer facing as we have always been. Among the facility investment, there are several other investments that we have in motion to improve our safety, quality, delivery and innovation. Portescap and the legacy Danaher/Fortive businesses merger was valued at about two-thirds of the newly formed Altra6 resulting in a large presence. This presence will be a foundation to transaction and growth initiatives within the Altra Business System. We believe Portescap will be at the forefront of miniature motors and precision motion control solution.
Past picture - https://www.notrehistoire.ch/medias/55038
1 - http://www.annualreports.com/HostedData/AnnualReportArchive/d/NYSE_DHR_2000.pdf
2 - https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DHR/danaher/stock-price-history
3 - http://investors.danaher.com/2016-07-02-Danaher-Corporation-Completes-Separation-of-Fortive-Corporation