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Jochen Lipp has been named chief operating officer of Firstronic. He joined Firstronic’s board of directors in 2013 as vice chairman.
“Jochen’s operations expertise is unmatched in our segment the EMS industry, particularly in terms of understanding the best ways to implement Lean manufacturing holistically. He and I have already successfully worked as a team guiding one EMS company up a steep growth curve, and we are at the point in FIrstronic’s growth curve where this leadership combination makes sense once again,” said John Sammut, president and CEO.
Jochen has both electronic and business degrees. He spent over 20 years in the EMS industry, serving as COO of EPIC Technologies for half that time. While at EPIC, he was part of a team that grew the company from 250 employees in one factory to over 2,700 employees in six factories with sales of nearly $300 million. In recognition of that effort, he and John Sammut were jointly awarded the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year 2006 Award in the Technology category.
Prior to joining EPIC, he was associated with Alcoa Fujikura, Ltd (AFL) as Operations Manager, where he was responsible for launching their electronics manufacturing operations in Juarez, Mexico in support of automotive industry customers. He was earlier responsible AFL’s electronics manufacturing operations in Germany and also launched two manufacturing facilities in Hungary. Most recently, Jochen served as CEO of IBL Technologies, the US subsidiary of vapor phase equipment manufacturer IBL-Löttechnik GmbH.
About Firstronic
Firstronic is a premier specialty provider of electronics manufacturing services (EMS), including turnkey electronic assembly and materials management services, to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in the electronics industry. Firstronic’s electronic manufacturing services consist primarily of the manufacture of complex printed circuit board assemblies (PCBAs) using through-hole and surface mount technology (SMT), interconnection technologies including fine-pitch and mixed technology products.