Jenny Erwin, an RN in the Progressive Care Unit at McLaren Lapeer Region, gives a ‘thumb’s up’ gesture to the fit of the donated ADS face shield.
MILLINGTON — Bob Morris grew up in Lapeer. The 1983 graduate of Lapeer East High School still has family in the community and it will always be ‘home’ — even though his residence is now in Rochester.
Lapeer County and the greater Thumb region is where his heart is, and where many of his employees live — including from the Columbiaville and North Branch area.
Morris, 55, is CEO of Millington-based Advanced Decorative Systems (ADS), a global producer of parts and technology for the automotive industry — with manufacturing plants in neighboring Tuscola County as well as China, Mexico and Hungary. Despite the COVID-19-related shutdown of much of the auto industry that resulted in furloughs at the Millington plant, it was those hometown employees who stepped up and took the initiative to make personal protection equipment (PPE) from materials they already have on hand for local hospitals at their hour of need.
“They wanted to do something to help out and went to work to design and manufacture face shields,” said Morris. Company employees hand-delivered 10 individually wrapped samples of their clear full-face shields to McLaren Lapeer, McLaren Flint and Marlette Regional Hospital.
(Above) ADS workers hand-delivered 10 individually-wrapped face shields to each of three local healthcare providers — McLaren Lapeer, McLaren Flint and Marlette Regional Hospital.
In order to produce the shields, another supplier heard about what the ADS employees wanted to do and donated a tool necessary for their production.
Capitalizing on an open source design, a willingness to participate and a ‘cando’ attitude, said Morris, the Millington team created the shields in a matter of only a few days. ADS has approximately 100 workers at Millington and another 400 employees at its other assembly plants around the world.
ADS is poised to begin immediate production of the face shields should the hospitals they donated the gear to want more of their locally-produced PPEs.
The initiative taken by his employees to produce face shields for frontline medical workers during the COVID-19 pandemic comes at a time when Morris was looking to diversify the company a bit from almost exclusive automotive products including components for odometers and speedometers to products to serve the healthcare sector.
An Advanced Decorative Systems employee in Millington demonstrates what the clear full-face shield looks like.
“I’m really proud of our employees, and I’m happy we can help the local hospitals and healthcare workers in the communities where our employees live,” said Morris.