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To create the exquisite liqueur chartreuse, French monks follow a 400-year-old recipe that blends 130 herbs and plants. The perfect balance is achieved not with 131 or 129 ingredients, but only by using the exact number. Taste chartreuse and you know its perfection: it is the elixir of long life.
Maurice Guitton grew up near the birthplace of chartreuse, in the French Alps. This year the company he leads, Composites Atlantic Ltd. (CAL), ranks as the most balanced enterprise on our TOP 101 list. Just as artisans schooled in a tradition of craftsmanship and skill make chartreuse, so do artisans fill the Composites Atlantic plant in Lunenburg. This is how airplane parts are made: one at a time by hand, using quality ingredients, following precise and guarded recipes that are tested and perfected.
Guitton’s first job was with Rossignol. The ski company built a plant in Grenoble following the 1968 Olympics and introduced him to his life’s passion: composite materials. At Rossignol skis that were designed, made, and marketed in small-town France were shipped around the world, including to Nova Scotia.
Today aerospace parts created in the CAL plant on Nova Scotia’s South Shore are sold around the world, including in France.
We can all learn something from the way CAL approaches business. A best-in-class manufacturer, it exports 99% of its products to some of the most discerning customers on the planet, including Airbus, Bombardier, and Boeing. It has enhanced productivity and competitiveness through investing in R&D, training, and innovative technology. It has streamlined processes using lean principles, and will soon employ a state-of-the-art RFID tracking system. It has an unwavering commitment to quality and a philosophy with customers and employees at its heart.
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The entire operation is built on the principle that lifelong learning is good, that an educated workforce is a company’s best asset. Maurice Guitton’s approach to his operation, his people, and his community is a harmonious balance of strategic leadership and human decency. Did I mention that he is descended from cathedral builders? This is the rare leader who understands what it means to invest in the long term.
Chartreuse is an equal-opportunity drink: the green liqueur is traditionally enjoyed by men, and a milder, golden version by women. This is another example of how Guitton’s heritage expresses itself in his operation. He wants more women embracing careers in aerospace and is making it his life’s work to maintain an equal balance of male and female employees across his company’s workforce, including in management, engineering, and quality assurance.
This issue of Progress is about balance—and broadening our thinking. It’s important to ask, what makes a holistic company? What qualities do we want in our leaders and workforce? Who can we learn from as we strive to expand and improve?
I was fortunate recently to tour the CAL plant. What I saw was impressive, and especially pleasing was the sense of purpose you can feel in the place. Spend time with someone like Maurice Guitton, and his passion reminds you how lucky we are here in Atlantic Canada. Immigrants sometimes have an ability to see what the rest of us take for granted: the beauty of our landscapes, our proximity to major markets, and the most precious resource of all—talented people.
A toast then: to balance, to long life, and to the TOP 101 Companies of Atlantic Canada. |
