Some people are born pioneers. Take Giancarmine Stumpo at our Genoa (Italy) site.
Growing up in a poor family with a disabled father, he helped with the household chores. This built resilience, an intolerance of waste and a drive for efficiency to create time for play - a fledgling ambition enabled by his handyman uncle, who passed on a wide range of practical skills he could apply at home.
Continuing curiosity
Fascinated by ‘how things work’, he expanded his knowledge at the Electro-Technical Institute, where he gained distinction for leading a team to build a scale model of one of Italy’s first solar-powered mountain refuges – which they exhibited at a renewable energy and climate change conference in Rome.
Impressed, a classmate’s dad gave him his first paid job, at his electrical industrial automation installation and maintenance business, RIAL srl, where he learnt valuable core engineering skills from highly experienced technicians.
He also met a range of customers whose sites opened up a new world of exciting technologies – and technical possibilities - for him. These included the Smiths Interconnect facility in Genoa, with whose machinery maintenance team he built a great rapport.
After seven years at a small, family-run business, Giancarmine was ready to venture into that wider world and, having recognised his potential, Smiths was delighted to offer him a job.
Creative applications
Since then, he's made numerous improvements to our Genoa site – from tidy storage solutions to initiatives that increase colleagues’ comfort, such as a device he made to reduce noise caused by vacuum generators.
Gian’s creativity has eliminated common causes of production delays, too. For example, he recalibrated a machine that produces spring contacts, inserting a small tool to reduce spring jamming which increased the hourly throughput by 30%, and he replaced fast-decaying sponge seals on a component separation bowl with the sheaths of cable off-cuts – so repurposing scrap while reducing stoppages from dust.
He’s also found simple ways to modernise older machines and so increase their productivity and longevity. For example, the ageing A3 machines had delicate relays which frequently broke but weren’t easily sourced or replaced without damaging surrounding wiring. Gian designed a new interface which enables operators to easily insert replacements using readily available standard relays which cost a tenth of the price of the original specialist ones.
More recently, Gian’s created an efficient ‘spare parts library’ for the maintenance team, with an inventory programme that makes parts easy to locate and automatically generates purchase alerts when stock levels drop below pre-set minimums.
Excellent results – and prospects
This impressive catalogue of innovations gained Gian promotion to electrical & pneumatic maintenance manager and a coveted Smiths Interconnect Excellence Award for Health, Safety and Environmental (HSE).
With his ambition now set on international management, Gian’s taking advantage of Smiths ‘continuous improvement’ belted training programme and practising his English language skills on international colleagues.
Gian said, ‘I’m proof that you don’t need a briefcase full of formal qualifications to progress a career at Smiths. The company also values qualities like ownership, integrity and passion for learning. If you’ve got the drive, they’ll help you go where you want.’
