With extensive capabilities, Creation Technologies is dedicated to delivering innovative solutions
Headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, Creation Technologies (Creation) is a global specialty electronic manufacturing services (EMS) provider with more than 30 years of experience. With integrated EMS solutions located around the globe, the business forms strategic partnerships with OEMs and provides end-to-end solutions, including expert design, manufacturing, supply chain, order fulfilment, and aftermarket support.
With 13 manufacturing facilities, global materials sourcing groups, a rapid prototyping center, and a design center, Creation is well equipped to provide responsive, cost-effective, and customized solutions for more than 200 customers. As the technology landscape continues to rapidly evolve and customer demands subsequently adapt, the business must stay ahead of the curve through research and innovation. 
Creation has a range of solutions that cater to its primary markets: aerospace, defense, and security; medical and life sciences; and tech industrials. While precision is a key consideration for all three markets, the company’s innovative and customized systems optimize and exceed expectations across the board. Creation is focused on being a scaled specialty EMS company committed to serving customers across three target markets, with a specific ability to handle programs that require high reliability across a high mix of products in low to medium volumes.
Specifically, in the aerospace and defense sector, companies are faced with ever-evolving regulation, industry consolidation, and globalization, which make the challenges of managing accelerated technological advancements, increasing geopolitical uncertainty, and rising competition more complex. However, Creation’s solutions provide enhanced field performance, continuous quality improvement, and market growth in aviation, marine, ground control, and commercial space travel.
In the medical and life sciences space, on the other hand, Creation prioritizes innovation with the patient in mind. Its advanced manufacturing technologies cover Class I, II, and III medical devices, biotechnology, and pharmaceuticals, which meet stringent regulatory requirements and ensure product accuracy and traceability. With a global mandate to make healthcare more accessible, affordable, and wirelessly connected, medical OEMs are increasingly looking to form strategic outsourcing partnerships to co-create revolutionary advancements that enhance patient outcomes.
The Internet of Things (IoT) and machine-to-machine (M2M) communications are transforming the field of tech industrials from the micro-level of device controls and sophisticated instrumentation to complex macro-level integrated systems and infrastructure. Although Creation offers a solution for many sectors within the tech industrial space, its expertise lies in industrial controls and instrumentation, warehouse automation and robotics, communications, energy and environmental, and transportation.
We last spoke with Creation in late 2022, so to learn more about the company’s operations over the last 18 months, we sat down with Patrick Freytag, Chief Financial Officer. Having joined the business in 2019, Patrick has navigated operational challenges including a global pandemic and supply chain shortages while managing responsibilities including capital structure, financial planning and analysis, risk management, and treasury.
“As material markets have eased over the past 18-months, Creation has remained focused on its commitment to deliver world class service to its customers,” Patrick opens. “We are on an exciting path with our customers as we return to a normalized level of demand and continue to win share and new customers in our focused markets. We worked alongside our customers to solve mutual challenges, building confidence and trust in Creation. The market responded with continued feedback of high levels of customer satisfaction, and Creation realized significant new commercial wins that will amount to 20 percent growth when fully ramped up. These wins came from share gains with existing customers as well as new customers.
“Many businesses choose to put their confidence in Creation to deliver effective solutions, and we take particular pride in winning new customers that have switched from a competitor due to lack of financial or operational confidence,” he states. “Over the last 12 months, a lot of business has flowed our way and we’ve generated a tremendous amount of opportunity, but now it’s down to us to convert and execute.”
On a more personal note, Patrick reflects on his experiences during this time: “Since I joined in 2019, I’ve experienced multiple ‘once-in-a-generation’ type events; the Covid-19 pandemic, a global supply chain shortage, and unforeseen interest rates and economic challenges.
“It feels like we’ve aged in dog years over the last three years; however, we’ve used this experience to be innovative and push our own limits,” he laughs. “We’ve learned a lot. It has forced us to reflect, which has allowed us to learn more about ourselves and our customers, as well as fine tune how we deliver world-class service to our customers across the globe.”
Creation prides itself on providing four key values to its customers: scalability, dependability, expertise, and stability. Firstly, Creation’s solutions promise to optimize cashflow and mitigate risk. With an established supply chain network, the combination of Creation’s relationships, infrastructure, and technical capabilities provides customers with a custom-built model to scale up and ensure long-term market competitiveness.
Dependability is a crucial element of any partnership, and Creation truly understands the technical or stakeholder issues that can arise when outsourcing manufacturing or supply chain processes. Its product portfolio provides a unique combination of integrated solutions across the entire value chain that stems from decades of experience in delivering high-value programs.
With this in mind, it’s clear to see that Creation possesses the expertise required to free businesses from the challenges of establishing an outsourcing program. Its history of more than 30 successful years not only demonstrates Creation’s stability in the market, but also proves that the business has the financial strength and expert infrastructure to be a long-term partner.
One of Creation’s recent customer partnerships is with aerospace and defense giant, L3Harris. “Our relationship with L3Harris is a perfect example of how we can work strategically with our customers,” Patrick explains. “Upon an evaluation of their supply chain, L3Harris made a strategic decision to establish new long-term agreements with critical suppliers that would enable them to scale. It became clear early on that we understood one another’s strategies and our goals aligned, meaning Creation was an ideal fit for L3Harris’ highly complex and specialty applications.
“Our journey with L3Harris has generated momentum on both sides of the deal. From a commercial perspective, the announcement of our collaborative work has had a positive impact on our positioning in the military and aerospace markets. It has also provided further opportunities for L3Harris to optimize its supply chain, and we’re thrilled to grow alongside this wonderful partner.”
To facilitate such partnerships, Creation must stay ahead of the curve when it comes to innovation. “We must not only consider how to best serve our customers today, but also how we can serve them in five or even ten years,” Patrick suggests. “We’ve recently undergone three expansions. First, we have nearly doubled the size of our facility in St Peter, Minnesota, which was fueled by momentum within our existing customer base.
“Secondly, we’re thrilled to strengthen our presence in China too, as we’ve moved to a larger, more efficiently designed building. Despite the challenges of tariffs, our team in China work incredibly hard and generate a significant stream of work for the overall business. High customer satisfaction in the region gave us the confidence to invest in China to expand the team’s capabilities.
“Lastly, we have expanded one of our two locations in the Greater Toronto area,” he adds. “We took advantage of an opportunity to relocate our Markham site to a larger and more efficient building at the end of 2023.”
On the topic of investment, Patrick goes on to explain Creation’s plans for the future. “To use a famous quote, the future looks much like the past, only longer,” he states. “We’re confident in our strategic focus on three current end-markets, and we remain committed to providing world-class customer service. We will continue to focus on organic growth complemented by strategic acquisitions.
“As we grow alongside our customers, we provide opportunities to fuel the development of our employees and the growth of the communities in which we operate,” Patrick concludes. “We’re in a competitive industry, but it’s a thrilling adventure overall. There’s a tremendous amount of pride in what we do that permeates throughout Creation.” ■