ZEELAND, MI (WHTC) – Chairman and CEO of Gentex, Fred Bauer was presented with the Innovation Trailblazer award at Lakeshore Advantage’s annual meeting that celebrated innovation in West Michigan.
Bauer started manufacturing fire safety products at Gentex in 1974. According to Lakeshore Advantage, Fred Bauer revolutionized the fire protection industry with the world’s first dual-sensor photoelectric smoke detector – a device less prone to false alarms yet quick to detect slow, smoldering fires, as Gentex’s first manufactured product.
Today, Gentex is an industry product development leader in the aerospace, fire protection, and automotive industries, with products including the auto-dimming car mirrors and aircraft windows.
Three hundred investors and guests gathered to celebrate “Innovation in Action” at the Lakeshore Advantage annual meeting. Bauer was honored with a video presentation as well.
During the presentation, Jennifer Owens, president of Lakeshore Advantage, shared that among the top ten manufacturing employers in Ottawa County over the last 30 years, Gentex steadily climbed to the top. Gentex went from the 10th largest manufacturing employer in Ottawa County in 1996 to the largest manufacturing employer in Ottawa County in 2016.
