R&&D Plastics honors its history while laying foundation for the future

Hillsboro, Ore. — Rod Roth, CEO and majority owner of R&D Plastics LLC, was born into a family in the plastics industry.

Roth grew up spending summers running the injection molding presses at Grant & Roth Plastics Inc. The company was co-founded by his father, Merrill Roth, and his mother, Ivy Roth, was company controller.

At the time, he wanted to be a ​ rocket scientist. Then he went to college and studied political science.

But eventually he drifted back to plastics, first at Grant & Roth Plastics.

Rod Roth eventually served as president of Grant & Roth. The family sold that business in 1989, but Roth soon found himself imagining the possibility of starting a brand-new injection molding company.

After all, he said: "Being unemployed provided a great incentive."

On April 5, his R&D Plastics LLC in Hillsboro celebrates its 21st anniversary with an open house. Now 74, Roth is delegating more responsibilities and managing a leadership transition.

Upon his death, Roth has arranged to have his ownership shares go to R&D President Charlie O'Bosky and Vice President of Business Development Ron Knowlton.

Both O'Bosky and Knowlton have extensive experience in the plastics processing business, including tenure at Grant & Roth Plastics in Hillsboro.

Knowlton said he came "back to work for Rod at R&D in 2003," and O'Bosky returned to the Northwest and joined R&D in 2007.

Roth originally planned to launch R&D with a friend, Don Lovell of Northwest Nursery Supply. A family issue intervened in those plans, but Lovell's first initial stuck with the company name.

With Lovell unavailable, Roth recruited industry veteran Sal Gonzalez for his process engineering, problem-solving, prodigious memory and thinking-outside-the-box skills.

Then Janet Evensen came aboard to manage R&D's accounting and software systems.

The business opened April 1, 1996, with Roth, Gonzalez and Evensen as founders and partners. Each had worked with Merrill Roth at Grant & Roth Plastics.

Jim Philpott and Gregg Newhuis of Toshiba finance arm TM Acceptance Corp. provided R&D with "tremendous support" in equipment and ongoing funding, Roth said.

Support came from more than TM Acceptance, though.

Preparing for its celebration, R&D identified 78 financing sources, customers, material suppliers and equipment makers "for their contributions in getting us started."

Initially, R&D leased 10,138 square feet in the Evergreen Business Park in Hillsboro. Now, the firm occupies 18,000 square feet in the same park.

When it first started, the company devised a ploy to look busier than it was during open houses in May 1996. It borrowed molds from an Oregon plant of Southern Plastic Mold Co., known as SPM, and resin from distributor M.A. Hanna Co.

Gonzalez has 41 years of experience in the plastics business, has taught courses in molding technology at Portland Community College and, now at 62, is eyeing retirement.

Roth has agreed to buy Gonzalez's ownership stake over eight to 13 years, with company performance determining the pace of the purchases.

Evensen promised to remain with R&D for five years but stayed for 15. In 2014, Roth acquired Evensen's equity interest in the business.

R&D operates 17 injection molding presses of 40-720 tons. The machines include three each from Sumitomo and Arburg and 11 from Toshiba, the latest being a 2016 all-electric, 198-ton EC200SXII model with a V50 controller.

Beginning in June 2016, R&D participated in a project with the independent nonprofit Energy Trust of Oregon Inc. and the investor-owned utility Portland General Electric Co. to qualify a new material dryer. Operational in December, the Maguire VBD-150 vacuum dryer has reduced energy consumption by 84 percent in comparison with the desiccant dryer it replaced. R&D received a 32 percent incentive from the state-mandated, utility-funded Energy Trust of Oregon to purchase the new unit.

The project is an example of R&D's use of "lean and green" sustainable practices.

Most of R&D's 120 customers account for less than 1 percent of the business.

The largest customer, making up 13.4 percent of sales, makes water bottles. R&D molds a thermoplastic polyurethane tip insert, a silicone O-ring and a polypropylene sport cap for double-wall vacuum-insulated stainless steel water bottles from Bend, Ore.-based Steel Technology LLC doing business as Hydro Flask.

Components for two different trucking parts programs represent 5.7 percent and 1.8 percent. The work goes through Tier 2 auto suppliers.

During 2016, R&D says it used 150,000 pounds of reprocessed resin. One of the jobs involves recycled copolymer polypropylene for boxes used as retail packaging for tire chains. That work represents 1.1 percent of the business.

R&D uses IQMS's RealTime-brand wireless manufacturing process monitoring software for gathering machine performance and process data at the programmable logic controller. The software helps control costs including overhead and improve performance for customers.

Roth's reason to use IQMS: "Payback on investment is better than on other capital investments."

Auditing firm Orion Registrar Inc. of Arvada, Colo., certified R&D on Feb. 7 as being compliant with the standard for an ISO 9001:2008 quality management system.

R&D employs 40, including 28 permanent employees — two of them former interns — and 12 temporary workers. Currently, R&D is recruiting an experienced project engineer.

Showing R&D's family-friendly face, Roth and others are handling the quoting, mold design and mold testing duties of project manager Sarah Cornwell during her three-month maternity leave. Benjamin Cornwell-Hayes was born Feb. 25.

From 1998-2007, the Oregon Business Journal recognized R&D on its list of the state's 100 fastest-growing privately held companies.

R&D hires and supports summer interns from the plastics engineering program at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash. It also donates materials and equipment to the school and interacts with students. Knowlton studied there.

The project follows up on the Ivy Roth Memorial Scholarship, endowed in 1994 by Grant & Roth plastics at WWU. The scholarship was originally for women engineering students but now is also open to men.

Another program, the Merrill Roth Memorial Scholarship, started in 2013 with support from the Society of Plastics Industries Inc. — now called the Plastics Industry Association — Rod Roth and R&D Plastics. In 1972, Merrill Roth was instrumental in WWU receiving a M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust grant to help start the plastics engineering program.

R&D President Charlie O'Bosky is a member of WWU's College of Science and Engineering External Advancement Board. Rod Roth is a member of the plastics advisory committee.

Often, R&D holds full-day plastic part design seminars for up to 24 people at a time.

"We aim for six times a year in plant and may do seminars at customer locations," Roth said.

The next in-plant seminar at R&D is scheduled on May 3.

In addition, R&D lunch-and-learn programs in the near future will focus on spot cooling of molds, designing for overmolding and decorating plastic.

Rod Roth exudes enthusiasm, even in talking about the range of part weights with which R&D deals: "from 0.4 gram of PVC overmolded on wire for strain relief connectors" to "almost eight pounds of ABS" for another component.

He envisions 11 percent growth during 2017. The 2016 sales were $7 million, and Roth projects $7.8 million during 2017.

R&D says its declared mission is to "continuously shorten all business cycles with accuracy and efficiency while producing outstanding financial results."