Winners show different paths to success

The latest Plastics News Processor of the Year is Dymotek Corp. — a custom injection molder that specializes in liquid silicone rubber, and two-component molding. LSR is certainly growing, but it's a niche market, and that's one of the main messages from this year's crop of finalists: Hone in on what you do best.

Dymotek, running two plants in Connecticut, has succeeded by embracing change: in difficult-to-mold LSR, in finding new customers that place a high value on innovation and not just the lowest-cost molder, and most importantly, in a dynamic employee involvement effort.

You can read all about Dymotek in the profile of the company that starts on Page 1 of this issue.

Dymotek won the Processor of the Year Award, but the three finalists also are good role models for the U.S. plastics industry: General Plastics Inc., Petoskey Plastics Inc. and Trilogy Plastics Inc. And they demonstrate the diversity of plastics. General Plastics is a thermoformer. Petoskey makes blown film and is a leader in running recycled plastics. Trilogy does rotational molding.

All four were strong contenders that made the cut to become finalists from 16 companies that sent in their submissions for the award — one of the highest participation rates ever.

The judges are Plastics News reporters and editors. Candidates for Processor of the Year are evaluated on seven criteria, as the process rewards companies that are well-rounded: financial performance, quality, customer relations, employee relations, environmental performance, industry/public service and technological innovation.

It was a tough decision. All the finalists, throughout the history of the award, have been strong in the employee relations area. And this year's finalists are no exception. Each one has developed its own unique methods of attracting and retaining hard workers and giving them the skills do the job.

Dymotek, General Plastics, Petoskey Plastics and Trilogy Plastics should serve as examples to the plastics industry in this most-important challenge of finding the future manufacturing workforce. A key is showing new employees that they can have a career at your company.

One reason Dymotek stands out is the use of roundtables to foster the next generation of leaders. CEO Norm Forest heads the leadership roundtable. Select employees also can participate in a multigenerational roundtable with other local companies in all types of businesses.

And every single employee at Dymotek needs to become proficient in LSR molding, and in molding LSR and thermoplastic into a single part. That's a major challenge. In many ways, liquid silicone rubber molding is still a pretty proprietary-minded sector that emerged out of the rubber industry and its history of customized compounds and formulations. "So there's no playbook," Forest said.

Dymotek, like most plastic processors, likes to promote from within. Of its current 108 full-time employees, nearly 25 percent started as direct labor but have since been promoted.

That shows how smaller family-owned companies — the hallmark of the plastics industry — often offer great opportunities for quick advancement for workers who are enthusiastic about learning new skills and willing to push themselves. The plastics industry needs to keep promoting that fact to the young people it so desperately wants to recruit.

Dymotek, based in Ellington, Conn., generated sales of $23.2 million in 2016. The company runs 27 injection molding machines, with clamping forces ranging from 35-440 tons. A 550-ton, two-shot Arburg is scheduled to arrive later this year.

The company began in 1990 when brothers Steve and Tom Trueb developed something they dubbed the Lav Guard, to cover pipes under sinks in public restrooms and protect people in wheelchairs from getting burned by the hot water pipes. Dymotek, in a highly automated work cell, still churns out Lav Guards for the customer the Trueb brothers sold the line to in 2004.

They hired Forest in 1997 to build up an injection molding plant, first with two presses to mold the Lav Guard. The company expanded to do custom molding, got into LSR and hasn't looked back.

Milwaukee-based General Plastics is owned by Robert Porsche, who was just named Thermoformer of the Year by the Society of Plastics Engineers' Thermoforming Division.

General Plastics is a small plastics processor, with 2016 sales of $13.7 million and 75 employees, but those numbers will increase thanks to a $4 million investment to more than double the size of its factory. In the world of thermoforming, Porsche has built the company into a major industry former that runs some of the biggest equipment in that sector — able to vacuum or pressure form parts measuring up to six feet wide by 10 feet long by four feet deep.

Porsche is a celebrity in the SPE Thermoforming division. But his company deserves much wider recognition in the overall plastics industry. The company has done an impressive job of cross-training workers, so they can move around between thermoforming machines, computer numerically controlled routers and other areas. That's important for a custom thermoformer that often does short runs.

Plant manager Patrick Cain, together with Porsche, has made major moves to reorganize the factory and boost efficiency and invest in machinery. General Plastics installed an ERP system in 2012 and, last year, began to implement a total bar coding system.

The company recycles 86.4 percent of its scrap, and its leaders want to get even closer to 100 percent recycling.

Another finalist, Petoskey Plastics in picturesque Petoskey, Mich., offers a major selling point for customers: The ability to take back film scrap in a closed-loop system and bury the recycled plastic inside multilayer films, surrounded by virgin plastic.

Petoskey, which reused more than 30 million pounds of plastic in 2015, can make film that contains up to 70 percent post-consumer recycled polyethylene.

Petoskey, owned by founder, President and CEO Paul Keiswetter and his family, is the largest of the four finalists this year, employing 400 people at three factories and generating 2016 sales of about $135 million.

The film maker has more than 5,000 customers around the world. That includes more than 30 Fortune 500 companies. Last year, Petoskey was one of only 11 suppliers to win 3M's Supplier of the Year Award for helping 3M improve its competitiveness and sustainability.

Petoskey has developed a very good, professional-looking booklet for prospective employees that explains the company's history, values, pay rates and opportunities for advancement, and just about everything about the company.

Trilogy Plastics also has invested big-time in its two manufacturing plants in Alliance, Ohio. In 2005, Trilogy built a brand-new headquarters factory, a $5 million investment that was set up for the unique demands of rotational molding — big parts, lots of routers, assembly and the need to make it all run smoothly. And Steve Osborn and his partner, Bruce Frank, have kept up with leading technology — bringing some Trilogy machines as close to "closed-loop" as rotomolding can get, currently.

An interesting attendance program lets employees "work off" points for unexcused absences by working in charitable causes like the Salvation Army and Habitat for Humanity. Getting people to come to work in the physically demanding industry of rotomolding is a major challenge, or course. But all plastics processors could emulate this idea and do good works in their communities at the same time.

Plastics News named three winners of the PN Excellence Award for efforts three individual categories form their submissions for Processor of the Year.

Erie, Pa.-based custom injection molder Plastek Industries Inc. won the award for industry and public service. The legacy of community involvement starts at the top. Joseph Prischak has become a living legend for his work in plastics — playing a leading role in creating the important plastics program at Penn State Erie — and far beyond the industry, through his Africa 6000 International effort to build water walls and irrigation projects in Tanzania and Kenya. So far, 64 wells have been drilled.

Revere Plastics Systems LLC, a custom injection molder based in Clyde, Ohio, picked up the award for customer relations. Revere is major plastics supplier to the appliance market, including the big Whirlpool plant in its hometown. The company has gone to great lengths to serve customers, working over holidays if needed. And Revere is diversifying into other markets such as automotive and outdoor power equipment and other areas.

The third PN Excellence Award winner, for employee relations, went to custom extruder Engineered Profiles LLC in Columbus, Ohio. Executives have built a strong training program that turns some of its highly skilled operators into full-time trainers — and invested in a dedicated extrusion line just for training. That has helped retain employees — 22 of the 25 new operators trained under the program over 12 months are still working at Engineered Profiles.

Finally, Plastics News named Plastikos Inc., a custom molder in Erie, Pa., as the winner of the Sustained Excellence Award, which goes to past Processors of the Year. Plastikos has maintained the high level of excellence since winning the top award on 2010. The company has expanded from its still-core business of molding electrical connectors to do more work in medical, including building a clean room complex.

Congratulations to all the finalists and winners. These companies are sending a positive message about the plastics industry.