California's Kennerly-Spratling expands to Mexico

San Leandro, Calif. — Kennerley-Spratling Manufacturing Group opened a maquiladora in Tijuana, Mexico, and is elevating its quality-control focus.

For the Tijuana site's plastics processing, "we are buying equipment and moving some equipment," Nathan Chandler, chief information officer, said in an interview at KS headquarters in San Leandro. "The project has been in the works since 2016." Operations began in March.

KS took occupancy of an 80,000-square-foot Tijuana facility and currently employs about 30 there. It is ramping up production with new and used injection molding machines with a clamping force range of 80-1,400 tons.

KS envisions employing 100 in Tijuana in a year or two.

Production at the Tijuana site will "open some San Leandro plant capacity and allow KS to accept more local work," Chandler said.

The group was founded in 1955 in the northern California town of San Leandro with original Kennerley-Spratling Inc., now a division.

KS Group established a minority-controlled KS Automotive division in 1998 in a nearby San Leandro building, acquired medical device component maker MOS Plastics Inc. of San Jose in 2002 and purchased the customer base and certain assets of Henry Plastic Molding Inc. of Fremont in 2006.

For the Henry Plastic Molding transaction, Chandler was the seller. His grandfather, tool and die maker Ed Henry Sr., started Henry Plastic Molding in 1972 and was an original mold supplier to Palo Alto, Calif.-based Hewlett-Packard Co.

"We sold some assets that were relocated to [KS] San Leandro and [MOS] San Jose over several years," he said.

Chandler retained Branford Group for a 2016 auction to sell remaining Henry assets and now works with KS under a management contract. He started in a senior business development position in November 2016 and became CIO in September 2017.

For the quality control effort, KS recruited Dave Brown in February. The director of quality has two decades of experience in Silicon Valley's high-precision hard disk drive industry. Brown has strengths in design and sustainability engineering and holds a Six Sigma Green Belt certification.

In his spare time, and furthering one of his longtime hobbies, Brown serves as a driving coach for Life's Good Racing, a performance car service facility in Livermore, Calif.

Across all operations, KS Group wants a more aggressive level of focus on quality assurance — due-diligence performance and part-requirement checking and quality control — the process of looking forward.

"We want to be proactive in quality to identify and minimize defects," Brown said. "The key process input is the variable to control the process."

Brown employs critical-to-quality trees to meet customer requirements.

KS is implementing version 15.3 of the enterprise resource planning software from IQMS of Paso Robles, Calif. Brown said KS will enable each plant to have focused access specific to the IQMS statistical process control data for its operations.

The effort to monitor, control and integrate processes should enable KS to save time and make its labor force more productive, Brown said.

KS is certified under the ISO 13485 medical device standard and is in the process of upgrading to the 2015 version of the ISO 9001 quality management system. Currently, KS is certified under ISO 9001:2008.

"On most jobs, KS is one level below the contract manufacturer," Chandler said.

Like other plastics processors, KS Group is trying to grow, find more customers and identify ways to diversify beyond its core in the electronic, automotive and medical markets.

"We are trying to find qualified people for facility, injection molding and mold making jobs," Chandler said.

The San Leandro facilities employ about 360, MOS has about 160, and Tijuana is in the startup phase.

"Fewer skilled workers are available," Chandler noted. "The trades are dying."

In addition, San Francisco Bay area housing costs and government-imposed minimum wage requirements challenge employers including KS.

For all facilities, KS Group operates more than 70 injection molding presses of 22-1,760 tons. Twenty-five machines have clamping forces at or above 400 tons. "Having large-tonnage presses is a strength," Chandler said.

Capabilities include standard injection, structural foam injection, two-shot, insert and over molding.

MOS in San Jose is adding to its clean room molding capabilities.

Along with the quality effort, KS is adapting and customizing robotics using automation systems from the Sepro and Wittmann groups, Brown said. "We want to optimize for the improved processing of customer parts," he said.

Recently, KS has hired key project engineers with knowledge of automated fixtures and assemblies, and the company believes that is "a good strategic way to be competitive," Chandler said.

The adjacent KS buildings in San Leandro have nine resin silos to store incoming truckloads of plastic pellets.

For fluid applications requiring chemical resistance, KS has worked with PVC and chlorinated PVC for 30 years, Chandler said. The applications can involve pool, spa and jacuzzi components.

As with any business, KS identifies — and bids on — potential prototype and production opportunities in its markets.

"The challenge is how to stay in touch [with the customer] at the beginning of a program," Chandler said.

KS Group's investments in Tijuana as well as quality and technology are geared to help capture and keep customer attention.