Plastic Molding Manufacturing: Precision, innovation and customer-centric excellence

Berlin, Conn. — When George Danis came to America in the early 1970s as a young man from his rural home in Greece, he wanted to learn more about U.S. manufacturing and engineering.

The young engineer worked at Honeywell International Inc. in Massachusetts before deciding to strike out on his own. He opened a small metal fabrication company and built that over many years. But he had an itch to get into more complex parts that would test his technical skills and challenge him.

So, in 2010, he went into injection molding, selling off his fabrication business and converting a plant in Hudson, Mass., that could produce plastic parts. His company — rechristened Plastic Molding Manufacturing Co., or PMM for short — successfully worked with electronics makers Lucent Technologies Inc. and Motorola Inc., among others, to build his business and work on small but complex parts.

Since then, the company has expanded to four facilities that specialize in hard-to-mold parts for more than 500 regular customers and more than a thousand altogether. It is that initiative, and the modern factory approach that defines PMM to its customers, that has led to its recognition by Plastics News as the winner of the 2024 Excellence Award for Customer Relations. PMM was awarded that honor on March 12 at the PN Executive Forum.

For Danis, that ability to mold plastic parts, some smaller in diameter than a dime, still awes him.

"It's a complex business, and some don't understand it," he said during a PN visit on Jan. 28. "You take granules of material, heat them to more than 500°, inject it into a tool and cavity and, maybe 15 or 20 seconds later, the parts come out cold and formed. And it takes flexibility the entire time."

Danis, the sole owner of PMM, has not sat idly in a market where meeting customer expectations has been a moving target. In the 2010s, the company expanded from a single facility in Hudson to four plants — its facilities in Hudson and in Berlin, Conn., are both around 70,000 square feet, and plants in Lancaster, Pa., and South Bend, Ind., encompass 30,000 square feet. Another business, Phillips-Moldex Co., was purchased in 2019 and combined tooling and molding into the Hudson facility.

Many of the purchased companies either were distressed or in strong need of capital infusion. But they are also strategic.

Danis and Chief Financial Officer Jacqui Nielsen said acquisition targets are only those that are manageable and do not bring an uncomfortable level of debt.

All operate independently, with plant management making product and technology decisions in what Danis calls a flat organization that has few bureaucratic layers. Only finance and purchasing functions are centralized in Hudson. It is a process that ensures employee empowerment and engagement, Danis said. No one is the boss, but all can be reached at any time, he added.

"We are responsible for the work, but if we have a problem, other plants are only a phone call away," said Manufacturing Manager Ben Schelling, based in South Bend. "Even in communication with customers, we can work autonomously with full support."

PMM could be described as a thoroughly modern company. Its employees wear blue T-shirts emblazoned with the words "America's Technology Molder," and that motto is built on more than merely the ability to make hard-to-produce parts.

Instead, repeatability is a must in processes, and PMM is cutting edge when it comes to how it works on the factory floor. The watchword is simplicity, Danis said, with time management the No. 1 objective.

Lean manufacturing is the gold standard at PMM; in South Bend, the plant may have 34 machines running at one time with only three or four operators, Schelling said. In Berlin, the company has around 35 machines and averages only 55 operators total working three shifts, said Vice President of Engineering Joel Lenha.

"And it's lights-out on weekends," Lenha said. "Machines this past weekend ran 24 hours straight, and I could monitor them from home and look into a camera to see if any machines were sounding alarms. If so, I could drive in and address it."

According to Nielsen, about $2 million in capital expenditures was spent last year for automation investments.

Modernity has meant a sophisticated series of microscopic cameras placed strategically at each PMM machine. The cameras can focus with pinpoint accuracy on each part coming out of the machine and the materials going in on the front end. It can inspect tools and parts remotely, via an automated sampling system, and detect any defects or other issues.

The rolling inspection system can move between machines on the floor where needed or can be attached to one machine. The live-action videos can also be shared with customers at remote locations anywhere in the world, offering just-in-time data with a link and a visual representation of a solution to any issues. And the camera can rove to see whether an insert is missing or whether a mold does not close, said Quality Manager Dave Jones. Even small yellow labels on the side of each machine can be read clearly by the camera.

"Customers can see the tool opening and closing and view the part coming out of the tool," Jones said. "Customers on the other side of the world can see measurements of parts produced."

Operator training is also computerized and shows both in video and audio formats, with step-by-step operations. In the Berlin facility, located near Hartford, Conn., some of the videos are in Spanish.

It leads to a lean manufacturing environment in state-of-the-art factories — facilities where space is maximized and operations are consistent. Inventory is lessened due to strict controls, and the use of real-time data for customers (with a link sent to them to see the work) means less time having to shut down a machine for a day or two until an issue can be communicated, Lenha said.

In a boardroom at the Berlin facility, hundreds of parts are arranged on shelves in more industries than can be counted, for applications as small as antibacterial rice beads for humidifiers and fish tanks to overmolded gaskets to two-shot parts, for medical devices and consumer products, to perfume bottles to automotive gears to fuel holders.

A clean room is used for medical parts, and insert molding and precision products requiring tight tolerances and high-heat materials are commonplace. Some parts require tolerances as tight as plus or minus two-tenths of an inch.

No one application area takes more than 8 percent of PMM's business, and much of its business comes from tool transfers from other facilities due to the complexity needed, Lenha said.

But even with the highly engineered nature of the business, Danis is most proud of his workforce, he said. Regular lunches are held for all three shifts, and employees from different plants can see each other on video cameras. Benefit costs have not risen for the past seven years, with Danis himself absorbing any increase, he said. If customer commitments are met, then extra holidays are added.

Community involvement includes a Christmas tradition in Hudson of serving 120 seniors at the facility, with those in need lined up at 9 a.m. for an 11 a.m. lunch, said Chief of Staff Jody Heyward. And plant independence means employees have a voice, she said.

"The only thing we oversee is daily reporting," Danis said. "You train, you empower and you let people do their job, with a very important focus and objective to support the customer."

Plastic Molding Manufacturing: Precision, innovation and customer-centric excellence