Interns play key roles at Wisconsin-based Plastic Parts Inc.

Union Grove, Wis. — Custom injection molder Plastic Parts Inc. is seeing dividends after just two years from its summer internship program.

Megan Goessl is one example. She started her first internship at Plastic Parts two years ago, right after high school. Now Goessl is a student at the University of Wisconsin Platteville, and this summer she was back at Plastic Parts for a second internship.

During her first internship, Goessl designed a floor plan for a work cell for a major Plastic Parts customer.

"They told me what needed to be in my work cell, and then I had to make it happen and create a flow of process," she said. "They pretty much let me run with it. Like I've told them since, I was completely out of my comfort zone.

"When they first threw it at me, I ran home and I said, 'Mom, these people are crazy. They don't know that I just came out of high school,'" she joked.

"By the end of the summer, I had a fully operating work cell, and I actually had people working under me that I was managing. It worked out amazing. And after I went to college, the work cell continued to run after I was gone. So that felt great for me, to know that it was still running when I wasn't even there," Goessl said. "And I actually see one of the products that I worked on in the stores now. I point at it and say, 'I did some of those.'"

Moses Butler, operations manager at Plastic Parts, is an enthusiastic supporter of the company's internship program.

"Every year we look at our needs and see how we can fill those with interns," Butler said. "You want to develop the talent pool. We're trying to develop people for technical positions to replace people like myself when we retire."

Keith Brown is another internship success story. He did a six-month internship at Plastic Parts in 2017. Now he's at the company full time, developing complex inspection and automation systems.

"From what I've heard, we've had quite a few good interns come through — getting their feet wet, doing design work, quality work, things like that," Brown said.

"It's a really exciting. I wish I would have been a part of it when I was in high school. There are some really awesome opportunities," he said.

Brown, 27, was an unconventional intern. He was teaching at a private high school when he first joined Plastic Parts.

"I was able to teach and be here part time. I was able to weave those two things together. That experience was huge to me," Brown said.

Right now, he's wrapping up a complex vision system that automatically inspects 18 different critical part checks.

"We do high-level work for world-class companies. It's really cool to think about some of the parts that we make, complicated jobs that nobody else wants to take on. This job is really unique," Brown said.

Plastic Parts, a 43-year-old company in Union Grove, started the internship program with local high schools in southeast Wisconsin. The company has 17 presses and specializes in challenging molding jobs, including complicated overmolded and insert molded parts.

This summer, Goessl is managing timelines for new projects coming to the company.

"Wherever I can help, I step in. So if they need sample requests done or little stuff done here and there where I can take over, I run ahead and do that for them, and make sure we're on top of it," she said.

Goessl said her friends are impressed with what she's learned at Plastic Parts and the amount of responsibility that she's trusted to handle.

"A lot of people are surprised when they hear about it. A couple of my girlfriends who I've been really close with never would have thought about working in an environment like this," Goessl said.

"But once they saw me doing it and saw what I was doing, they went out and did the exact same thing, working in factories, and they love it. So it's kind of cool, to be able to broaden other people's horizons."