Ohio plastics firms mobilize to 'support those risking their lives'

A group of 19 Ohio manufacturers, including injection molding and tooling suppliers, are working with hospitals and the state government on a crash program to deliver 1 million plastic face shields for front-line health care workers in five weeks.

The program, first announced April 9 by Gov. Mike DeWine, is off to a fast start as manufacturers work around the clock, at times deploying new technology to compress what's normally months of product development into 10 very intense days.

But the scramble also highlights a growing challenge: plastics material shortages, as companies around the world try to ramp up production of personal protective equipment.

Tech giant Apple Inc., for example, announced in early April it would make and distribute 20 million face shields to health care workers. That and many other PPE projects are squeezing plastic supply chains, according to those involved in the Ohio project.

"Really, the biggest challenge right now that everybody is seeing was being able to secure the material for the face shield," said Matt Hlavin, CEO of injection molder Thogus Products Co. The Avon Lake company is making them as part of a contract that Cleveland-based industrial equipment maker Eaton Corp. has with Ohio's government.

Ethan Karp, CEO of the Cleveland-based Manufacturing Advocacy and Growth Network and one of the coordinators of the project, said that "sourcing the plastic was almost impossible with raw materials disappearing at record speed."

"It is Apple and everybody else that is making face shields," he said. "We have talked to a number of the folks that make the sheet. And they have all talked about how they've rapidly expanded their capacity and they're sold out for weeks because everybody across the country is looking to make this sort of product in various forums for PPE."

But Hlavin said his group solved the issue by getting polycarbonate directly from a Saudi Basic Industries Corp. plant in Mount Vernon, Ind., where Sabic both makes pellets and extrudes the sheet needed for the shields.

"I think Apple's got a lot muscle to flex with the scale of their supply chain, but I think one of the biggest contributing factors to the shortage of sheet is all of these little companies trying to help out whether it's the colleges or schools or these fab labs," Hlavin said.

Challenges aside, the effort is ramping up.

Karp said at its peak, it wants to have capacity at various companies around the state to make 45,000 face shields a day.

He expects to reach that around April 23, with several different groups of companies manufacturing independently of one another.

"We went from an idea to a prototype to building a new local supply chain to production in less than two weeks," Karp said. "This should have been impossible, but we got it done."

When the need became apparent, Karp said his group, Magnet, worked with Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and Eaton to make a prototype, with design ideas from doctors and hospitals.

Then they started soliciting the state's manufacturing community for ways to turn it into mass production reality.

That outreach was done as part of the Ohio Manufacturing Alliance to Fight COVID-19, which DeWine formed April 1 with business and hospital groups.

DeWine sees it as a way to make much-needed equipment for health care workers, while strengthening Ohio's manufacturing base. More than 1,500 companies have volunteered.

The alliance includes the Ohio Manufacturers' Association, the Ohio Hospital Association, the Ohio Manufacturing Extension Partnership, state agencies and hundreds of companies. It's working on a variety of projects, including making cloth face masks and hand sanitizer.

The face shield work, though, is among its most complex so far, with multiple plastics processors, material suppliers and others, Karp said: "It was really an incredible effort on the supply side, the plastic side.

"We've had to use multiple plastic suppliers and these plastic suppliers have had to use multiple sorts of plastics," he said. "Having to put it all together to make it go so quickly has increased the complexity amazingly, and yet we're still making it happen."

As they worked, engineers ran into attempts at price gouging on the plastic, Karp said. The face shield component makes up about half the total cost of the project, he said.

"Frankly, the prices were fluctuating like crazy on that plastic face shield," Karp said. "I know some of the folks we talked to, they're just being gouged on the price … like five times what somebody else was quoting, which I'm sure was already high because of the demand for the plastics," he said.

But companies involved are doing the work at cost, according to Hlavin from Thogus.

"We're covering costs to keep our family, meaning our employees employed, to try to keep this economy going," Hlavin said. "No one's making money doing this. It's really about what's our social responsibility to help support these front-line workers that are risking their lives every day."

Thogus is molding some components and assembling the complete product and delivering that to Eaton, he said.

Other companies involved include Classic Laminations Inc., Die-Cut Products Co., Evenflo Co. Inc., GSH Industries Inc., HP Manufacturing Co. Inc., ITEN Industries Inc., Kent Displays Inc., MTD Products Co., Ottawa Rubber Co., Pragmatic Manufacturing LLC, Premier Seals Manufacturing LLC, Professional Plastics Inc., Talent Tool and Die Inc., and Trifecta Tool and Engineering LLC.

Eaton said its wing of the Ohio project will deliver 360,000 of the reusable face shields.

Overall, the program plans to make 750,000 to 1 million face shields for the Ohio Department of Health's stockpile.

DeWine framed the new manufacturing alliance as part of a deliberate strategy by the state government to "make PPE when it cannot be purchased" and use technology to find other ways to make Ohio's PPE stockpiles last.

"We are going to protect our protectors and strengthen our manufacturing sector," DeWine said. The Alliance is on the web at repurposingproject.com.

Hlavin said Thogus was able to move quickly in part because it could tap a network of U.S. mold making shops.

"Our tool suppliers are stateside, and we are very fortunate for that," he said, adding that Suburban Tool & Die Co. Inc. in Erie, Pa., built its mold.

"All those materials normally to procure in an eight- to 12-week cycle wouldn't be a problem, but to compress it 10 days, that's where I think we've turned the miracle," Hlavin said.

Getting to that point required close collaboration.

Terry Ellis, general manager of Metalcraft Solutions in Akron, said it required sharing more information with potential competitors than you normally would and pushing personal needs "down the priority list."

His firm, for example, worked nonstop into the early morning hours over a weekend to design and manufacture a 3D printed mold insert for Esterle Mold and Machine Co. Inc. in Stow.

It was the first time the company, which also goes by Acro Tool and Die Inc., commercially used a new technology it patented only a few days before — a way to make mold inserts that reduces the mass of the piece, shortening the time need to cool the mold and thereby shortening the cycle time.

Metalcraft delivered the piece on a Monday morning, in time for Esterle to keep its schedule.

Beyond making the mold, Esterle is also molding the headbands and delivering them to a Little Tikes Co. factory nearby in Hudson, where other pieces were being packaged into kits for distribution.

Like the other efforts, Esterle ramped up quickly. It turned the initial one-cavity design into a two-cavity mold to double production, and it made the tools on a vastly abbreviated schedule. It plans to be molding about 24,000 pieces a day by April 23, Esterle manager David Lazic said.

Those working on the project said the public health crisis and desire to help are overruling some of the typical competitiveness between businesses.

Every company likes to protect the know-how it sees as giving it an advantage, Ellis said, but that too was pushed down the priority list.

"People are sharing knowledge, even with people who in normal circumstances may be competitors, to make the whole thing run faster," he said. "That says a lot about the spirit here."