Passion meets automation at PTI Engineered Plastics

Last year was challenging for most North American plastics processors. Big chunks of the manufacturing sector were in recession. High interest rates and lingering supply chain disruptions from the pandemic had companies scrambling.

Not every company had a successful 2023.

But, as the adage goes, the cream rises to the top, and we had a very impressive list of companies trying for the Plastics News 2023 Processor of the Year award. The number of nominees was close to a record, and the quality of the entries was very strong.

Our winner — Macomb, Mich.-based PTI Engineered Plastics — was one of three companies that stood out from the rest.

The company won high marks in all the Processor of the Year criteria: financial performance, quality, customer relations, employee relations, environmental performance, industry and public service, and technological innovation. That wasn't a surprise. In 2019, PTI won the PN Excellence Award for Customer Relations, and in 2021, it won the PN Excellence Award for Industry and Public Service.

When Brian Graves, the company's marketing manager, first contacted me last summer to let me know PTI would be trying for Processor of the Year a third time, I sent him an email saying that the company's previous submissions have all been "very good."

He responded: "Yeah, we've gotten close. But we think we have an even stronger case this year."

Brian, you were right.

PTI's technology is very good. Thanks to my role judging the Processor of the Year award, I've had the opportunity to see how PTI has taken its tooling, molding and automation to the next level.

As Mark Rathbone, the company's founder, owner and CEO, says, "We make it possible to put automation and low volume in the same sentence."

The medical device customers — a key market for PTI — require high quality, repeatability and validation. PTI has been able to do that with collaborative robots, measuring systems, process monitoring, scientific molding — all the bells and whistles.

When I visited a few years ago, the company had some state-of-the-art automation stations and a handful of collaborative robots. This year, the cobots were everywhere.

Rathbone likes the technology because of their portability and the fact that they don't need safety caging. Thanks to Industry 4.0, PTI's cobots can be rolled up to a press and, with the corresponding end-of-arm tooling, be operational within minutes. The system can run uninterrupted, either for short runs or for lights-out manufacturing over weekends and holidays.

And once an order is complete, the robot is rolled to a different press and set up to run a completely different product.

"It's kind of like the cruise control in a car — but on steroids," Rathbone said.

But all the robots don't replace the human factor. Employee relations at PTI are strong; the company has received a Detroit News Top Workplace Award in seven of the last nine years. And the company is a leader in Macomb County, especially when it comes to working with local schools.

Rathbone uses the word "passionate" to describe PTI employees. "They come to work with passion. And when people are happy and passionate about what they do, it just shows on the floor," he said.

It's hard to create a culture like that, but the results are obvious.

As I noted, the Processor of the Year entries this year were very strong. Two other companies stood out from the pack.

Radius Packaging, a blow molder and injection molder based in New Berlin, Wis., is a repeat finalist and also the winner of our PN Excellence Award for Employee Relations.

Redline Plastics LLC, a Manitowoc, Wis.-based rotational molder, and thermoformer, composite fabricator and cut-and-sew company, is a repeat finalist and also the winner of the PN Excellence Award for Industry and Public Service.

The Processor of the Year award has been given out annually since 1996. As the winner, PTI received the Bregar Trophy, named in honor of Bill Bregar, the Plastics News senior reporter who coordinated the awards for many years.

Don Loepp is editor of Plastics News and author of the Plastics Blog.