Ironwood Plastics Blog

2013 - April - New Vision Robot

Mon, 13 May 2013 13:53:46 GMT

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2013 - February - Leadership Transition

Mon, 13 May 2013 13:13:53 GMT

Leadership_Transition.pdf

2012 - December - IWP Receives RJG Award

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 16:32:28 GMT

2012 - November - TS Certified!!!

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 14:10:27 GMT

2012 - September - Robotics and Automation

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 21:35:12 GMT

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2012 - August - Sales and Service

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 18:55:26 GMT

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CTB 60 Year Anniversary

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 17:30:30 GMT

Company News

CTB Celebrates 60 Years – Founded as Chore-Time in 1952

MILFORD, Ind., U.S.A., July 24, 2012 — A group of more than 600 Milford-based employees and many retired employees gathered on July 17, 2012, at CTB’s Conference Center in Milford, Indiana, to celebrate the Company’s 60th anniversary. CTB (www.ctbinc.com) was founded as Chore-Time in 1952 and is a leading global designer, manufacturer and marketer of systems and solutions for producing grain, poultry, pigs and eggs. Additional celebratory events are planned at CTB’s other locations in the U.S. and around the world later this summer.

Greeting attendees, Victor A. Mancinelli, CTB president and chief executive officer, described the anniversary as an opportunity to “bring many of our people together and express gratitude to all for the hard work put forth these many years.” He remarked that, “the Company was very fortunate to have had a core group of founders and early employees who were passionate, dedicated and visionary.”

Mancinelli also noted that “the value system which began with our founders … was handed down to us over the years and to this day defines us and makes us who we are.” Those core values start with “the cornerstone of integrity” and include a “dedication to new ideas, newer products, being different by design, and giving our customers more, so that we can make them even more successful.”

CTB has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. since 2002, and Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett also offered employees a congratulatory video greeting. “You’ve got to have a good feeling about what you do at CTB,” Buffett said. “You’re helping feed the world, and nothing is more important than that.” Buffett concluded, “I couldn’t feel better about being your partner.”

The program included recollections by a number of individuals hired by CTB during the Company’s first three decades including retirees Dick Mundy and Pat Farm, current employees Chuck Bird and Roger Hollinger, and early employee and inventor Eldon Hostetler. A video was also shown of company founder Howard Brembeck (1910-2010) and original co-owner Forrest Ramser (1925-2010) speaking in 2002 about their philosophy of doing business. A meal was served to all attendees after the program.

Based in Milford, CTB today sells its products in over 110 countries under some 14 brand names. These include the original two brands, Chore-Time and Brock, as well as Agro Logic, Fancom, Ironwood, Laake, Mannebeck, PigTek, Porcon, ProTerra, Roxell, Shenandoah, Shore and Uniqfill.

On May 4, 2012, the Company announced an agreement to acquire Meyn Holding B.V., the parent company of Meyn Food Processing Technology B.V. The acquisition, soon to be finalized, will add a 15th brand – Meyn – to CTB’s product portfolio. It will also bring CTB’s worldwide annual sales to over a billion dollars.

Throughout its history, CTB has dedicated itself to product leadership, and its product development ideas have generated numerous patents and awards for various innovations for agriculture. The Company has focused its product development on equipment that helps farmers feed the world through more efficient production of animal protein (poultry meat, pork and eggs) and systems that facilitate long-term storage of grain. CTB also produces and offers products for various equestrian and industrial applications.

CTB continues to focus on its strategy for growth, which includes emerging as the best cost manufacturer in the industries it serves, emphasizing its product-driven focus, expanding its global physical presence, fortifying the business through acquisition and enhancing its financial strength in order to support ongoing product development and to better serve its customers both today and in the future.

2012 - June - Tool Room Capabilities

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 20:33:33 GMT

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2012 - April - Mark Stephens Bio

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 20:33:18 GMT

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2012 - March - The History of IWP

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 20:32:56 GMT

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2012 - February - CTB / IWP Update

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 20:32:41 GMT

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Plastic News Article

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 16:32:05 GMT

January 29, 2001

MOLDERS WEATHER CHALLENGES OF LOCATION

Rhonda Miel
PLASTIC NEWS STAFF

The Pacific Ocean rolls onto the beach just 200 yards from the back door at Pacific Allied Products Ltd. Workers can watch the surf while they take breaks from making bottles and expanded polystyrene containers at the Kapolei, Hawaii, plant. On a clear day, they can see Diamond Head, just 25 miles away.

A world away, in Michigan's remote Upper Peninsula, nearly 13 feet of snow had fallen by mid-January. On winter afternoons at Ironwood Plastics Inc., deer come in from the fields to feed, nabbing the food that employees hand out to help the animals make it through the harsh winter.

Just beyond the city limits of Ironwood, Mich., skiers zip downthe four hills surrounding the town while a few brave souls checkout the 120-meter ski jump just four miles from the injection molder.

The separate families that own the operations -- Pacific Allied Products and Ironwood Plastics -- share many of the same concerns of how to do business in remote locations. They worry about training workers, developing a niche that fits with customers' needs and juggling the demands of everything from intermittent power outages to snow plows.

These are the costs of setting up a business where your heart leads you, rather than where the marketplace normally dictates.

"We came here because of a personal lifestyle," said Scott Stephens, whose parents opened Ironwood Plastics 21 years ago as part of his father's dream of returning to an Upper Peninsula town like the one where he'd grown up.

"There are disadvantages, but you have to find the advantages and exploit the hell out of them."

Setting up shop in out-of-the-way places bucks the trend for an industry that typically seeks out sites based on customer demands, said consultant G. David Moore. His company, Cumming, Ga.-based Moore Associates Consulting Ltd., conducted a national survey of molders dealing with site selection.

The three issues deemed most critical, he said, were the local market, labor availability and quality and utility costs

"Most people come in and say, 'I have an expertise, and this is the market that expertise serves,"' Moore said. "But you can define your way into success and fight the trend of moving where
your market is."

Locating in out-of-the-way places requires a good business plan and brings a whole new set of hurdles for any processor, he said.

"There are costs that are associated with, say, opening [a facility] in your hometown, but there are advantages as well," Moore said. For example, start-up shops may do better by setting up where their personal support is the strongest, closer to financial backers, lawyers or technical wizards.

"As a small guy, sometimes it's more important to have that support than to be close to the market," Moore said.

Even larger companies are opting to locate new sites in more rural locations to take advantage of a stronger labor supply at lower costs, said site selection consultant Dennis Donovan, a principal with Wadley-Donovan Group of Morristown, N.J.

Each time a trained employee leaves, it costs companies about $2,500 in lost training, Donovan said. A more stable work force permits employers to invest even more in training and produce the specialized parts their competitors cannot.

Although Donovan does not recommend that every business seek out the back roads, he added, "You can recoup a lot of transportation costs through lower labor costs."

Improved technology, from the fax to e-mail, has helped put remote molders in closer touch with their customers, maintainsBrad Weber, president of Terhorst Manufacturing Co. of Minot, N.D.

The 60-employee company is one of only about two dozen plastic processors in the state. It opened in 1926 to make metal parts of wind generators but during the years has added toolmaking, injection molding and expanded polystyrene production to keep up with changing demands from customers in the agriculture and construction industries.

Its average customer is 500 miles away, but by working carefully with trucking companies, Terhorst can meet delivery demands with custom parts produced to exact specifications by a stable employee base, Weber said.

It is all a matter of perspective, he said.

"You're only as remote as you want to be," Weber said. "It used to be, you'd have to have three, four days to get a copy of the [specifications] from a customer. Now, with the technology available, you've got a fax right away.

Missy Nasi, Shipping, with her two sled dogs.

"It's not like you have to be right next door to get information."

Paul E. and Linda Smith had no experience in the plastics business prior to 1982. He had worked in international banking, she for the federal government's Office of Management and Budget.

What they had was a desire to live in Hawaii. The couple advertised to buy a company, finally settling on Pacific Allied Products, which at that time mostly produced foam cups and EPS forms for the construction business.

"It had a technology I could understand, a marketplace we felt was not fully served and a solid track record," Paul Smith said.

Pacific Allied eventually added PET blow molding capabilities.

Hawaiian island life is everything they had hoped for, he said. Sun, warm temperatures, beautiful views of everything from the surf to volcanoes. Their yard is filled with tropical fruit trees: mangoes, papayas, limes, oranges and tangerines.

"Anything in Hawaii comes down to the personal location preference," Smith said. "Hawaii is paradise. It really is."

But doing business there is not easy.

"The most significant part is, you are so far from any significant market," Smith said. "You're forced to focus on a small market."

Hawaii, with a population of 1.2 million, is a captive market, but even accessing all of those potential customers means shipping between islands -- not just packing a load on a truck.

Pacific Allied operates more like a niche testing facility than a mass producer. On any given shift in the 24-hour, 7-day-a-week operation, workers are switching over one of the three blow molding machines.

"If we get an order for 100,000 bottles of any particular style, say a clear 2-liter, that's probably the largest single order for any one bottle we'd ever get," Smith said. "Five days of anything at any time would be an excellent run."

Any foam cutter could end up with 10-12 different jobs during the course of a week -- sometimes switching jobs after less than an hour.

Pacific Allied has 200 different products, including the 20-foot-tall foam Santa Claus figures used in Honolulu's Christmas decorations, roofing insulation, and the specialized packaging used by Kimo's Ono Hawaiian Food, which sells a "luau in a box" on the Internet at www.luauking.com.

That means the entrepreneurs have had to develop a work force that can adapt to changes quickly.

"Everyone in a remote location has to focus on the ability to be flexible, and do an equally good quality job on every one of those changeovers," he said.

To encourage people to stick around, Pacific Allied treats employees celebrating their 10- year anniversary with the company to a trip to the U.S. mainland.

The cost of doing business in paradise starts from the ground up. To buy a 100,000-square-foot industrial site like Pacific Allied Products costs about $26 per square foot.

"I could buy land in downtown Los Angeles for less than that," Smith said.

Warehouse space rents for 50 cents per square foot per month -- forcing processors and customers alike to specialize in just-in-time delivery.

Raw material costs come at about a 10 percent premium over anything on the mainland. That includes everything from resin to the company's own shipping materials.

Electricity runs 11.5-12 cents per kilowatt hour -- double the Midwest industrial average of about 5.5 cents. Hawaii has no natural gas infrastructure, so instead processors rely on propane, at $1.60-$1.80 per gallon.

With little plastics production on the islands, Pacific Allied also has to train the bulk of its work force from scratch.

"You have a lot of condo maintenance people, but almost no machinery maintenance people here," he said. "You hope to keep people for at least three to four years just to retain them long enough to pay for their training."

The strong work force was just one of the selling points that brought Ironwood Plastics to the 6,000-person community of Ironwood.

Gordon Stephens was born in the Upper Peninsula town of Iron Mountain -- about 100 miles south of Ironwood -- spending the first years of his life running wild through the small town and surrounding countryside.

His family moved south to metro Detroit to work in the auto industry when he was 13. He learned the plastics trade through jobs with Ford Motor Co. and Master Industries Inc.

He and his wife, Joan, were anxious to move out of the city and settled for a while in Phillips, Wis., working with Phillips Plastics Corp. Phillips had considered two sites for an expansion -- Chippewa Falls, Wis., and Ironwood. It chose Chippewa Falls.

Randy Ahnen, Tooling Engineer, and Ben Busch, Product Inspector, show off their preferred method to commute.

The Stephens family chose Ironwood to start out on their own and follow Gordon Stephen's calling: "To go back home," his son Scott Stephens said.

The family already was familiar with the area, taking in the surrounding slopes as skiers. In 1979, there was little else happening in Ironwood.

The town that grew up on the iron and copper mining industries was in a major depression. There was one plastics supplier in place there already, mold maker Everson Tool. Only one copper mine remained open, and it closed in the 1990s.

"It was like a bomb went off here," Stephens said. "It was terrible. Everything was in disrepair. The only things happening were skiing and snowmobiling, and there wasn't much of that."

The family found a town ready to open its arms to any new business.

"The city was really anxious to see us come in, even though at that time, we were talking about a business with three machines and six employees," he said.

Local officials provided tax abatements and other assistance to help the family establish Ironwood Plastics. The operation also found plenty of people with a lot of experience operating heavy equipment.

"The basic education of the people here is wonderful," Stephens said. "There is a heritage of machine trades from the mining days. There are good training programs in the high school, but it kind of ends there."

Ironwood Plastics had to invest in additional training, but the community's isolation helps ensure it holds on to good people.

"There's really a good work ethic here," Stephens said. "People take their job seriously. Unlike in an urban area, jobs are not a dime a dozen.

"Because there's very little turnover, we can take our people a lot further skillwise."

Now the 150-employee company enjoys its status as a mainstay in the community. If the managers need input from the city or local utilities, they get attention.

"In the city, people wouldn't even know about your company. Here, we're a major employer."

And while Scott Stephens said he could not understand the lure of the town when he was in high school, he now appreciates the community where his own children can spend all day skiing, taking in sleigh rides and hockey games.

He is vice president of administration for Ironwood Plastics. His brother Mark runs the main operation in Ironwood while Rob Stephens oversees a second small shop in Two Rivers, Wis.

But all of the workers' skills and local support cannot help win business on its own. Ironwood is nearly a five-hour drive away from its nearest customers in Minneapolis.

Although Michigan is among the most populated plastics processors, Ironwood is far out of the auto supply loop. The city of Ironwood is 635 miles from Detroit. Washington, D.C., is closer to Detroit than is Ironwood.

That means Ironwood Plastics has to specialize to compete and survive, Stephens said. It focuses on small parts, with presses ranging from 45-250 tons. The company boasts both insert molding and continuous reel-to-reel operations.

"We do the tough projects that no one else wants to mess with," Stephens said.

And the business also has to convince skeptical customers that its employees can cope with the Upper Peninsula's extreme weather conditions. In 20 years, Stephens notes, it has closed because of bad snow fewer than 10 times.

Consultant Donovan warned that scenery and bucolic settings cannot take the place of a solid business plan. Molders need to be certain they can compete on price and meet their customers' demands, no matter where they are.

"If you want to move someplace remote, you do it because you want to, not because your customer wants you to do it or the market wants you to," said Jeff Mengel, a partner with Auburn Hills, Mich.-based consultants Plante & Moran LLP.

"You can make money, but you have to really want to be there, and you have to work hard at it."

Missy Rappley, Molding Tech, and Laverne Morello, Product Inspector, operate vertical molding machine.

John Lorenson, Manufacturing Coordinator, feeds the deer outside the plant's back door.

Injection Molding Article

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 16:31:48 GMT

At Ironwood Plastics’ 45,000-sq-ft facility in Ironwood, MI, two molding bays are arranged on either side of a materials room containing material handling equipment, a dryer, and granulators. Smaller tonnage machines located in the bay shown here range from 45 to 100 tons.

IMM's Plant Tour:
Self-reliant molding specialists

By Michelle Maniscalco

Ironwood specializes in turnkey services for both insert and continuous reel-to-reel molding. These parts represent some of the specialized processes offered.

Ironwood’s nerve center contains most of the plant’s auxiliary equipment, including hoppers, granulators, blenders, a dryer, and material silos. Keeping this equipment off the molding floor pays dividends in cleanliness and noise reduction.

In the reel-to-reel workcell, a strip of plated leads is first insert molded (above), then sent through a series of sensors (below) that read the position and spacing of the wires to determine if they are bent or out of place. All data is sent to an operator’s monitor (bottom) for verification. The DVT imaging system provides high-resolution sensing with a PowerPC processor for faster speed.

Location, location, location. It’s just as important in custom molding as it is in real estate. So why did Ironwood Plastics choose a remote spot in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula? According to Mark Stephens, whose family founded the company, there was a desire to simplify, something that couldn’t be done in the city. Detroit, that is. Although the plant is located in the same state, it is 600 miles from Detroit. “Washington, DC is actually closer to Detroit by five miles,” quips Stephens, who is the division manager for the Ironwood, MI plant.This relatively distant location has shaped the way Ironwood operates as well as the services it offers to customers. “Molders located in the city can win most of the easy jobs,” Stephens says. “We realized that we had to supply the market with extraordinary capabilities, or it wouldn’t make sense for customers to make the trip.”

As a result, the company specializes in reel-to-reel insert molding, both horizontal and vertical; turnkey stamping services; and close-tolerance molding services for electronics, automotive, industrial, and military customers. “Our customers are looking to us to take a project and run with it,” Stephens says. “On insert molding projects, for example, we take responsibility for metal stamping and plating as well.”

Ironwood has also learned to be self-sufficient. More than 80 percent of all molds are designed and built in-house, allowing the company to maintain control of the project. A staff of 23 toolmakers (12 in Ironwood; 11 at a second location in Two Rivers, WI) produce production tools along with prototype steel tooling.

At first, Ironwood struggled to convince customers that parts wouldn’t get snowbound or that production wouldn’t be halted because of bad weather. To survive, the company became expert at shipping, squelching the snowbound fears. And although snowfall can reach 305 inches in the winter, Ironwood has missed only six shifts in 20 years of operation (13,687 shifts) due to weather. “Our people are our biggest asset,” Stephens says. “Their work ethic and stability have been essential in setting Ironwood apart from the competition. Our county has high unemployment—more than 10 percent—so people take their jobs seriously, making turnover very low.”

Molding Floor Specifics

We begin the tour on the molding floor, which is divided into two bays by a self-contained materials room located between the rows of molding machines. On one side are smaller machines up to 100 tons, some of which are vertical presses with rotary platens for insert molding. The other side contains larger machines from 150 to 250 tons. All molds are loaded by means of an overhead crane.

Each group of six machines is controlled by a section leader, who is responsible for troubleshooting and production. One operator can cover all six machines because most presses run automatically, thanks to a $4 million investment in 1997. “We installed Yushin robotics on every press,” Stephens explains. “After purchasing a new material handling system, we pulled the granulators, dryer, and the new equipment into a materials room.”

All of the presses are connected to the closed loop materials system. Cleanliness has improved and sound levels are contained with this layout. Stephens had originally planned to put the auxiliary equipment in the basement of the plant, but his father vetoed the idea. “My grandfather worked in an iron mine, and my father refused to put any of his employees in an underground facility.”

Because operations are largely automated and turnover is low, Ironwood can boost training to entry-level personnel. All operators are trained in visual and dimensional inspection and SPC, and earn the title of product inspector. Several are certified by ASQ as mechanical inspectors.

Over the next 18 months, due to customer projections for increased business, Ironwood plans to install nine new Engel molding machines. According to Stephens, being a turnkey supplier means that the plant becomes an extension of the customer’s production line. The planned investment is aimed at keeping Ironwood one step ahead of projected increases in demand.

Nerve Center

Between the two molding bays is the self-contained structure that houses both the materials room and quality department. Taking a look inside the materials room is a bit like peering into the body’s central nervous system. Material flows into and out of pneumatic tubes with precision, while granulators automatically send regrind to specific barrels. A central dryer presides over the entire room.

Only one operator is needed to run the materials room, dubbed the “Motan” room because all of the equipment (except blenders from Maguire) comes from that company. Twenty hopper-silos send material to the presses, including regrind if applicable. Each hopper can send material to one of six machines. “Our main goal with this room was to improve the consistency of material,” Stephens says, “and this system ensures that.”

Chillers and other cooling system components sit on the floor above the materials room. Ironwood’s quality department also resides in this island, separated from the materials room by a wall. Achieving and maintaining QS 9000 means that quality personnel are often interacting with the rest of the plant. “Giving this department a central location made more sense,” Stephens adds.

Special Attractions

One workcell in the plant attracts the most attention, perhaps because it contains two huge reels and a bevy of image sensors. Ironwood molds connectors for PCMCIA cards here, and the entire cell was constructed in-house, from the reel automation to the stamping and coining equipment.

The process begins with a large reel of plated metal stampings. A continuous strip is fed into a stamping station, which snips off the carriers. Leads are then coined in the next stage and continue on to a vertical Arburg press, where nylon 4/6 is overmolded onto the edge of the stamping using a four-cavity mold. The hot runner tool requires a 10-second cycle time, and the strip then cools as it is reeled up at the end of the workcell.

Ironwood produces 225,000 connectors each week for its customer, which uses the reels in another continuous process. “If there are any connectors in the reel that don’t meet specifications,” says Stephens, “our customer’s assembly line stops. So to avoid that, we have installed a vision system on this cell that checks for both bent leads and proper spacing.”

The imaging sensors (from DVT) are placed at several points in the process. If the system picks up any deviations, it alerts an operator via alarms. The technician can then either stop the process or cut out the offending connector and splice in a new set of leads without shutting down. With high production quotas, operators have become very adept at welding in strips on the fly, according to Stephens.

Another project that required creativity involved molding valves for blowmolded gas tanks. The valves needed to be injection molded, but the customer wanted to weld the same resin when attaching the valves. So Ironwood must use a 10 percent mica-filled HDPE blowmolding resin for the job. “We developed our own processing parameters through several DOE trials,” Stephens says.

Tooling and Techniques

Its remote location forced Ironwood to become its own moldmaker, but in retrospect, that necessity has allowed the molding operations to run more efficiently.

“For the types of jobs we do, precision is a must. Having our own toolmakers on board and the ability to design tools with moldability in mind is one of the reasons we can take on close-tolerance work, insert molding, and reel-to-reel jobs,” he adds. The list of tooling that can be produced runs the gamut from multicavity, hot runner, and shuttle molds to face-mounted, prototype, and insert tooling.

Almost all tools are made of hardened or prehardened steel. Ironwood typically produces prototype tooling in three to four weeks, but shies away from aluminum. Most of the jobs are too intricate, toolmakers say, and aluminum won’t hold up.

Unusual requests such as automatic unscrewing cores don’t seem to be a problem for Ironwood, which has invested in experienced toolmakers. One recent project, a radiator cap with molded-in screw threads, came off without a hitch.

An emphasis on secondary operations also sets Ironwood apart from its competitors. In addition to pad printing, hot stamping, and ultrasonic welding, it offers metal insertion, adhesive and solvent bonding, customized machining, and automated assembly.

Plastic Business Article

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 16:31:23 GMT

IRONWOOD PLASTICS Declares, "Challenge Us!"
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Plastics Business: Strategies for Today's Plastics Processors
Summer 2008

Current Weather

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 16:16:17 GMT

Ironwood Weather Forecast, MI

Two Rivers Weather Forecast, WI

Ironwood Plastics Blog

2013 - April - New Vision Robot

2013 - February - Leadership Transition

2012 - December - IWP Receives RJG Award

2012 - November - TS Certified!!!

2012 - September - Robotics and Automation

2012 - August - Sales and Service

CTB 60 Year Anniversary

2012 - June - Tool Room Capabilities

2012 - April - Mark Stephens Bio

2012 - March - The History of IWP

2012 - February - CTB / IWP Update

Plastic News Article

MOLDERS WEATHER CHALLENGES OF LOCATION

Injection Molding Article

IMM's Plant Tour:Self-reliant molding specialists

Plastic Business Article

Current Weather

IMM's Plant Tour:
Self-reliant molding specialists