Plastics & Injection Molding Manufacturer Blog

The year 2020 has been a tough one, especially for manufacturing. Duelargely to the COVID-19 pandemic, the manufacturing industry saw a decline of nearly 23 percent in 2020. The simultaneous shock and demand from shutdowns, the financial crisis, and increased workplace regulations have created the perfect storm for what’s likely to be the worst hit to manufacturing we’ve seen in decades.

If there’s one thing that every manufacturer knows, it’s the value of a good operator. Operators are champions of production, driving the performance, efficiency, and reliability of your plant processes.

Unfortunately, great operators are often wasted on repetitious manufacturing processes, where most of their time is spent on mundane tasks instead of work that requires more “brainpower” and finesse. On those monotonous tasks, if operators are being forced to act like a machine doing the same thing over and over again, why not get an actual machine to do it?

In Part 1 of our discussion of the importance of TQM to the injection molding process, we introduced George Popov, our Quality Supervisor, and provided you with a behind-the-scenes look at what George and the Ferriot Quality Team are doing to implement and improve TQM on a daily basis.

In Part 2, George and I discuss a new technology acquisition, the AICON smartScan Structured Blue Light Scanner, and how it is helping Ferriot meet and exceed quality goals.

Total Quality Management is critical to everything we do for our customers. At the end of the day, the goal is production readiness. Injection molded parts must be optimized for functionality, production consistency and ease of manufacturing. TQM includes everything from start to finish, from mold qualification to production quality. 

A practical way to provide design flexibility - A smart way to reduce cost

Gas assist injection molding (GAIM) is an enhanced injection molding process often applied for complex parts, large parts and parts requiring an attractive, cosmetic finish.  The types of parts benefiting most from this process include:

• large panels
• enclosures
• handles
• doors and bezels
• tube or rod shaped parts
  
  

COVID-19 has drastically changed the way that companies are run – possibly for years to come. Here in Ohio, we’ve all had to change the way that we work and go about our lives.

While stay at home orders are starting to slowly lift, that doesn’t mean a quick jump back to normal. As an essential business, Ferriot has remained open during the quarantine, making critical parts for the medical, industrial and financial services industries. However, it’s how we all protect our workers that’s equally as important to fighting the pandemic. 

Team Ferriot recently enjoyed a visit from students at Akron's NIHF STEM High School. The students toured our 200,000-square-foot office and manufacturing facilities to learn more about the latest manufacturing processes, technologies and varous injection molding career opportunities from engineering design to quality management. The following photo blog provides you with a glimpse at their tour.

Ron Pack, Manufacturing Engineer, provides students with several new technology demonstrations, including collaborative robots (cobots) that assist with repetitive tasks and allow employess to do more complex work.

Here at Ferriot, an increasing number of our clients are expressing growing concerns over the Coronavirus crisis and the impact of this crisis on the global supply chain. The situation remains very volatile, changes daily, and continues to have a global impact.

This affects injection molding because the industry relies heavily on Asia, especially China, to manufacture a significant portion of the tooling.  A large percentage of plastic parts are molded there as well.  The lower labor cost has allowed Asian countries to deliver tooling at a lower cost and provided OEMs with a reasonably safe supply chain.

Truth be told, although Ferriot has been around for close to a century accumulating an unlimited wealth of experience and applied expertise, we've really only been blogging for a short time. However, since 2020 marks the start of a new decade, we felt it was apropos to share our TOP 10 injection molding blog posts. The front-runners are determined by you, our frequent readers, after nearly 20,000 views of dozens of blog articles on a variety of topics. The majority of these articles are a quick read, requiring only a few minutes to consume. No doubt you'll find them quite valuable. You be the judge...  

The year 2019 was a very special one for the Ferriot team, marking our 90th year in business. Wow! Ninety years! As you can imagine, we've enjoyed learning more about the colorful history and numerous accomplishments of Ferriot's early years. Many on our team weren't aware of our early history with Disney or early Star Wars toys.  The year has also been full of reminiscing over family, friends and business associates that have come and gone through the nine years of our existence. It's only fitting to recap some of them by sharing the following 90th anniversary posts from the past year.