Do you remember the one about the manufacturing plant of the future? The manufacturing plant of the future will have two employees: a man and a dog. The man is there to feed the dog, and the dog’s job is to bite the man if he touches the machines.
Welcome to Plastic Components Inc.'s (www.plasticcomponents.com) newest facility. According to PCI’s President, Tom Duffey, since the plant’s opening on September 11, 2011, it has been running around the clock, fully automated 23 hours and 30 minutes each day with no one in the building.
People come in for about a half-hour each day to load the full boxes onto the conveyors and put the empty boxes back on the conveyors, or do a mold changeover. PCI uses RJG technology to monitor the processing, and digital cameras monitor the plant. Full electronic linkage allows PCI’s production control manager to watch what goes on in the automated facility from his desk.
“This is the future of the American injection molding industry,” Duffey states emphatically, “taking the science and technology available to us to remove the direct labor. This plant has exceeded our expectations, and that’s the model for our future, and the future of the American manufacturing universe.”
Duffey is an advocate of taking the science and the technology available to processors and using it to reduce or eliminate direct labor as much as possible. The company’s recent accolades from Frost & Sullivan’s Manufacturing Leadership Awards confirmed that PCI’s new plant is the model for its future. “We’ve substituted science and technology for human involvement, and business is booming. January was the biggest month in our history and February will be the second-biggest month,” Duffey said.
While Duffey is excited about PCI’s future—and the future of what science and technology can do to help build a sustainable, profitable business model for plastics processing—he knows that for many processing company owners and management, it’s not easy to make that shift. In fact, many may be reluctant to replace activities that people once did with robotics and automation. So how do people make this shift?
“A lot of it is a mindset,” Duffey explains to PlasticsToday. “Many successful entrepreneurs had to make the cross-over from hiring a bunch of people to grow their business to using automation, technology, and science. It’s a shift in mindset. Some are uncomfortable with automation. They’re more comfortable with having a person standing at the machine. I can trust the science: trust the technology to do what the human being has done for the last 30 years. If you’re comfortable making that shift, and trust the technology, you can create a new world order for yourself. If you can’t cross that bridge, you’ll be stuck.”
A brave, new manufacturing world requires making some uncomfortable moves, but it’s critical if the goal is to build a successful company. Duffey adds that “Everyone needs to ask themselves: ‘Am I going to be a part of the future of this industry or am I just going to make a living?’ The actions they take and decisions they make will mean the difference between being a successful, long-term profitable business or going out of business.”
