Molder PTI Engineered Plastics launches design & development firm

PTI Engineered Plastics (Macomb, MI) has provided its medical, automotive, electronics, consumer products, aerospace, and defense clients with in-house design support incorporating DFM throughout its 25 years in business, but saw a need for an independent firm to focus and expand that service for both new and current clients.

Along with its own website, PTI Design will have separate office space on the top floor of the 115-ft² building in Macomb that PTI EP inaugurated two years ago, and will have an initial staff of four experienced design and manufacturing professionals. John Budreau, PTI EP's executive director, said that two of them are industrial designers and the other two are strong in mechanical engineering, including hands-on work in molding and designing for manufacturability.

Budreau stresses that each professional in PTI Design understands the need for an integrated design and development process that simultaneously creates a product that is attractive, functional, and optimized to be manufactured as efficiently and economically as possible. The new company, he adds, comes from the need for the supplier to carry more of the front-end of the product development chain.

"Clients are depending more on us to take more of the design work," says Budreau, adding that PTI Design provides a direct design interface with the client, and importantly, that interface understands how to also optimize a great design so that it can be manufactured.

Clearly aware of the critical nature of time-to-market windows, Rathbone said, "When the market won't wait, PTI Design won't let a great idea become a victim of design failure." —Rob Neilley