Q&A with Jack Shedd

Stepping into the role of director of sales and marketing for Hoffer Plastics, Jack Shedd moved back to a family-owned custom processing operation following stints with Mulay Plastics and Kamco plastics. Beginning his career with GE Plastics in 1980, Shedd has seen the best and worst of times for the U.S. plastics industry—from both sides of the fence.

Whether the processing operation is family-owned or not, the guidance for success is the same: Be better, smarter, and faster than ever before.

Jack Shedd’s career in the plastics industry has spanned 27 years and a variety of companies, and it paints an interesting historical picture of the U.S. plastics processing industry during its heyday of the 1980s and 1990s, and also through the challenges of the 21st century. In 1980, Shedd began his plastics career in sales with GE Plastics. In the early 1990s he moved to the “other side of the fence” and took a marketing/sales position with Mulay Plastics, a long-time family-held custom injection molding company that had just been sold to an investment group as the family exited the business.

After fulfilling his mandate at Mulay to grow the company’s business and expand into new markets, Shedd joined Kamco Plastics, another privately held injection molder that has been in operation since its founding in 1972. There his goals also focused on business development. On November 15, Kamco announced that it had been acquired by KPI Holding Company. Also in November, Shedd assumed the duties of director of sales and marketing for Hoffer Plastics (South Elgin, IL), a well-known, family-owned custom injection molder led by second-generation President Bill Hoffer, whose daughters Gretchen and Charlotte also hold leadership roles in the company.

MPW: You’ve worked at a number of companies during your career, from a huge multinational to smaller family-owned, privately held ones. You’ve also seen the transition of molders from privately held to investment-banker ownership. Why this recent move to another family-owned molding company?

Shedd: I always said if there was ever another injection molding company I’d go to work for, Hoffer Plastics would be the one I’d pick—not knowing that one day I’d get the opportunity. Bob Hoffer, the founder of the company, was a dynamic individual and what he created here at Hoffer is a dynamic company. Hoffer is famous in our industry for building one of the premier custom molding companies in the United States. Hoffer has been an industry leader for 54 years, and the family wants to continue that. The Hoffer charter is to build the business with sustaining value for our customers and for the Hoffer generations of the future.

MPW: Lightweighting, thinning of wall sections to reduce weight and cut material costs, and so on: How do you see that impacting both plastics suppliers and molders?

Shedd: From the resin side, thinner, lighter, and smaller products in almost every industry will drive down consumption and reduce the number of pounds used. But from the molder’s standpoint, there’s still a huge amount of conversion opportunities from metal to plastics. At Hoffer, that’s what we go after—assemblies of multiple metal components that we can consolidate with a more robust and cost-effective plastic design. That’s where some of the real opportunities still lie. We also specialize in taking plastic assemblies, molding very close tolerance parts, and feeding them into elaborate assembly equipment that reduces costs and save jobs. We’re heavily into industrial design for ergonomics, design for differentiation, and design for reduced cost to manufacture. There are some good opportunities in plastics right now for molders who can provide this.

MPW: Where do processors stand in today’s global market where competitive issues are increasingly tough?

Shedd: In today’s market custom molders need to be better, smarter, and faster than ever before. They need really good discipline in their business models, and need to run their businesses more efficiently than ever before. Hoffer is a phenomenal model in how to run a large, custom molding facility efficiently and profitably.

MPW: Can you explain that model?

Shedd: When Hoffer Plastics really began to take off during those growth years in the 1960s, Bob Hoffer recognized that there was such as thing as “too big” for a custom molding plant. He believed that in order to be run efficiently and profitably, a molding plant should not have more than 12 presses.

He developed a model that created a new division when that 12-press limit was reached. Today, there are eight manufacturing facilities of 12 presses each within 360,000 ft² in the Elgin facility. Each facility has its own P&L, tooling support, management, and etcetera. Each is their own little entity, plus each one is a focused plant; focused on specific markets and specific customers.

What’s really cool about all of this is that the company has a global customer base of some of the biggest and best in the Fortune 500 and 100 category, and we did it all without having to be in China or Mexico. However, that said, we realize that going global is the next step.

MPW: Can family-owned molding companies make it today? If so, how?

Shedd: Family-owned companies need critical mass. There’s a certain niche in which some molders can be a certain size, and kind of hang out there and make a living. But eventually, if they expect to grow their businesses and staff them with design, industrial, and tooling engineers, they have to have a sustainable program in place. They need to be diversified and versatile, and have a broad base of customers that allow them to weather the storm. We have a really great diversity of markets, as well, that include caps and closures, consumer, automotive, medical, and building products. Molders today need diversity of markets.

MPW: What’s the biggest change you’ve seen over your career?

Shedd: The way the global economy keeps driving manufacturing toward the most efficient producers, whether that’s on the resin producer side or the custom molding side.

Years ago, you may have had less competition and were able to enjoy greater margins. Today, we’re all required to supply the most efficiently manufactured products. We have to get cost out. To do that requires that we have disciplines in place and operate within those, or we won’t be successful. Customers today cannot afford a supply chain mired in poor quality, high scrap, or with delivery issues. They need the efficiencies like ours has. We make plastic molding look easy.