Now Plastic Components can count another achievement winner of Plastics News' Processor of the Year Award. PCI is consistently profitable, and the molder boasts low debt. Sales have increased steadily, by double-digits in four out of the last five years. With 50 employees and $12.3 million in 2008 sales, Plastic Components exploits the advantages that a small, tightly focused and owner-operated processor can have in these turbulent times: hands-on management that thinks long term, dedicated employees, and an ability to make changes without a lot of bureaucracy. The reason we've been working flat-out, making as many parts as we can, is because of the effort that we started four years ago, with marketing and business development. We've been working overtime every Saturday since around Thanksgiving, Duffey said. The company is running six days a week, 24 hours a day, instead of the usual five days. Many plastics factories felt the squeeze some have even shut down. We had to completely rethink our whole marketing and sales approach.įast forward to late last year, as the recession started to bite. We had never done any marketing, any sales effort beyond the state line of Wisconsin at the Illinois border. We thought we were a good molder, but no one beyond a 50-mile radius of Germantown, Wis., had any idea who we were, Duffey said. Then in 2005, he hired a marketing manager, Teresa Schell, to help expand the molder's reputation. PCI itself cut costs by sourcing molds from China, reworking them, if necessary, at an in-house tool shop.
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would move manufacturing to China, and leave a small custom molder in Germantown wondering how to cope.ĭuffey tightened up operations by investing in a plantwide IQMS enterprise resource planning system. But back in 1989, he could not have predicted that several big, sturdy customers Midwestern stalwarts West Bend Co., Motorola Inc. 20 years ago, his crystal ball was half cloudy and half clear.ĭuffey got the part right about low labor costs by fashioning a highly automated injection molding factory. Comes standard with TTL coaxial illuminator and patented LED SmartRing™ light.When Tom Duffey founded Plastic Components Inc.High-quality auto calibrating AccuCentric® 12:1 zoom lens provides excellent optical performance over its entire range.