Since 1854 — News from Montcalm County and Ionia County, Michigan

By Elisabeth Waldon | on April 14, 2020

GREENVILLE — This Easter Sunday, many people likely watched virtual church from their couch, hid toys and treats for children and cooked a special dinner to give the religious holiday some extra meaning amid COVID-19.

Niles Thompson, a CNC operator, and Michael Sullivan, a quality inspector, fill in for shipping personnel at Greenville’s DME, a global plastic injection molding supplier. — Submitted photo

But others clocked in for work at their regular job and worked harder than ever in the ongoing fight against the pandemic.

Randy Garvey, plant manager at DME (through acquisition of Master Unit Die), a global plastic injection molding supplier in Greenville, said in his 32 years on the job, he has rarely witnessed his colleagues working on a holiday or a Sunday. While some people are unable to work during the pandemic, DME is racing to keep up with an unprecedented demand for global health industry products.

“My crew makes me as a plant manager so proud,” Garvey said. “I am running on Easter Sunday with a limited crew to support COVID.”

The plant at 1117 E. Fairplains St. has been slammed with new requests for mold bases — especially for ventilators — and employees have stepped up, creating three times as many products as they did pre-pandemic.

The mold bases are used by Ford and General Motors which have partnered with 3M, GE, Medtronic and Ventec to create new medical supply chains, which are in turn soliciting the help of the North American mold-makers and molders to manufacture essential parts — from ventilators to face visors to plastic swabs used in the testing of COVID-19, according to DME President Peter Smith via a press release. Production hours at the Greenville plant, as well as at a DME-owned mold base manufacturing plant in Windsor, Ontario, have been expanded to keep up with demand.

Bruce Fisher works as a CNC operator at Greenville’s DME, a global plastic injection molding supplier. — Submitted photo

“We build the mold base and then another supplier for mold makers will supply the actual mold for the ventilators itself,” Garvey told the Daily News. “So we supply the blank mold base. We supply the entire mold making industry with blank mold bases and quick change systems.”

DME produced some mold bases for medical supplies in a limited fashion before the pandemic but mostly focused on a variety of other products.

“Anything plastic that gets injection molded, we could be the supplier,” Garvey said. “Now we’ve ramped up three times in our standard product in the last couple months going to COVID-related situations, whether it be ventilators or face masks or even bedpans. We’re up three times in our standard product line going out the door. Overall we’re very proud to be part of that.”

Garvey said it’s now common for the Greenville shop to receive an online order at night, for employees to pick and pull the parts in the morning and buyers will be waiting on the dock well in advance. What took four to six weeks to produce before is now being created and sent out in a week and a half.

“It was already starting to ramp up in February,” Garvey said. “Ever since March it’s been, you can’t get it pulled fast enough for people to get here and grab it. We’ve actually had some buyers show up from Ohio so they don’t get the transit lag.”

The Greenville shop is doing all this work despite a limited crew. Typically fully staffed with about 71 employees, Garvey said a number of employees are not working now due to either illness or fears about COVID-19. The company is now running on two shifts instead of three.

“With the high demand, it’s a little more hectic,” said Paul Shemanski, a first shift foreman for the Greenville shop. “Everybody here is busting their ass — even more so because we’re losing people on daily basis due to the fear. It’s a lot of pressure.

Robert Eldridge works as a finish grinder filling in for a Duplex mill operator at Greenville’s DME, a global plastic injection molding supplier. — Submitted photo

“Everybody’s proud to do it,” he added. “It gives you a sense of pride, something to be proud of to be able to have an end result in something like this. We do the best we can right now under the circumstances and trying to be here for our employees.”

Via a press release, Smith said there are 12 manufacturers of ventilators in North America, so when the virus arrived, DME officials began reaching out through the supply chain to better understand who was supplying those 12 and what they could do to help. Smith said through conversations a solution was discovered to help build the needed molds and also provide a strategy for North American mold builders to be cost-competitive with overseas tooling.

A newly expanded, simplified and standard MUD (Master Unit Die) Quick-Change mold base system was introduced — an integrated supply chain solution that allows original equipment manufacturers to work on faster delivery times, reduced supply chain economics and lower upfront tooling investment as a way of bringing North American production into play.

“Our three deliverables to compete with overseas tooling are redesign, so tooling costs are lower than China, deliver faster and provide more productivity through the processing phase. This works for the majority of mold sizes used in North America,” Smith summarized of DME’s approach to help build North American mold manufacturing. “DME saw a 400-percent boost in demand for its next-day delivery mold base and MUD Quick Change Systems that went out in two weeks.”

The Greenville shop was previously known as Milacron which purchased DME. More recently, Hillenbrand purchased Milacron. Hillenbrand has Michigan headquarters in Madison Heights and main headquarters in Ohio. Visit www.dme.net for more information.

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