ROYAL PLASTICS TOUR

Royal Plastics is a manufacturer of plastic injection molded parts for the automotive, furniture, refrigerator, and vacuum cleaner industries to name a few. We toured one of their two plants, and were given a good idea of their manufacturing processes.

Royal Plastic's philosophy is to keep things simple. This could be seen in the way that their factory was set up. They had set up bays of approximately eight injection mold machines. Each bay was run by it's own operators, and every bay had a break room, bathrooms, stock area, and a finished goods area. In a sense, each bay was it's own manufacturing facility. Some of the problems that this eliminated was dealing with production problems. If a defective part was produced, it could be narrowed down to the exact group of machines that had produced it, and the operators in that bay were solely responsible.

The manufacturing facility itself was extremely clean. This was very good to see, and I'm sure it helped to increase the moral of the factory employees. The injection molding machines were rather impressive. Each machine was equipped with it's own robot which removed the sprue and runner after a part had been produced, and it deposited the waste into a hopper. The sprue and runner was then reground, and reused to produce parts.

One bay in the facility which we toured was assembly. Here we seen a sonic welder which was producing coin holders which are supplied to General Motors. In the assembly bay we also seen a hot stamping operation, and a painting operation. I was struck by the levels of quality which have to be met in the plastics industry. The slightest imperfection in the surface quality of any part was reason for disposal. Overall, it looked like Royal is well established in what they are doing, and can hardly expand fast enough to keep up with the incoming business.