Plastics in Medical Devices

Brian McGary Named to Top IT Role at Mack

February 7, 2017 by Larry Hovish Leave a Comment

STATESVILLE, N.C. (Feb. 7, 2017) – Mack Molding, a leading custom plastics molder and supplier of contract manufacturing services, announced today Brian McGary, a seasoned information technology professional with more than 15 years of experience, has been appointed director of information technology, reporting to President Jeff Somple.

“Located in our Statesville, N.C., location, this new position represents an exciting opportunity to further tie the Mack North and South teams together in our mission to achieve Total Customer Satisfaction,” Somple said. “From systems administration to managing IT security and operations, as well as implementing significant infrastructure projects, Brian has broad expertise in building dynamic enterprise solutions. In a competitive marketplace, he will play a key role in our continued success by bringing scalability, agility and efficiency to our business systems.”

Prior to joining Mack, McGary most recently was service delivery manager at Acrowire in Charlotte, N.C., where he played a key role in Microsoft SharePoint and custom application development solutions. He previously served in positions of increasing responsibility at Muzak and Polypore International. Brian has an associate’s degree in liberal arts with an emphasis on business administration and computer technology from Rowan Cabarrus Community College in Salisbury, N.C., as well as a bachelor’s degree in management information systems from Queens University in Charlotte, N.C.

McGary will be responsible for implementing cutting edge solutions to advance the Company’s short- and long-term technology plans with a focus on increasing competitiveness, compliance and security. He will work closely with all levels of the organization, ensuring the proper technology is in place to support mission critical business operations.

About Mack Molding
Mack Molding is a leading custom plastics molder and supplier of contract manufacturing services. Mack specializes in plastics design, prototyping, molding, sheet metal fabrication, full-service machining and medical device manufacturing. Founded in 1920, Mack is a privately owned business that operates 11 facilities throughout the world. Don Kendall is CEO and chairman. For more information, go to www.mack.com.

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Contact: Larry Hovish
(802) 375-0772
larry.hovish@mack.com

Mack’s Focus on Workforce Development Pays Off

February 7, 2017 by Larry Hovish Leave a Comment

Six Former Interns Begin Careers with Company

ARLINGTON, Vt. (Feb. 7, 2017) – It is February, which means Vermont’s skiers are hitting the slopes and college students are hitting Mack Molding with resumes in hopes of landing a summer placement – and possibly a career. In fact, during the last year Mack has welcomed a record number of interns back as full-time employees at its Headquarters after graduation.

In all, six former interns have returned through Mack’s doors, bringing with them an intimate knowledge of Mack’s operations coupled with fresh ideas and the promise of a strong future in manufacturing. The recent hires include Manufacturing Engineer Kelsey O’Dell; Quality Engineers Aaron LeBeau, Peter Bush and Brendan Gleason; Program Coordinator Britney Coley; and Finishing Technician Matthew Comar.

From left, Brendan Gleason, Kelsey O’Dell, Peter Bush, Aaron LeBeau, Matthew Comar and Britney Coley are all former Mack interns who have returned to the Company in full-time positions.

“Welcoming these young professionals back to Mack has been a great pleasure, not only due to what they bring to the organization but the fact they represent the measurable impact of our workforce cultivation efforts,” said Mack Molding President Jeff Somple. “As a manufacturer, and a New England one at that, we are keenly aware of the challenges associated with recruiting for skilled and professional positions. This is why we have invested in opportunities to influence the next generation of engineers and technicians.”

While Mack has hosted interns for many years, the program was redefined in 2011 as the Company sought to build a more sustainable workforce by showing students how rewarding a career in manufacturing – and a life in Vermont – can be. Since then it has become the pinnacle of its workforce cultivation efforts.

Each intern is assigned specific projects that allow them to return to school with a tangible experience they completed from start to finish and can show to prospective employers. During the summer they also participate in a series of “Lunch ’n Learns” where senior staff members and seasoned employees present on various aspects of the business, conduct tours of Company facilities and help develop presentation and interviewing skills. By the end of the summer the students turn the tables, conducting their own “Lunch ’n Learns” as they present the results of their project to their peers and Mack’s senior management.

Meet the Recruits
Peter Bush returns to Mack as a quality engineer after graduating from the University of Vermont with a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering. Previously a sales and engineering intern at Mack, he has experience in planning, preparing and organizing resources for class 3 medical device product development studies and facilitating related communication between manufacturing, quality and management.

Britney Coley has been named a program coordinator in the Company’s medical device sector. The St. Lawrence University graduate has a bachelor of science degree in biology and psychology. In her role, Coley maintains program schedules and records, facilitates document control tasks and interface with customers as part of a multi-disciplinary team from across the organization focused on launching new products and improving performance.

Matthew Comar, who studied advanced manufacturing at Hudson Valley Community College, joins Mack as a finishing technician. Comar brings experience in SolidWorks and Mastercam software, as well as knowledge of CNC mills, lathes and manual machine tools. As a finishing technician, he will perform set-ups of various processes, including pad printing, milling and sonic welding, as well as maximize efficiency and quality of production.

Having received his bachelor of science degree in science and technology studies from Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., Brendan Gleason joins Mack as a quality engineer. Gleason developed a deep understanding of Mack’s medical device manufacturing business as a quality technician intern, collaborating with manufacturing, quality and management to satisfy customer needs for over 300 unique medical parts.

University of Vermont graduate Aaron LeBeau, who has been appointed as a quality engineer, earned a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering. In addition to previously serving as an intern on Mack’s quality engineering team, LeBeau spent a summer working in production. He previously gained experience as an electrical technician intern at Abacus Automation in Bennington, Vt., and brings experience in computer-aided design, quality management and data analysis software to Mack.

Kelsey O’Dell joins Mack as a manufacturing engineer in the Company’s medical business. She received her bachelor of science degree in biomedical engineering from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, N.Y. In addition to previous Mack experience, O’Dell honed her engineering skills as an undergraduate research assistant at RPI’s Lighting Enabled Systems and Applications Engineering Research Center.

Multiple Approaches
The internship program is only one piece of Mack’s strategy, which includes engaging students of all ages. In addition to sending engineers and other team members into the classroom, Mack has welcomed students as young as kindergarten for visits, as well as local high school juniors and seniors for an inside look at life at Mack during its Made in Vermont Days.

Machining Center Manager David Hoffman, back, left, gives students a tour during the Mack’s Made in Vermont Days.

From Oct. 24-28, 2016, Mack hosted this biennial event – designed to reach students looking to go to a four year school, as well as certification and technical programs, and those who may wish to enter the workforce directly. In all, nearly 50 students, educators and parents participated, including home school students and their peers from Arlington Memorial High School, Southwest Vermont Career Development Center, Long Trail and Burr & Burton Academy.

Students toured the Headquarters, building their understanding of Mack’s vertical integration of services. Following the tour students participated in a workshop introducing manufacturing flow theory before learning about careers, hearing business insights and having a Q&A with key staff members. They also were given the opportunity to sign-up for more in-depth workshops on injection molding, machining, sheet metal fabrication, manufacturing and engineering to be held at a later date.

Mack is able to leverage the power and name recognition of Manufacturing Day and Manufacturing Month by having the event in October, creating additional pull through while increasing access to supportive resources. Additionally, Mack benefited from its relationship with the Vermont Manufacturing Extension Center (VMEC). The non-profit trained some of the Company’s employees to conduct the manufacturing flow workshop featured during the event, giving students context to what they had seen on the manufacturing floor.

“We are proud to have hosted around 100 interns to date and influenced countless more students,” Somple said, “We always hope to send them back to school with some executional knowledge and a better understanding of the opportunities available to them, and our hopes are now realized as we welcome our newest recruits home.”

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Contact: Larry Hovish
(802) 375-0772
larry.hovish@mack.com

Mack Training Program Builds Skills Needed for Future Growth

February 7, 2017 by Larry Hovish 1 Comment

ARLINGTON, Vt. (Feb. 7, 2017) – Mack Molding, a leading custom plastics molder and supplier of contract manufacturing services, utilizes several tools, including workforce cultivation, prudent fiscal planning and vertically-integrated services, to position itself for future success. Today the Company announces the addition of a core competency program to its toolbox, ensuring employees are prepared to meet customers’ increasingly sophisticated needs.

Mack’s first graduates from the Company’s core competency training program, dubbed Mack U: Jim Cook, Tyler Willette, Lucas Cross, Nelson Nieves, Amanda Adams, Sarah Warren and John Morin.

Dubbed Mack U, the program recently graduated its first seven students from the initial curriculum, Electro-Mechanical Operator I. In all, the graduates completed 14 courses and 21 hours of classroom time and hands-on training. To receive certification, successful trainees must demonstrate their proficiency through tests, on which they must score a 90 or better.

“We believe employees are the Company’s most valuable assets,” said Headquarters Plant Manager Rich Hornby. “We developed Mack U because our work is getting more complex, making the quality of our output more important than ever. We carefully looked at what we are doing and where we are going, and this program gives our team the tools needed to meet the demands of our customers, as well as a pathway for advancement.”

According to Hornby, the initial program was foundational, helping to improve safety awareness and explain the reasoning behind Mack systems. They tapped into the talents of 12 veteran Mack employees who channeled their expertise to become subject experts and develop courses on topics like customer communication, electrostatic discharge and wiring assemblies.

While there are seven employees in the first graduating class, a significant number continue working toward certification. Moving forward, the trainees will take on Electro-Mechanical Operator Levels II and III in which they will be introduced to advanced topics such as drawing and wire schematics, pneumatic connections and plumbing, soldering and the integration of firmware, software and hardware. Additionally, Mack will be rolling out a molding program.

Mack Finishing Operator Sarah Warren has used what she learned in the 5S class both at work and in her personal life.

If an improved customer experience and being better prepared to deal with marketplace changes was not enough, the trainees also are benefitting personally. Finishing Operator Sarah Warren used what she learned in the 5S class to alter the way she sets up her tool box, taking her organization skills to the next level.

“It’s made everything easier to find, and I am working more efficiently,” Sarah said. “This is my first job, so this is totally new to me. I am even using what I learned at home, just yesterday I was talking to my dad about the state of his toolbox!”

Since taking the classes, Sarah’s classmates have used their newly gained knowledge to make recommendations on calibration and raise important questions about materials, enhancing their value to Mack and its customers.

“As a ninety-six year old company we have a lot of knowledge and an intimate relationship with manufacturing, but organizing like this is truly a first for us,” Hornby said. “By establishing foundational skills, and then building on them, we are creating a team that will be unsurpassed in skill and quality of work – ensuring Mack continues to serve as the manufacturing arm for current, and new, customers, well into our next century as an organization.”

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Contact: Larry Hovish
(802) 375-0772
larry.hovish@mack.com

Navigating Resin Selection with Mack

January 31, 2017 by Larry Hovish Leave a Comment

By Scott Rishell, Design Engineer, Mack Molding

As a leading custom plastics molder and contract manufacturer serving a range of markets – medical, industrial, transportation, energy/environment, computer/business and consumer – Mack’s customers are varied and so are their needs. To meet the diverse requirements presented by costumer programs, Mack has vertically integrated services, including design, prototyping, supply chain management, machining, sheet metal fabrication, molding, painting, assembly, testing and even fulfillment. One area where we often find the most distinctiveness is in resin selection.

Mack has a wide portfolio of molded parts, and each is unique based on the customers’ requirements. Beyond aesthetics, like color, a material’s properties, processability and cost all play a key role in determining a resin’s suitability for an application. With thousands of grades to choose from, and new ones being developed to fill market niches, customers often turn to Mack to help them navigate the resin selection process.

Here are some of the key considerations the Mack team makes when making a selection:

Mechanical Requirements
A part’s strength requirements need to be considered as resin classes have various tensile strength, tensile modulus and elongation at break. Thermoplastic resins offer a variety of strength properties that can often be modified with fillers like glass or carbon fiber.

Chemical Compatibility
Many customers are concerned about how chemicals, including cleaning solvents and process reagents, interact with their resin selection. In these cases we consult published testing data from resin manufacturers that show a material’s performance in each chemical. In some cases the data may not exist and testing with specific chemicals will be requested.

Environmental Compatibility
Parts that will be exposed to extreme hot or cold conditions need to be made with resins that are rated accordingly, making the long term service temperature and heat deflection temperature critical performance metrics. Other conditions to consider include exposure to UV light and high humidity.

Commodity vs. Performance
Whenever possible Mack strives to pair customer applications with commodity resin grades due to the inherent cost and availability advantages that come with higher volume raw material production. Some projects call for specific properties – strength, heat resistance, etc. – which is where performance resins excel.

Amorphous vs. Semi-crystalline
Selecting amorphous resins can often be advantageous as they can provide wider processing windows and improved dimensional control due to their random molecular structure. They can be transparent and are compatible with many adhesives. Semi-crystalline materials offer improved mechanical and thermal properties but can be more difficult to process.

Material Shrinkage
The amount a resin shrinks during the molding process can have a huge impact on the ease of building a tool or developing a successful molding process. For this reason we try to select resins that have lower shrink rates whenever possible.

Once all of these factors are accounted for the list of suitable resins is typically cut down to a manageable number to consider. It is here that the Mack team leverages its proficiency with particular materials, coupled with expertise in supply chain management, to make the final determination of a grade.

If you have a part you are ready to put into production, would like to learn more about resin selection or are interested in any of Mack’s vertically integrated services, please visit us at www.mack.com or e-mail our team salesnorth@mack.com.

Scott Rishell is the technical lead on several programs at Mack, developing part designs for production processes. He works with customers to diagnose and implement solutions for design for manufacturability (DFM) issues, as well as reduce manufacturing costs through part simplification and process improvements. He has established an intimate knowledge of design, material selection, tooling and specialty processes for injection molding, including structural foam, and internal and external gas assist. Prior to his current role, Scott was a program manager in the Mack’s medical business, where he gained unique customer experience insights. He has a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering from the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Go West with Mack for MD&M

January 18, 2017 by Larry Hovish Leave a Comment

It’s January, so as sure as the mountains of Vermont are capped with snow, the Mack team is hard at work with final preparations for Medical Design & Manufacturing (MD&M) West.

The world’s largest annual medtech event returns to Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, Calif., Feb. 7-9, 2017, with more than 20,000 industry professionals coming together for three days of sourcing, networking and education. Mack will have a significant presence with a prominent location – Booth No. 1801 – where the Company’s senior management and sales teams will introduce attendees to our capabilities as a full-service contract manufacturer with specialties in plastics design, prototyping, molding, sheet metal fabrication, machining and turnkey system assembly.

Whether you are interested in Mack Medical, Mack Molding, Mack Technologies, Mack Prototype or Synectic Engineering, our vertically integrated services have been organized to benefit your business throughout the product life cycle. The most important piece of the puzzle, however, is you! That is why we are extending an invitation to our friends, old and new, to take advantage of free expo admission – a $95 value! Use our promo code “INVITE” when registering to claim a complimentary Expo Pass. Additionally, you can use it to get 20% of a full conference pass if you are looking to take advantage of the education tracks.

For more than 30 years, MD&M West has been connecting industry-leading suppliers with the latest products and technology, helping bring products from concept to market. In addition to unparalleled networking opportunities and educational content, MD&M West is collocated with synergistic events like Plastec West, Design & Manufacturing Pacific, ATX West, Electronics West and WestPack, offering an unmatched interactive face-to-face environment to share ideas, challenges and solutions with like-minded peers.

If you would like to schedule a specific meeting time in our booth, please contact your business development manager, or Joan Magrath, Vice President of Sales & Engineering, at joan.magrath@mack.com or (802) 375-0312.

We look forward to seeing you at this year’s event – and remember you can find us at Booth No. 1801!

Brian McGary Named to Top IT Role at Mack

Mack’s Focus on Workforce Development Pays Off

Mack Training Program Builds Skills Needed for Future Growth

Go West with Mack for MD&M

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