Modern Plastics Worldwide - July/August 2009 - dae uptlax

AS I SEE IT
Staying alive means seeing the
opportunity in challenge
By Clare Goldsberry
One of the bright spots in the North
American plastics industry remains
Hoffer Plastics Corp. where, for 56 years,
the family-owned custom injection molding
company in South Elgin, IL has built
a business that has stood the test of time
and several recessions. Currently in its second
generation and led by CEO William
A. (Bill) Hoffer, the company continues
its pursuit of excellence for its customers,
employees and for the third generation.
MPW: How does Hoffer get past the bad
news so common in the industry today
and maintain a strong business?
Hoffer: Recently Plante & Moran made
a comment at an industry conference that
we have 7800 processors in North America,
and in the next 12-18 months, 1000
of those will be gone. With that, some
250,000 molds will move. This seems to
be substantiated by discussions we have
in an industry-benchmarking group that
meets quarterly. While the news lately
has been anything but good, we feel that
there’s a lot of opportunity for Hoffer,
with our extensive capabilities for tooling
transfers as well as managing those
programs. The question is how do we
take advantage of that opportunity?
If a lot of molds are going to be moving in the next 18 months, the big question
is where will they end up?
MPW: How has the company grown and
evolved in the past half-century?
Hoffer: We’ve been doing this for 56
years, and have developed a good reputation
in the industry. Bob Hoffer [Bill’s
father] built a company based on three
basic principles: putting money back into
the company, trying to improve the working
environment for the employees, and a
focus on taking care of customers; all this
while remaining financially stable and debt
free. We continue to satisfy long-standing
customers even given all the market changes
we’ve had over the decades. I think that
speaks strongly to the fact that we listen to
the customer and have met their needs and
developed these relationships.
As to Hoffer’s growth, we could have
probably expanded much more than we
did. I can remember spending many hours
in my dad’s office years ago talking about
what Gordon Lankton did [with Nypro],
but dad said he could never do what
Gordon did—get on a plane on Monday
morning and come back on Friday night.
Instead, he built a company based in South
Elgin on a focused-factory concept, with
individual plants within the same building.
We established good quality systems and
a great tool-room support system. Those
were essential to establish a position with
long-term customers: building tooling,
maintaining tooling, and moving up the
line to exceeding customer expectations.
For example, for several decades we’ve
molded nylon actuators for an aerosol
valve. We have a mold built in 1978 that
continues to run today. It has produced
parts, continues to meet customers’ quality
requirements in 2009, and has run in excess
of 35 million shots during its lifetime.
MPW: Hoffer implemented the “focusedfactory”
concept a couple of decades ago.
Is that model still working for the company
today?
Hoffer: The family management is committed
to the original vision from 1953, and to
see where we are today is a testament to the
foundation that was established. We have a
core of functional disciplines including great
tooling competency (24 full-time tool makers),
mold qualification, process validation,
and how we track and measure customer
satisfaction. The focused-factory concept
grew out of studies done by GE and DuPont
many years ago that showed the optimum
number of molding presses for a plant was
12. We built the first factory in 1960-61
and wanted to make a manufacturing cell
of approximately 12 presses. We continued
that process as we continued building and
expanding Hoffer Plastics, ending up with
eight cells we call plants. This has evolved as
the market has evolved.
Conceptually, instead of having one
big room with presses down each side as
far as you can see, we’ve developed these
focused manufacturing cells that specialize
in particular tonnage presses, customers
and markets, and we’ve stayed with this
concept. The original plants [plants 1, 2
and 3] have up to 300-ton presses. Larger
plants have 400-600-ton presses with high
ceilings and overhead cranes to handle the
larger molds.
William “Bill” Hoffer is the president and CEO of Hoffer Plastics Corp. (South
Elgin, IL). Hoffer Plastics was founded in 1953 by Robert and Helen Hoffer and
has been under the leadership of Bill Hoffer since 2005, when his father Robert
stepped down. Bill has been with the family business 38 years, as celebrated on
July 1, 2009, and has played many signifi cant roles in its success.
12 JULY/AUGUST 2009 • MODERN PLASTICS WORLDWIDE mpw.plasticstoday.com