As medical device manufacturers continue to diversify their supply base to protect against supply chain challenges, New Berlin Plastics has expanded its reach into the medical device industry. To accommodate these medical manufacturers’ needs, NBP is now ISO 13485 certified, meeting international quality standards for medical device companies. While NBP continues to diversify its customer portfolio to include the medical device market, the company is still committed to supporting the customers and markets it already serves. “Our growth plan is to continue expanding into a variety of industries ..read more

Now that we’re one month into 2024, many industry experts, economists, and strongly opinionated people are sharing their thoughts regarding what lies ahead throughout the year. We thought we would share our own thoughts based on what we’re seeing in our market space as well as macroeconomically. Labor The labor market continues to perform strongly. Overall civilian unemployment across the country is near 20-year lows at 3.7%. The number of unemployed persons per job opening is 0.7, which is the lowest since this metric began being tracked. Both these statistics are from the Bureau of Labor Sta ..read more

Manufacturers have seen a lot of upward pressure on costs including labor, materials, and freight. To further mitigate non-value-added labor cost from impacting part price, New Berlin Plastics has deployed a new UR20 collaborative robot (cobot) from Universal Robots. Focused on automating tasks for higher tonnage presses, the UR20 adds new capabilities to the automation fleet. The arm reaches 68.9 inches (1750 mm), which is one of the longest reaches of any robot on the market today that can handle a comparable payload. New Berlin Plastics is one of the first injection molders in the U.S. to h ..read more

New Berlin Plastics has always excelled at high-quality plastic molded parts, but new changes to the Quality Department are even increasing on-time delivery of Product and Process Validations (PPAPs) from 96% to 99%. To meet the needs of our growing workload, we’ve enhanced our Quality Department to ensure dedicated support for both our external and internal teams. Instead of having each Quality Engineer manage activities for both the product launch and production stages, we’ve added a third experienced Quality Engineer and divided the roles so each person can focus all their efforts on their ..read more

Motorcycles give riders a sense of freedom and power, as well as the satisfaction that they look cool while cruising down the highway. But as bike OEMs continue to engineer new models with advanced performance and eye-catching appearance, there’s another priority impacting their design decisions today – environmental sustainability. One iconic motorcycle manufacturer in the Midwest has partnered with NBP to develop sustainably-sourced electric bike parts made from an unexpected material – nylon fishing nets.  Parts made from ocean plastics are an increasingly popular request from OEMs tha ..read more

Here at New Berlin Plastics, we’re obsessed with driving variability out of our processes. It helps us improve part quality as well as reduce scrap, downtime, and labor costs while streamlining our operations. That’s why we’re starting to experiment with artificial intelligence (AI) in two areas. Here’s a closer look at the benefits we’re seeing from adopting this cutting-edge technology. Training vision systems When certain parts come out of a press, they must be inspected to verify dimensional accuracy and determine whether an insert is present. One inspection method is touch sensors. After ..read more

No plastic pellet, flake, or powder left behind. That’s the goal of Operation Clean Sweep. One of New Berlin Plastics’ resin distributors, M. Holland, is totally committed to it and encourages members of its supply chain to do the same. Operation Clean Sweep (OCS) was launched in 1991 to help every plastic resin handling operation achieve zero plastic resin loss. In the U.S., the Plastics Industry Association and the American Chemistry Council have been encouraging companies that manufacture, distribute, and use plastic materials to sign the OCS pledge and follow its guidelines. If pellet ..read more

The past three years were challenging for many businesses, including New Berlin Plastics: a global pandemic, a major winter storm that knocked resin producers offline, followed by an unprecedented spike in demand as the U.S. economy came roaring back from the pandemic. Now that its supply chain has begun to stabilize and these “black swan” events are more in the rearview mirror, the New Berlin Plastics team is taking steps to ensure that no matter what happens next, the company will be resilient and adaptable. “We’re working hard to identify and control everything that we can control and mitig ..read more

Numerous industries including healthcare, electronics, industrial, and automotive have relied on metal for many years to produce the parts and components that go into their finished products. While that is still true, many manufacturers are turning to thermoplastic resins as their continued evolution makes them practical for many metal to plastic conversion opportunities. Why are a growing number of OEMs and product designers converting metal parts to plastic? Here’s a helpful overview: Enhanced design freedom and production benefits Part functionality: Due to its low melting point and high mo ..read more

As part of its commitment to expand into medical molding, New Berlin Plastics recently had a preliminary ISO 13485 audit done by the Wisconsin Manufacturing Extension Partnership (WMEP), a not-for-profit organization that provides consulting services to local manufacturers. WMEP performs ISO 9001 and ISO 13485 gap assessments for organizations in support of implementation and annual internal audit plans. It also advises manufacturers on the steps they need to take to achieve these certifications. ISO 13485 is a standard defining requirements for processes, documentation, and recordkeeping that ..read more