A Leader in Bringing Work Back to US, American Manufacturer Says National Independence Requires These “4 Pillars” – ThomasNet News

“We believe that the independence of a nation requires four pillars,” says Michael Araten, president and CEO of The Rodon Group. “One is food security. Another is energy security. The third is, obviously, defense and border security. And the fourth is the ability to manufacture the things you need yourself in order to be an independent nation.”

A third-generation family business celebrating its 65th anniversary this year, The Rodon Group manufactures high-volume, custom plastic injection molding solutions at its ISO 9001:2015 certified headquarters in Hatfield, Pennsylvania. As one of the largest family-owned and operated injection molders in the United States, Rodon has remained committed to American manufacturing since its founding and is proud to produce all of its products in the U.S.

“One of our most important tenets is making sure that, whenever possible, we encourage and become part of the supply chain for domestic manufacturing,” says Araten. “We make all of our products in the United States, and since the Great Recession we’ve been one of the leaders in bringing back work from overseas in general, and from China, in particular.”

Creator of the popular K’NEX® construction toy systems, Rodon was one of the only companies making toys at scale in the United States at a time when almost every other toy business had offshored their production to China. With experience collaborating with customers across virtually every sector, from construction, to healthcare to food and beverage, and more than 125 presses ready to produce upwards of one billion parts per project, Rodon is leading the way in American plastic injection molding.

Thomas Insights (TI): 83% of North American manufacturers are likely to reshore this year in light of global supply chain challenges, but Rodon has been passionate about American manufacturing since the company’s inception. How is your business stepping up to address that reshoring shift?

Michael Araten (MA): As the medical supply chain reshores and people realize that they don’t want to be reliant on distant, single source supply chains for such mission-critical things as testing kits, syringes, and swabs, we’ve been able to help by designing our own FDA-registered swabs for COVID-19 testing, to become the low-cost provider for that key component, for example. Because we were already manufacturing all of our products in the U.S., we were able to not only develop the swabs but also to build the molds required to begin production at scale within just a few weeks.

[Read more about The Rodon Group’s American-made COVID-19 testing swabs, which were recognized by U.S. medical professionals as being “even better” than other swabs they had been using to meet extraordinarily high testing demand.]

We also partnered with one of the largest global healthcare manufacturers in the world that wanted to adapt its flu test kit platform to use for COVID testing. The healthcare company asked if we could help them not only make that adaptation, but also if we could triple our production capacity to meet surging testing needs.

Over the course of literally six months, we tripled our capacity so that we could make eight unique component parts for this testing platform and produce four million test kits a day at the height of the pandemic.

TI: That’s an incredible accomplishment. Can you share any other particularly unique or challenging projects that you and the Rodon team worked on recently?

It’s a bit different from our recent healthcare work, but in the food and beverage space we helped design a filter for a single-serve coffee maker that keeps the grounds out of your cup of coffee and allows for stronger cups of coffee, which, during the pandemic especially, we all needed — and still need!

When we first partnered with that customer, we planned to make about 90-100 million parts a year. The customer also needed 100% inspection of all parts done at the press, within the work cell itself. We were able to adapt a vision system with end-of-arm tooling robotics to complete a closed-loop work cell that allows us today to make over two and a half billion of those component parts. They’re 100% inspected at the press so that all of us can have fresh coffee at home every day.

And finally, in the booming construction industry, there’s a lot of regulation around making sure that windows, doors, and other structures can survive in hurricanes. And since we’ve all seen the headlines now around increasingly prevalent and severe storms because of climate change, those have become even more important.

One of the dangers of windows in these storms is the potential for rust on the metal springs within your window; those are the components that allow the window to open when you’re trying to get natural airflow through your house. We set out to eliminate that potential for rust by developing and patenting an all-plastic spring. The new spring lowered the cost for the manufacturer, including a reduction in labor assembly costs, and made it so that you could open that spring thousands of times, and it would still have a memory to it.

That’s the kind of design expertise and engineering that we brought to something that most people don’t think about. They just want to open their windows on a nice sunny day and get air circulating throughout their house.

We strive to continually innovate with our customers in a collaborative way to make sure that they get the most efficient, precise parts at a globally competitive price.

TI: What’s the biggest question you get from prospects or customers, and how do you respond to them?

MA: I think the biggest question we get is about how we make things here in the United States. Can we do it affordably? Can we do it at scale? And can we do it with the kind of productivity that’s required to be globally competitive?

What we have demonstrated time after time is how important it is to invest in automation. We’ve invested in automation since our inception, but in a particularly serious way since the 1980s. Now we have a fully automated robotics-filled facility that allows us to literally make component parts that are cheaper than China — and actually cheaper than anywhere in the world, as even China is now increasing wages to their workers. So a lot of those savings are going away anyway.

The other recurring question we get is, “Can you help me design what I’m still trying to build?”

Over the years, we’ve invested in having our own internal design and engineering teams, as well as our own mold-making division. Through these investments, we can not only produce high-precision component parts but also make the mold themselves and we can help all of our customers and potential customers with the design of their products.

I’d say over 95% of the time we get a preliminary design from an existing customer, or a potential new customer and there are some issues regarding its manufacturing feasibility. Is there an opportunity for us to make it more efficient? Can we pick a material that gives them the design parameters they want but is better for them? This development process allows us to work collaboratively to get the precision components made in the most efficient way so that we can be part of a very effective and strong supply chain.

TI: The Rodon Group went “landfill-free” in 2007. What does that mean for your business, your customers, and the environment?

MA: While our competitors often overlook this, one of our major areas of focus is what’s commonly referred to as ESG, or environmental, social, governmental responsibility. While we’ve focused on ESG from a sustainability perspective throughout our history, we really honed in on it when we decided to go landfill-free. That means that we recycle all the water we use here. We recycle at the press all of the plastic we use so there’s no wasted plastic resin. Any other trash that we can’t recycle at the work cells is sent to a trash-to-steam facility to become clean energy.

We’re also using performance LED lights and everything is on motion detectors. We do everything we can to reduce our carbon footprint.

Any time you make something in the United States for North American customers, you’re reducing the carbon footprint by over 50%. So all of that production is driving reshoring, but it’s ultimately helping the ESG efforts of our customers as well as ourselves.

TI: While you’re well known for your high-volume production capabilities, is there another area of expertise at Rodon that others may not be as familiar with?

MA: We’re known for our production; we can produce extremely high volumes, whether it’s a million pieces a year, a billion pieces a year, or more. But what we’re not as widely known for is that we are truly problem solvers. We’re taking the design challenges, the manufacturing challenges, and the supply chain challenges of our customers and solving all of them.

For example, a window manufacturer is great at putting the panes of glass and argon gas together but may not be great at the rest of it, such as what goes around the window, as an example. The large healthcare companies are great at doing the scientific research but aren’t always great at figuring out how to manufacture the things that their research shows will be needed in actual use.

That’s truly the hidden gem at Rodon: our design ingenuity and problem-solving expertise.

Image Credit: The Rodon Group