NPE 2018: Highlights from the Largest Plastics Show in History

The first time I went to the NPE: The Plastics Show was in 2015. I was just starting to rebuild Matrix4 and I knew it was a great place to gather market intelligence and gauge what’s happening in the industry. I went alone. The manufacturing industry was stalled and the economy wasn’t recovering as quickly as everyone hoped. As a result, the show lacked energy. 

Fast forward three years later to NPE 2018. It was the largest plastics show in history with over 2,100 companies in attendance from 21 countries and more technology than ever before. The economy is stronger now and the manufacturing industry is growing. This year I brought our technical team with me, including our manufacturing director, Donnie Schaupp, and our process tech on 3rd shift, Kevin Buchholz. As I entered this year’s conference, I could instantly feel a different energy. It was exciting for our team to see this new level of interest in our industry as we enter a new era of manufacturing.

Matrix 4 Event Highlights

This year’s show was packed with awesome events, client meetings and meaningful industry connections as we continue to explore where we can optimize, automate and become more competitive and efficient. Notably, we were able to explore groundbreaking innovations in:

AUTOMATION

Robots

Matrix4 currently operates several robots from Yushin America so we were excited to learn more about their advanced capabilities and hear about new robotic technologies coming to manufacturing. Automation played a huge role at NPE this year.

Dryers

Matsui America has an exciting resin drying technology and were happy we got to connect with them about our recent dryer purchase. Their drying technology dries resin in a fraction of the time, using less energy.

Injection Mold Machines

Our team had a productive meeting with Absolute Haitian, discussing joint PR efforts and the two new machines we purchased in the last 6 months. Buying molding machines from Absolute Haitian at a better price point helped us make a whole new level of commitment to the Matrix4 organization and offered us the benefit of more energy efficiency and space saving layouts for higher productivity per square foot.

SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS

It was especially fun to attend the IQMS+MAPP cocktail hour as Matrix4 is currently launching IQMS and will be joining MAPP this year. We look forward to attending the MAPP benchmarking event in Indianapolis this fall.

PROGRESSIVE COMPONENTS

It was cool to see what our new COO, Sujit Sheth, was up to before he came to Matrix4. We visited the Progressive Components booth by day and rocked out to their progressive rock band party by night.

CHASE PLASTICS

We love what Kevin Chase has created with Chase Plastics. He is a hustler and has built his team on culture. We got to hang out with our Chase Plastics rep, Brad Simpson. Brad has always been so positive and supportive of Matrix4, we’re fortunate to have him on our team. Best of all we got to hear Kyle Maynard, an incredible motivational speaker, inspiring people to make and do great things.

MATERIALS

Tritan? Resin

During the show, we met with Eastman and had a follow up meeting post-show to explore their newest version of Tritan resin. This year marked the 10th year Titan materials have been disrupting the market with its IoT applications.

Lifocork

One of the biggest highlights for us was meeting our material supplier, HexPol.

Our relationship with HexPol started when we began thinking about how Matrix4 can bring products to market and how we can be more engaged in launching consumer product lines. Working with our design partner, MNML, we were looking to launch a series of products in the flower and garden segment. The idea? A terrarium made of plastic (most are made of glass) with a cork base.

Was this even possible? Does an injectable cork material even exist? 

Lucky for us, we found a supplier out of Germany - HexPol. They had developed a special manufacturing method to combine natural cork with thermoplastic raw materials. This new material, Lifocork, could be processed using typical thermoplastic processing methods such as injection moulding, extrusion or thermoforming. We bought it and sampled it.

We absolutely loved the product. It was so real. It smelled just like cork and had the same texture and feel. It added a finishing design touch to the terrarium that completely enhanced the product. We had to meet them at NPE.

When meeting with HexPol, they informed us we were the first manufacturing company in the U.S. to sample the product! We're excited to see the potential applications with this material.

TEAM BONDING

I was so happy I could share this event with our amazing technical team. We learned and accomplished a lot, and had some fun as well. We tracked our steps and each teammate walked an average of 8-9 miles/day. We rocked out to Ice Ice Baby on our beachfront drive to the convention center, because...why not? Donnie, our manufacturing director, caught a shark during our Atlantic Ocean fishing trip. We witnessed Elon Musk and SpaceX launch the first upgraded Falcon 9 rocket, known as the 'Block 5', from the Kennedy Space Center. We definitely made some solid memories on this trip!

Looking Ahead To 2021

Our team is excited about the future, continuing to be first to try new things and to #makemeaningfully as we enter the new age of manufacturing. There is no limit to what we’ll bring to NPE 2021. See you there!