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A Look Back at the History of Team 1 Plastics

As part of the year-long celebration of its 30th anniversary, Team 1 Plastics, a plastic injection molding company for the automotive industry, is highlighting different milestones in its history through a series of articles. This month’s article features a pivotal decision that Team 1 Plastics made which greatly impacted the company.

As a business, when do you cut your losses? When do you stop throwing good money after bad? When do you say, “Enough is enough”? That was the dilemma that Team 1 Plastics, a plastic injection molding company for the automotive industry, faced in the early 1990s.

Dave Seedorf, Engineering Manager for Team 1 Plastics, recalled the situation. He said that there were two parts that Team 1 was making for II Stanley’s ELP (Electronics) division. One was Part #412 which was a bright, brown-colored cover that needed to be polished and very shiny because it would visible to the consumer. The other was Part #414 — a core skirt part.

Part #412 – the cover – looked like a very simple “shoot and ship” part, Seedorf said, “But we struggled and struggled with this part for years.” Team 1 experienced “problems with flow marks that went through the parts and created some ugly voids on the surfaces. We were constantly sorting the parts. Every time we ran it and shipped parts, we would get rejected and would have to send people over [to II Stanley’s facility in Battle Creek, Michigan] to sort parts. It was terrible!”

And, Team 1 struggled to find the root cause of the problem. Seedorf said that the defects were not specific to any of the cavities of the four-cavity mold (i.e. four parts could be produced at the same time in one mold). “It would happen randomly across several of them.” He recalled that they were constantly trying to troubleshoot the problem. “We checked the water flow. We checked the machine size, and all kinds of stuff. We had material suppliers involved thinking that maybe it was a material problem.” No solution was evident, and the problems continued.

Similarly, on Part #414 – the core skirt – Seedorf said, “We had problems with the parts sticking in the mold and breaking legs. Every shipment … every production run, we had parts breaking.” He said that the “part looked so simple and so basic, but it was very difficult to make.” Seedorf said that the mold was constantly in the Maintenance Department, being polished or soaked down with mold release, trying to get the parts out.

Seedorf said that everyone was “frustrated and extremely distraught over both of these jobs.” These two parts were the only work that Team 1 Plastics had at the time from the ELP division of II Stanley. The company had not quoted any jobs nor won any work from this customer in years. “We were spending so much money. We were producing bad product. We were sorting parts. We were having trouble meeting orders.” They began to think that maybe it was time for Team 1 to cut its losses and tell the customer that it wouldn’t produce these two parts any longer.

Seedorf said that he remembered being involved in several conversations about sending II Stanley, as he described it, a “Dear John” letter, saying that “Team 1 Plastics can’t do this anymore. We were very close to sending them that letter. I think we were probably days away from making that decision.”

But, what would be the consequences for Team 1 Plastics if they sent that “Dear John” letter? Seedorf said, “I remember specifically talking with Craig [Carrel], and saying that if we tell them that we can’t do this anymore, then we’re probably not going to be able to produce any parts for them. They’re not going to come to us for a quote or for a new tool or for anything.”

He remembered Craig’s response, “What can we do? Maybe we’re not looking at this right? Can we take a look and try to find out what we can do better or differently and try to get good parts off of it?” And that’s what Team 1 Plastics did.

Seedorf said that for Part #412 – the cover – the company started looking at how the parts were gated (i.e. how the four parts produced at one time would be separated from each other). Two of the parts were gated on one side while the other two parts were gated on a different side. “It was really kind of a gut feeling or hunch, I guess, that maybe the gate changing was creating the impact. We started discussing that. How could we do that differently?” They decided to adjust the design to make the four parts all gated to the same method. Then, they sent the tool to a tool maker. And, when they sampled the part, “It was favorable!” They had solved the problem, and Team 1 Plastics successfully ran Part #412 until it went out of production.

For Part #414 – the core skirt – Seedorf said that the decision was made to build a new tool which would allow for an “A-side ejection to help push the part out during mold open to the B-side of the mold. We developed it and sampled it, and immediately, the job ran much better. Ultimately, we were able to run the parts for the remainder of the program without defects.”

Soon after the two parts went out of production, Team 1 Plastics began quoting and winning many jobs from II Stanley’s ELP division. Seedorf said the value of these projects was in the millions of dollars. And, the projects were not just to produce parts – they involved all of the services that Team 1 Plastics offers. Seedorf said, “We built the tooling, molded the parts, and assembled them.”

He believes that because the customer had witnessed the determination that Team 1 Plastics had shown in resolving the problems with Parts #412 and #414, and had finished the programs out successfully, that positively impacted their future decision-making. “We had really strong relationships with all of the people at Stanley, and they knew they could rely on Team 1 Plastics to use that same determination with these new jobs. And,” Seedorf added, “I think that they needed the help because these programs were so huge, and they didn’t have a lot of resources.”

In reflection, the decision to try one more time to solve the issues with Parts #412 and #414 has been described by Team 1 Plastics’ co-owners, Carrel and Gary Grigowski as a “pivotal decision” in the company’s history because it ultimately resulted in millions of dollars in new business. As Seedorf said, “Wow, we’re glad we didn’t make that decision!”