Developing products to meet customers' changing needs is what the plastics industry is all about.
And doing that has changed the focus of GE Plastics - Mount Vernon over the last four years and has spurred new growth at the 45-year-old facility.
"To continue to stay ahead of the innovation curve" is what Mike Walsh, general manager of GE Plastics Mount Vernon, says is one of the biggest challenges facing the plastics industry today. "You can't rest because everybody else out there is trying to do the same thing," Walsh said.
Today the plant is focusing energies on Ultem, a heat-resistant plastic which has undergone double-digit sales growth in recent years, and on new uses for Lexan, the original GE Plastics product for which the 1,200-acre Mount Vernon plant was founded 45 years ago.
Although the Mount Vernon plant today is one of 31 in the GE Plastics global system, it was the first, in many ways is the largest and remains the chief developer of new products for the company.
GE Plastics-Mount Vernon was founded in 1960 - the first of the GE's plastic-making plants. Lexan, a plastic discovered by chemist Daniel Fox in a laboratory in Pittsfield, Mass., was its first product. GE Plastics has since grown to become a major division of GE, and the Mount Vernon plant remains the largest plant and the key innovator in the division.
The Mount Vernon plant today employs about 1,450. In addition to Lexan and Ultem, the plant has divisions that make Chrystalline, a plastic of multiple uses, and specialty films and sheets.
The shift in focus for GE Plastics began four years ago when the industry, highly sensitive to economic slowdowns, was in a downturn, Walsh said. There was excessive capacity in the plastics industry, which forced GE and its rivals to drastically drop their prices to compete with one another.
GE Plastics leadership at that time realized it could command greater margins on proprietary specialty products, so GE Plastics-Mount Vernon shifted its focus to these. That shift is paying off for the plant.
One of the products that has spurred the plant's growth is Ultem - the fastest growing plastic in the Mount Vernon plant's lineup, according to Brian Herington, general manager of the High Performance Polymers (HPP) division, which oversees the division that makes Ultem. The product has many established uses in the automotive, health care, electrical, telecommunications and high-performance film industries, Herington said. But new uses are being developed all the time.
Recently, the company introduced an Ultem product that holds hard disk drives together and makes them operate - a plastic that is used in the popular Apple iPods, Herington said.
Two new products being developed with Ultem resins are a flame-resistant plastic that will be used in the interior of airplanes for Airbus and Boeing and a plastic that is used on surgical equipment that resists chemicals and heat and is easily cleaned.
Why this demand for Ultem? "Everybody wants smaller electronics. To do that you need high heat performance, high strength... products," Herington said.
To keep up with the demand, the Mount Vernon plant is undergoing a $30-million expansion that will increase its Ultem manufacturing capacity by 10 percent. GE Plastics is also building a facility in Spain that is expected to open in 2007. It will be the only facility in the world, other than the Mount Vernon plant, that makes this increasingly popular plastic.
"We see this growth and demand (for Ultem) continuing as far as we can see," said Herington. "The market is in the Genesis stage."
If Ultem is the fastest colt in the GE Plastics stable these days, Lexan, the reliable old workhorse, isn't far behind.
Lexan, long GE Plastics' top selling product, is a hard, extremely durable, chemically resistant plastic that comes in many colors and has many uses. It is used in automobile dashboards, prison windows, pleasure boats and compact discs.
Its success has attracted many competitors. To stay ahead of the competition, Walsh said, the Mount Vernon plant continues to develop "co-polymers," or new strains of Lexan with different properties.
For example, the company is developing kinds of Lexan that better withstand weathering, that withstand a wider range of temperatures and that resist scratching, such as may occur on an often used cellular telephone, Walsh said.
The Mount Vernon plant remains the innovative heart of the GE Plastics company. That's because it was the first GE Plastics plant and much of the technical experience has always been there. Most of the company's new plastics are developed at Mount Vernon. Many of these new products were then assigned to other facilities for continued production.
Because it is an innovation center, attracting and retaining top talent is important, Walsh said. The Mount Vernon plant draws talent from many nearby universities, and its employees maintain contact learning institutions, helping to make sure the facility's pool of talent remains deep.
The plant's reputation as a technical innovator also helps it continue to attract top people, Walsh said.
The plant will continue to meet other challenges. The "number one focus" for the plant's leadership will be to keep the plant operating safely, to keep improving on its environmental record and to get a good corporate citizen, Walsh said.