Thermoforming Workshops at Penn College: June 2014

Next month, CMT Materials will be participating in the annual National Hands-On Thermoforming Workshops at Penn College in Williamsport, PA. As a supporter of the program and of thermoforming industry, we are pleased to present new developments in syntactic foam plug assist materials for both heavy gauge and thin gauge thermoforming.

You can read our reports from last year’s events here (heavy gauge) and here (thin gauge).

Penn College is at the vanguard of addressing the skills gap in the plastics industry workforce today. Here is brief excerpt from remarks by the director of the Plastics Innovation & Research Center (PIRC), Hank White:

We see significant opportunities for expansion of workforce development programs among plastics product manufacturers. An expanded use of outsourcing to contract manufacturers, due to higher employee cost factors, may create a market for the PIRC training products. The industry also shows signs of growth in terms of new materials, innovative processing, and higher conversion volumes. A re-shoring movement is in place bringing production previously outsourced offshore back to the US. These movements, along with retiring skilled workers from the “baby boomer” generation, continue to create a need for workforce training products currently offered by the PIRC.

In our previous newsletters, we promoted an employee certification program called Global Standards for Plastics Certification (GSPC) that is now being offered by the PIRC. I want to emphasize the merits of this program in reference to productivity of workers in the plastics processing industry. This program began as an apprenticeship program in the United Kingdom and has become the only internationally recognized program designed to ensure that plastics industry employees have a consistent body of knowledge and skills related to plastics processing and production. I believe that this powerful program may be the answer to the existing workforce skills gap in the plastics industry. Incorporating GSPC into operations at your facility starts with contacting our office. 

We look forward to seeing customers and partners at Penn College in the next few weeks.