Minnesota Rubber and Plastics to Build Innovation Center

Minnesota Rubber and Plastics (MRP; Plymouth, Minn.) is building a new 9000-ft² innovation center adjacent to the company’s corporate headquarters in Plymouth, Minn. Architectural plans have been approved and construction is expected to be completed in the spring of 2022. Karthik Viswanathan, MRP global business leader, told Plastics Technology that the move was researched and customer driven.

“We talked to customers and suppliers and really determined what they value in terms of product development, and what do they value in terms of a strategic supplier,” Viswanathan said, noting that speeding time-to-market for new devices, treatments and therapy systems is of key interest. “Our customers said they wanted a partner that would be able to rapidly develop different solutions for them—this was the inspiration behind developing innovation center.”

Viswanathan said the center will consolidate some capabilities MRP already had and add some new ones. The center will feature material science, with MRP able to develop a variety of materials in house, including elastomers, black rubber, gum silicone, LSR, and high-performance thermoplastics, among others. The center will also feature design and simulation software, including FEA, Solidworks and Moldflow. It will feature multiple injection molding machines and presses in a variety of styles including vertical, horizontal, LSR, and transfer molding. The center will also feature process science for the development of stable molding processes and tooling capabilities.

Viswanathan uses an archer’s target as an analogy for the innovation center, where the bullseye is collaboration, the next ring is speed, and the outermost circle represents capabilities. “We want to be a partner; we want to engender trust; we want customers to come to us and we solve their problems,” Viswanathan said.

As in so many other areas, Viswanathan noted that the pandemic’s impact is seen here, pushing the medical market to move faster. “I think covid had a big role,” Viswanathan explained, particularly in diagnostics and treatment related applications.  “When Covid ramped up so quickly, you started seeing applications for diagnosing and treatments coming up a lot more quickly then they used to. As these devices become more complex, and solve more complex diseases, we also see the footprint of the devices getting a lot smaller, and we see a lot of this happening and at a faster rate.”