Imagine that you are a maker of snack foods. You want to extend your markets from coast to coast, but your snack bags tend to burst from changes in air pressure while they are jetting over the Rockies.
One customer of Toray Plastics (America) Inc. in North Kingstown didn’t need to resort to imagination: the bags really did burst, or at least sustained damage to their seals.
This type of need – and others somewhat less unusual – help to drive the dynamic R&D department at Toray, a maker of precision-performance polyester, polypropylene, metallized, and bio-based films used in food packaging and other industries, such as auto and flooring manufacturing.
Fortunately for the snack maker, Toray is continuously working to create new products, one of which, coyly named Over-The-Mountain, solved the problem of chips and pretzel parts peppering the interior of airplane cargo holds.
Christopher Roy, vice president and general manager, said the company aims to continuously roll out new products, with the aim of making products less than 5 years old account for a significant percentage of annual sales.
The reason? Competition, some of it from overseas. “The product life cycle goes out and out,” Roy said. “As the life cycle extends, competitors come out with similar products that will drive down prices.”
The company employs 600 people in North Kingstown and 120 in Front Royal, Va. Its films enclose snack foods, candy, dairy products and frozen entrees, and control the passage of the sun’s rays through windows. Its foams add comfort to nearly 60 percent of cars made in the United States.
In 2016, the company introduced Torayfan Over-the-Mountain polypropylene films to seal food bags at high altitudes. “This important technological breakthrough allows smaller, regional food companies to compete more effectively … throughout the United States,” a company document states.
Also in 2016, new Torayfan RS03 RipStop film improved the quality of reinforcement tapes with technology that reduces the amount of raw materials needed, thus reducing cost and weight. A third product from last year improves lids and packages for refrigerated dairy foods.
Where do ideas for new products come from? At least 50 percent of ideas come from the sales-team members, who talk to Toray customers’ product-development people. In short, customers tell Toray what they need or what problems need solutions.
“We have a very robust R&D process,” Roy said. “They are responsible to integrate their work with operations and sales.”
Apart from its emphasis on continuous innovation, Toray Plastics is a healthy company because all its management decisions are carefully considered, said Lisa Ahart, vice president of U.S. corporate human resources. “Everything we do – product development, benefits, recruitment – is carefully thought out,” she said. “There are no knee-jerk reactions. When you do that, you get the right outcomes.”
A big and continuous effort by the company involves training. “This equipment is large, fast and dangerous,” Ahart said.
The company’s injury rate is well below the industry average. According to documents supplied by Toray, its OSHA rate is 0.4, compared with an industry average of 4.9.
With help from a Real Jobs Rhode Island grant, Toray has conducted trainings of existing employees to develop mentoring and leadership capabilities. Cooperating with Workforce Partnership of Rhode Island, Toray used an On The Job grant to train unemployed people and prepare them for a career with Toray.
Using an Internship Training grant, the company offered 19 internships in 2016, almost all of them to students in Rhode Island.
Ahart said everyone in the company was delighted to be chosen for the Providence Business News Manufacturing Awards. “We have 600 employees here, and we are all very proud of what we do.” •
