Excellence in Manufacturing Award - National Polymer Company
A formulations lab that has become a manufacturer still gets introduced as a lab. The large customer does not need the origin story for its own sake. They need to hear that a development job can become a qualified process, and that a small company will move when the design changes.
National Polymer's video is the founder telling that path. He started the company in 2005, out of a relationship with an analytical lab, in a rented space in the old Republic Steel research center, advertising for formulation work in polymers, adhesives, and coatings. He names the companies the work ran with, including Sherwin-Williams, Lubrizol, and Geon, and he says most of the work still comes from the internet, with MAGNET as the local exception that put them on manufacturing projects. The turn is 2019. Growing was not the same as doing the coating process itself. They brought someone in, and that is the capability he says changed the company. The last two years, in his telling, are transportation and semiconductor customers whose development programs became manufacturing jobs. He says a smaller company can answer a schedule or a design change faster than a large one. ISO certification in 2020 is how they say they move development into a qualified process. The contracts that followed are the stability, and the reason they can hire.
Another technical founder hiring Beacon for this kind of video is buying a supplier story a quality manager can watch. Not a tour of beakers. The path from a lab project to a manufacturing contract, in the founder's voice, with the names of the industries already on it.
National Polymer did not need an award reel. They needed the lab to sound like a supplier. That is what this video is for.
Read transcript Video dialogue and narration
[00:00.000] Hello, my name is Adrian Dacrom.
[00:09.480] I'm the president and CEO of National Polymer.
[00:12.840] I founded the company in 2005.
[00:16.520] We were founded with the help of NSL Analytical, a gentleman named Larry Somrack, who went
[00:22.480] to our church, and we kind of had a synergistic relationship with them where we were using
[00:28.840] their analytical services and helping them start up Polymer Analytical Lab while simultaneously
[00:37.800] I began National Polymer as a formulations laboratory.
[00:42.160] Our first location was a rented space in Brexville, the old Republic Steel Research Center, and
[00:50.160] I had a lab there, and we put up a website and began advertising for formulation work,
[00:57.000] especially in the areas of polymers, and we did a lot of work in adhesives and coatings.
[01:03.000] National Polymer specializes in polymeric systems, and over the years we've, because
[01:09.420] of our expertise and the type of business that we were attracting, we have done a lot
[01:14.880] of work in the area of coatings, adhesives, and sealants.
[01:19.000] As we started the company, we also coordinated work with Sherwin-Williams, Lubrizol, and
[01:24.880] Geon, and those mainly came through contacts that we had inside those companies.
[01:31.160] They did work for us in the area of analytical and testing work, and we did work for them
[01:38.080] in the area of laboratory projects.
[01:41.640] The source for most of our work comes from internet advertising, but we did have some
[01:47.720] local help.
[01:49.640] Magnet contacted us and actually used us on projects that they were working on to help
[01:56.960] with coating adhesive chemistry issue on a manufacturing project, and we did some work
[02:03.160] for companies like Zircon and others in the area on behalf of Magnet.
[02:10.400] In 2019, we were continuing to grow, but it was clear that there were other opportunities
[02:17.480] that we weren't accessing, and one of those opportunities was the actual coating process.
[02:24.760] We were able to bring Jim aboard, and we expanded in that area, which strongly helped with the
[02:31.160] growth of the company and also increased our capabilities in the area of coating technology.
[02:38.920] Over the last two years, we've had some great opportunities present themselves with customers,
[02:43.400] mainly in the transportation and semiconductor areas, and we were able to accelerate these
[02:47.960] development programs with the clients to turn them into longer-term manufacturing jobs.
[02:53.340] We were proving to be a cost-effective and reliable supplier for these huge companies.
[02:58.520] One of our key advantages is that we can move quickly and respond to changes in their schedule
[03:03.360] or design much faster than a larger organization.
[03:06.600] We got our ISO certification in 2020, and that really helped us establish a system to
[03:11.760] transfer development work into qualified manufacturing processes.
[03:16.800] From these efforts, we were able to sign a few long-term manufacturing contracts, and
[03:20.640] that gives us a good stability and base for future growth and the ability to hire more staff.
