Stockwell Elastomerics was proud to host the Association for Rubber Products Manufacturers (ARPM) plant tour at its manufacturing location in Northeast Philadelphia on Thursday November 9, 2023. Stockwell Elastomerics has been an ARPM member for many years and welcomed about 30 participants from all over North America to tour the facility and to meet its staff.
Various members of the Stockwell Elastomerics team made presentations to the visitors on safety, continuous improvement, strategies to support the employees, and employee ownership (since 2017, Stockwell Elastomerics has been an ESOP).
Stockwell Elastomerics works with Marketplace Chaplains (mchapusa.com) to provide confidential support for all employees and their families. Marketplace Chaplains provide both spiritual and non-spiritual options to support associates as they navigate challenges and joyful events in their life. The company believes that this independent and confidential group combining with support from coworkers provides various ways to show care for the staff.
Another guest speaker was Baker Industries (www.bakerindustries.org). Baker Industries is a long-time Stockwell Elastomerics partner helping to develop future employees in technical manufacturing roles. Baker Industries is a nonprofit workforce development program serving hard-to-employ adults in Philadelphia and the surrounding area by readying their team members to be strong contributors in the technical manufacturing setting.
The continuous improvement (CI) presentation, delivered by Bob Walsh, the Director of CI at Stockwell Elastomerics, was a combination of sharing various tools and CI principles that the company uses, followed by sharing results from specific projects that the attendees were able to see during the plant tour. Continuous improvement is a key focus at Stockwell Elastomerics in order to provide customers better and faster service for their gasketing needs. After the tour, there was an active discussion on the journey to improve safety and eliminate hazards in the workplace.
ARPM member plant tours offer attendees a close look at key strategies to take away and implement in their own facilities. In the spirit of networking and sharing best practices, each plant tour event provides the opportunity to examine innovative processes and business systems of the rubber industries most successful manufacturing companies. The ARPM Team would love to talk to prospective members about the benefits of membership. If interested, don’t hesitate to reach out to ARPM at info@arpminc.org or 317-863-4072. For more information on ARPM and upcoming events, please visit www.arpminc.com.
Stockwell Elastomerics is thankful for the opportunity to work with ARPM on this event. Thanks to Kaitlyn Triplett and Letha Keslar for their planning of the event, the coordination and logistics, and the strong support of the members while they were onsite at Stockwell Elastomerics. Contact Tom Rimel, President of Stockwell Elastomerics, with any questions by calling 215-335-3005.