PRINCETON, Ind.—Mid-States Rubber Products Inc. received a 2014 Suppler Quality Excellence Award from General Motors Co. in recognition for its quality performance at its Princeton manufacturing facility.
Mid-States said the award was presented to 17 percent of GM's 2,300 suppliers in the U.S. and Canada for 2014. President Philip G. Eykamp said the firm has been supplying GM products for about 50 years. It is the first year Mid-States has earned the award.
“It's definitely a very high award,” Eykamp said.
“It certainly is only given to the top performing suppliers that meet their goals. We're very honored to have been recognized by them for meeting those goals, and I think that it certainly speaks well of our company and our employees that worked hard to provide quality products to our customers.”
A GM spokeswoman said the firm began offering the award in 2012. It is given based on achieving high levels of quality in 13 defined performance standards related to quality, delivery and other performance-related benchmarks.
“Certainly it's a very positive development for us,” Eykamp said. “There are all sorts of factors that go into how future business is sourced, but it certainly puts us in a very good position since GM—like all customers—would prefer to source business with the people providing the highest levels of quality and service to them.”
Founded in 1944, Mid-States operates one 230,000-sq.-ft. facility in Princeton.
The company produces molded and extruded rubber and plastic products for customers around the world not only through a variety of processes, dealing mostly with injection molding, but also with compression molding, transfer molding and cold feed extrusion.
Eykamp said the firm primarily serves the automotive, appliance and material handling industries, and works with a variety of polymers, with EPDM being the largest it uses for the automotive industry.
The firm is making ongoing investments to upgrade its injection molding equipment, Eykamp said.