Maplan strengthens expertise, deepens support for changing industry

PITTSBURGH—It's easy to look at Maplan GmbH and see the machinery. It is, after all, what the company does and does well.

But Maplan may just surprise you with the breadth of its expertise, range of its offerings and depth of its rubber industry knowledge. Because in the end, Maplan has a vision for its role in the industry.

Simply, it wants to meet all of its customers' needs to the best of its ability.

"This will sound like a tagline, but the truth is we have shifted from a machine supplier to a solutions provider," John "JR" Mohl, Maplan's national sales director, told Rubber News during the International Elastomer Conference. "And that does sound so marketing, but it is actually the reality of the situation. … We have great leaders within ACS Rubber Division, within ARPM and a lot of trade organizations that are trying to help the industry, but the suppliers are having to step up, too, and be that resource."

So Maplan, he said, is stepping up.

The company is seeing trends emerge across the industry and it's listening to what its customers need. And it takes those things into consideration as it prepares to move forward, according to Technical Sales Director Ben Puffer.

"For the past six to seven years," Puffer said, "there has been a growing trend as talent leaves the industry, you have a lot of process knowledge, a lot of know-how that is unfortunately retiring. It's passing away. It's moving on. And rubber molders are leaning more and more on the supplier side to fill that gap."

For Maplan—and the industry overall—it has meant a transition toward automation.

And that's a trend that Maplan has embraced, particularly over the last four years, Puffer said. He pointed to the release of Map.autocell two years ago as proof.

"Essentially," Puffer said about Map.autocell, "all of the automation is done within our control system."

But it's not just the automation.

The industry—in the U.S. especially—is seeing a greater need for molding experts to assist with the manufacturing side of the business.

"There is a lot of support within the industry on the compound side, there are suppliers like Hexpol or Zeon that can help with the chemistry side for the material, but within the States, there is a growing need for the machinery suppliers to also offer molds," Puffer said.

And Maplan, he said, is working to bring molding expertise into its fold. Just look at the company's recent acquisition of WEASystec.

"So we, Maplan globally, purchased WEAsytec last year," Puffer said. "… WEAsystec is primarily an automation house, but they also have a phenomenal design team for molds. They didn't produce a lot of molds, they typically subcontracted for that. But on the engineering side they are really good at designing the molds."

There's also the recent acquisition of molding experts rt-formtec, which produces elastomer molds and two- and multi-component tools, among other things.

And further supporting these steps is the newly expanded facility in Austria.

"It was a 30-percent expansion to be able to build these automated cells and larger machines. And in doing so, we added this technikum, which allows us to do compound testing, it allows us to do mold validation—so the molds that we build we can run off in Austria before we ship to the customer," Puffer said. "We can also do trials if someone has a mold and they want to make sure it works in our machines, they can send it to Maplan Austria and we can run it there. And you can also do training and play with the machine at the facility as well."

And it's all proof, he said, of just how the company is stepping up to help the industry grow and thrive.