“Plastics can make the world a better place,” he says. And that’s not lip service. As a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt-certified process engineer, Bryan is constantly raising the bar. Whether it’s reducing waste, creating more efficient processes, or increasing safety, he strives to give his best to an industry that has the power to transform tomorrow.
Mitsubishi Chemical Advanced Materials in Reading is the North American headquarters. It’s a global company—located throughout Europe and Asia as well. We’re a stock-shapes manufacturer. We make rods, plates, and tubes that go out to distributers who machine those down into final parts. Our customer base is wide-ranging and includes electronics, aerospace, food, medical, pharmaceuticals, construction, and heavy equipment to name a few.
My job is to do continuous improvement, making the processes safer in a manufacturing world, reducing costs to increase profits, and increasing through-put. A little bit of my job is in the office. Some of it's on the manufacturing floor. Once in a while, we'll do a customer visit.
Every day is different. It's constantly improving processes, working with new people and new materials every single day. The plastics industry always has more opportunities, whether it's working with operations and manufacturing, doing research and development, getting involved with material and process development, working with customers, or providing technical support.
Plastics are very high-tech. A lot of it is about replacing metals, making equipment lighter so efficiencies can go up and everything will be safer.
Getting customers to realize the benefits of plastics and realizing that plastics can make the world a better place. If you look at fuel efficiencies, especially with aerospace, when you remove metals from airplanes and replace them with plastics, it creates a lighter aircraft.
I always want to go into some type of engineering field. In high school I had a materials science class, primarily working with woods, metals, plastics, and composites. I started Googling to try and figure out, where plastics are in the world? And then I realized that it's in your phone, the paint on the walls, and books. It’s everywhere.
I loved being hands-on with the equipment. You get to learn the theory and then you get to try it out on the equipment: extrusion, blow molding, injection molding, thermoforming, and rotational molding processes.
The program exceeded my expectations. I landed a great job with a great company. I really put myself out there and they definitely supported me the whole way. Going into my junior year of college, I had a full-time offer at Mitsubishi Chemical Advanced Materials. I'd say 99% of the students had multiple offers. Everybody had a job before graduation. There are so many opportunities in the plastics industry. If you want to travel, there's a lot more opportunities as well.
I'm proud to work in plastics because I know I'm making a difference every single day, whether it's making plastics more recyclable, making equipment more efficient, or making processes more efficient and safer.
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