Hallmark

Hallmark as much of its main productions centralized geographically in Lawrence Kansas. Here the cards arrive already printed by a third party and are cut and decorated. Shearing presses cut the cards out of the 3 foot by 4 foot sheets they arrive in on and per design are either directly folded or sent to have surface treatments performed on them. A couple of the treatments are flitter and flock, flitter or as we might call it glitter uses ink that is jet sprayed onto the card to hold the glitter in place when it is water fall poured onto the card. After this it goes through a oven to back it dry then onto the folding machines. Flock is a process that applies a finished substance that feels like felt to the card. It goes through the same sort of process as flitter but instead of just a water fall pour Hallmark also makes use of a static field to get it to stand on end and feel more like felt. These are just two surface treats that are used. There are several others such holograms and plasticizing. After the surface treatments are applied the cards are send through a folding machine that looks like its running at the speed of sound when its on. the cards zoom through starting flat and going through a series of arms and rollers that fold the card around flat. Some cards through are too complex for this and still require hand folding. With the advent of robotics and the technological revolution Hallmark as seen a significant drop on their demand so they have had to diversify; moving into many fields such as packing materials and wrapping paper. 

Marti Gra made in China

Marti Gra made in China is a documentary about where the beads thrown at the annual Marti Gra festival in New Orleans come from and who makes them. The workers in China work eat and live in more or less a prison looking compound in mainland China. Though to them this is better than the alternative, which is no work, as westerners we see their working conditions and pay to be very bad in comparison to our own. The workers to 12 to 14 hour days with a 30 to one hour lunch that they are encouraged to work through. They have impossible quotas to meet on a daily basis that determines their pay and are not allowed to talk while they work. To us as westerners this is a unimaginable circumstance to work in and in fact we pay easily $1-$5 for the beads they made which is as much as a months earnings for them. To add to this we just throw the beads away. In the documentary neither the American or the Chinese knew for sure what the documentary was about besides the beads. But when told the American public disliked the beads a bit and didn't feel as free wheeling with them as they did before. But when the Chinese workers were told what was done with the beads and how they were used they were over come with giggles and disbelief. Stepping back from the film which showed the contrast between the owners living conditions and the workers, we see a very sharp contrast in the owner and the workers, but is it so much different from America? Here the CEO's make tens and hundreds of millions of dollars while the floor guy makes just mabey $40,000. In china the CEO makes a couple million Yen and his workers may make a couple thousand. After watching the film I don't think we can compare these two societies like this because they are so different. To me its a bit like asking why won't the cat fetch the stick.

Berry Plastics of Lawrence Ks

Berry Plastics is a plastics extrusion and injection molding facility in good old heart of America Lawrence Kansas. This quaint and polite looking place may not seem like much from the outside or at first glance until you realize just exactly they do. Berry Plastics makes every plastic Taco Bell and McDonald's cup and container in the world. Quite an accomplishment when you step back and consider just how many that is. The plastic shot that is used to form all of their products is shipped in my rail car and then fed through augers all over the facility so it can be melted and pushed into form by the various presses, injectors, and molds, all over the plant. This is another plant that makes their own dies and molds with the help of on hand designers, engineers, and machinists. Something fun that we were informed of had to do with the monopoly game McDonald's holds every year. Over a million different game pieces are sent into the facility to be affixed to the containers and every single one has to be accounted for by not only the plant security but the outside security hired by the participating company as well. This is because in and amongst the pieces are game winning pieces. I had to mentally laugh because it seemed a bit of a conformation that the conspiracy of them knowing where the game winners were going to be was actually a little true. Berry Plastics to me was a fine reminder that manufacturing in America is still alive and thriving but just going through a little bit of a change at the moment.

HuhTamki

Huhtamki is a paper manufacturer base largely in Desoto Kansas. They are the ones that design and create essentially every paper cup and plate that we see in the fast food market. Everyone from KFC to Taco Bell and McDonald's uses Huhtamki to manufacture their paper containers. They use a great many machines such as presses, printers, cutters, and rollers to create the cups and containers that their clients require and in fact build most of their own equipment right on site using computer controlled machining. Many of the dies for both old and brand new cups are still located at the facility as they are proprietary objects. What was most interesting though was to find out that not all the cups were allowed to go to the same states. Most prominently California has such stringent laws that about 95% of the cup has to be recyclable. I found this a bit laughable in my Midwestern mentality in that the state laws are placing essentially all of the responsibility for the disposal of the container on the manufacturer rather that having to worry about cleaning up the mess themselves and ensuring that the waste is disposed of in the proper manor. But it is what it is and the politics have allowed it. The over all facility is very efficient in that all of the waste is sent through a central vacuum system to the waste room as well has using mostly robotic lifts to move completed pallets to inventory. Quite a fascinating facility.

waste equals food

I recently watched a documentary on the cradle to cradle design concept called Waste Equals Food. This documentary had a great many interesting points not only about building techniques but life strategies as well. For instance in the film they redesigned a Ford plant from what looked like a near abandoned industrial park in to a lush park setting that just happened to have a car manufacturer right in the middle of it. This design concept bluntly put states; do not build or make anything that the world or people could not ingest, live in, or be disposed of in natural means. The film overall was interesting and did prove a lot of very good points about rethinking how we build our environment around us. We must consider the 100 year impact of what we create could do to the earth and by chain ourselves down the line. That plastic may be safe to ship that package in but what happens as it breaks down and goes into the water supply? To quote a famous film always be mindful of your surroundings.