A rendering of Minnesota Rubber and Plastics’ planned Innovation Center [Image courtesy of Minnesota Rubber and Plastics]
Minnesota Rubber and Plastics announced today that it is building a 9,000-square-foot Innovation Center adjacent to its headquarters, northwest of Minneapolis in the suburb of Plymouth.
The company envisions a place for the industry’s materials scientists and engineers to engage in an immersive design-prototype-build-test process. Whether customers engage in person or online, the goal is a game-changing engineer-to-engineer collaboration experience. Architectural plans have been approved. Construction completion is slated for spring 2022.
“We’re excited to show the industry how bringing these processes under one roof will remove weeks from the component development process, resulting in unrivaled production-ready prototyping speed,” said Jay Ward, CEO of Minnesota Rubber and Plastics.
“There are two foundational objectives driving our investment in the Innovation Center,” Ward said in a news release. “First, we want to leverage our unique materials science expertise and design capabilities to engage with customers earlier in their design process. Secondly, we want to transform our business model. Our customers have told us that they desperately need their partners to help them get their new products to market faster. The best way we can do this is to bring our entire production-ready prototyping process —materials science, design, tooling, and precision molding — under one roof.”
Minnesota Rubber and Plastics is incorporated under the name Quadion. It makes engineered elastomers and thermoplastics for the medical, water and industrial markets.