Diversified Plastics Adds Quality Lab and Clean Room Space

Custom injection molder Diversified Plastics Inc. added a new medical quality lab and tripled its class 100,000 clean room space to boost its product assembly and packaging capabilities.

“It’s provided a much better workflow. It is attached to our white room, so we are able to do some assembly and then push it through to the next room. It works wonderfully and we are much more efficient,” said Annette Lund, vice president of the Brooklyn Park, Minn.-based company, in a telephone interview.

Lund said the company converted space within its 53,000-square-foot building to triple its clean room space to nearly 1,000 square feet.

The new clean room features a “pass through” portal to accommodate pallet-size quantities of parts to be transferred from an adjacent environmentally controlled white room. The white room does not have HEPA filtration but has positive airflow and all workers wear clean room gowns. Many production steps can be done in the white room and sent to the clean room for hermetically sealed packaging.

Lund said the company has also formed a medical device production department and quality lab to focus on its contract medical device assembly and packaging. The new lab, which is separate from its non-medical lab, is situated closer to the clean room and allows for the company to monitor its programs closely.

She said some medical device customers have been growing and that, along with new customers, has allowed Diversified Plastics to grow as well.

Diversified also makes parts for the aerospace, lithium-ion battery, filtration and other industries.

“Currently, our sales growth is 28 percent above last year. This high growth rate is expected to continue due to the increased clean room space,” said Lund.

The company’s facility is in a suburb of Minneapolis. It has 85 employees, adding 35 employees in the last year and half.

Diversified Plastics is employee owned. It provides design assistance and mold construction, as well as intricate molding, and clean room assembly. It is ISO 9001: 2008 and 13485: 2003 certified.