Enhancing Molding and Tooling Capabilities

Warrenville, IL – May 10, 2024 The Heico Companies announced that it has completed its acquisition of Versatile Mold and Design, Inc. Headquartered in Rutledge, Georgia, Versatile designs, builds, and maintains high precision molds for both thermoplastic and thermoset materials and provides molding services as well.

Davies Molding is proud to be able to celebrate Manufacturing Day and continue the long tradition of US based manufacturing excellence. Manufacturing day is held the first Friday in October. Manufacturing Day gives us, manufacturers, at Davies, the perfect chance to shine a spotlight on our manufacturing expertise and the incredible skills of our workforce. It's all about inspiring the next generation of skilled workers. We open our doors to showcase the potential of modern manufacturing and foster interest in manufacturing careers.

Why is there a manufacturing day?

Across the country, organizations showed the public what manufacturing really looks like through more than 2,600 open houses and other events in each of the 50 states along with Puerto Rico, according to nist.gov. The hosted events had an estimated 400,000+ students, parents, and community members attending. This community outreach is important as, according to the National Association of Manufacturers, manufacturing accounts for 10.94% of the total output in the states and employs nearly 9% of the workforce. The total manufacturing output for 2019 was $2,345.85 billion which is an increase of $600 billion since 2010. In addition, there was an average of 12,182,000 manufacturing employees in the United States in 2020, according to the National Association of Manufacturers. There continues to be strong demand for local talent to join the manufacturing industry. In fact, according to a study by Deloitte, as many as 2.1 million manufacturing jobs could go unfilled by 2030 due to lack of qualified applicants. During the pandemic-challenged year of 2020, the manufacturing industry lost 578k jobs and at any given point in the last 6 months, nearly 500k jobs have remained open. This is an ideal time to get involved as manufacturing continues to grow and the talent pool is low.

Why does Davies participate in manufacturing day?

With a rich history spanning nine decades, Davies has proudly participated in every National Manufacturing Day thus far, and we are firmly committed to remaining an integral part of this celebration for all the forthcoming Manufacturing Days to come. The plastics and rubber products industry is one of the top 10 manufacturing sectors in the US. Davies Molding stands as a premier player in the plastic products industry, consistently ranking among the biggest and best composite and plastic manufacturers. With this position in the market, there is continuous high demand for our top-notch products leading to a high demand for quality employees to make these components. We recognize how important local talent is to our success as a company and the immense value they bring to Davies Molding. We will continue to support local recruiting events, like manufacturing day to find the best talent available for the future growth of Davies Molding.

Davies will be steadfast in our dedication to serve our customers and provide our local community employment opportunities at our world class Injection and Compression Molding facility. Visit our new website to learn about our famous knobs and plastic products that we manufacturer every day. If you are a local school or other training facility and would like to schedule a visit to teach your students about manufacturing of plastic and composite components, contact us at (800) 554-9208 and we can schedule a visit. We believe that the future of Davies Molding depends on the youth of today.

We are excited to share our new logo and new look with you!  We announced earlier this month that we updated the Davies Molding logo to a more modern look.  We chose a new logo that is symbolic of our standard product line, knobs.  We are a molding company and the molding process was in mind when we created the letter D in the D hex symbol.  The lines are designed to represent the molding process and flow of plastic material into the mold cavities. Even though our look has changed, we are still remain experts in injection and compression insert molding with over 80 years of experience.

The beginning of August brings a close to The Heico Companies' summer internship program. For the last eight weeks, Jacqueline DeWitt worked at Davies Molding as the Marketing Intern. It has been a great learning experience for her.

We are pleased to welcome Yusuf Waxali to Davies Molding. He has recently started the position of Mechanical Engineer. After graduating from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2016, he worked at the Intec Group, a tier-two automotive plastic injection molding company. There he developed strong skills in CMM programing and injection molding simulation. 

The Heico Companies interns recently took a tour of the Davies Molding plant to learn how our knobs and handles are manufactured. Geared up in closed toe shoes and safety glasses, they saw the molding process firsthand. The tour, given by Derran Smith and Jenny DuPrey, was rich with manufacturing knowledge applicable to the interns. It was a great opportunity for them to see the products that are made in the industry they are a part of this summer.

Jacqueline DeWitt, the Marketing Intern for Davies Molding, was excited to show her fellow interns where she's been working for the past few weeks. After the tour, she asked them what they thought of Davies:

“I was truly fascinated by the variety of methods with which Davies manufactures their products. However, I was most impressed with how well they are keeping pace with increasingly sophisticated prototyping technology like 3D printing.” - Preston Chloupek, Executive Finance Intern for Pettibone LLC

“I loved interacting with the materials produced by Davies Molding’s and seeing what great detail is put forth during the production stages. Being a consumer, it is rare to see an item before it is completely polished so I found this new perspective to be very fascinating.” - Jermell Shackelford, Finance Intern for The Heico Companies Mergers and Acquisitions.

We always look forward to giving the interns a tour of our plant. We had a great time teaching them about the manufacturing process and we hope they enjoyed learning what Davies is all about.

Davies Molding employees participated in a tornado/severe weather drill during June, National Safety Month. Everyone in the plant and offices practiced the precautions to be taken in case of an emergency. Everything ran smoothly during the drill—we're so lucky to have such a great team who cares for each other! Does your company have a plan in case of an emergency? Follow the link above to learn more what your company can do to be better prepared in the case of an emergency.

Davies Molding welcomes Erin Masterson, our new Assistant Project Manager. Erin successfully completed a marketing internship program for Ohmite and Davies Molding during the summer of 2017. She brought great qualities to the office, and her diligence was extremely evident to our team. 

We are pleased to introduce Adel Davish, the new Tooling Manufacturing Engineer at Davies Molding. Adel has hit the ground running and has already been making great contributions to the company. 

It is our pleasure to welcome Eduardo Favela to Davies Molding! Eduardo just joined the company as Senior Accountant at the end of May. We are lucky to have him as a member of our team because of his unique skill set that will positively impact the organization's overall vision.