Automation, plant management, sustainability: What we were talking about in 2025

By Ron Shinn 

Plastics Machinery & Manufacturing’s monthly Talking Points column aims to make you think about the plastics industry and your job in different ways. Frequently that will be by looking ahead to point out the “what ifs” or describing someone’s success that you might be able to duplicate. 

Here are six columns from 2025 that I particularly enjoyed, four of my own and one each by Senior Staff Reporter Karen Hanna and Managing Editor Lynne Sherwin: 

1. Is the era of autonomous production on the horizon? 

I visited my first injection molding plant in the early 1990s — a micromolder running what was described as a lights-out operation. I was impressed and assumed that lights-out manufacturing was the future of the plastics industry. 

I was wrong about that one.  Progress has been slow.  

2. How to become a world-class plastics processor 

While there are plenty of very good processors, a general observation is that there are not very many leaders who ever step back from the grind of day-to-day firefighting to think about how they can be a world-class manufacturer. 

This Talking Points includes a list of questions to ask if you want to become a world-class manufacturer and thrive in the future. 

3. Volatility underscores need for calm leadership 

Carlos Hoyos, a senior global executive coach and business adviser, knows about fear, so volatile markets, global instability and waves of tariff announcements and tariff suspensions don’t shake him. Nor should they faze you.  

Hoyos is an advocate for a concept he calls “self-leadership.” He’s on a mission to coach leaders to rein in their own emotions in times of crisis and change, so they can face the world with realism, flexibility, creativity and “unshakable emotional intelligence.” 

Senior reporter Karen Hanna wrote about him. 

4. Plastics pollution treaty talks fail. What comes next? 

A three-year effort by the United Nations to curb plastics pollution ended without a global treaty agreement. It is unclear if there is a will to bring everyone back to the bargaining table. Six sessions, which included an extra one after the planned five ended without an agreement, did not create much enthusiasm.

It appears the industry might have missed an opportunity to show it can solve its own problems.

5. What does the future of manufacturing look like? 

There is an interesting national debate about what manufacturing should look like in the future, and it certainly includes the plastics processing industry. It is easy to think nostalgically about lunchpail-toting workers streaming out of the factory gate at the end of their shift.

Training? Just show up every day and you would be shown what to do. Do it well and move up the ladder to a slightly better job in the factory.

Now we are in an era of transition from mass production to lean manufacturing and automation. How can your company be part of the future?

6. Recycling success story proves education works 

Five years ago, the contamination rate of curbside recyclables in Akron, Ohio, was 39.3 percent, and the city was spending more than $200,000 a year to have contaminants removed at a sorting facility.

To bring the problem under control, in 2019, the city and the nonprofit Keep Akron Beautiful (KAB) launched Recycle Right, a campaign to get plastic bags, greasy pizza boxes, yard waste and other trash out of the recycling stream.  The contamination rate dropped to 12.5 percent in 2024 and the cleaner recyclables generated more revenue. 

Managing editor (and Akron resident) Lynne Sherwin detailed this successful effort.