Dominican Republic Trip - Day 2

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Day 2 of the Dominican Republic trip took us to the Pisano Industrial Park in Santiago, which is approximately 2 hours north of the capital, Santo Domingo. The park is shown here.

• Primary contact for this industrial park:
  Ing. Jeannette Domínguez Aristy. (jdominguez@pisanozf.com)
  

We visited three suppliers at this park.

1. DMG International - a small plant that specializes in cutting and sewing leather for use in Alan Edmonds shoes. This was included in the trip to show the capabilities of suppliers in this area to handle leather. Automotive supply by this company is unlikely, since they probably could not handle the volume or quality requirements. The area, however, is known for fine quality leather (see B'Leather below).
   
2. K-Rain Industries - a producer of automatic sprinkler systems. This facility is equipped with several injection molding machines, sized from 65-300 tons. They handle the injection molding, assembly, and testing of these parts. They can handle tight tolerances, but have limited ability to repair tooling, so they carry 1.5 weeks of safety stock. Material used is ABS SD-0170 from Samsung, China.
   
3. Paxar Dominicana - a maker of labels for the apparel industry. This facility has the ability to produce many kinds of labels at high volume. They are a potential source for bar codes or other labels or stickers for the auto industry. Capacity is available because apparel industry has shrunk in the DR as companies flock to China.
   

The afternoon consisted of a visit to B'Leather, and was probably the most interesting visit of the trip. I had no idea how much went into the production of leather products. This facility produces high-quality leather that is used for shoes, and has also begun supplying leather at the tier 2 or 3 level to Toyota. An explanation of the process is:

"Blue Leather" is brought in. This is the hide of the cow that has had the hair removed and has been treated with a chemical process to turn it from an organic to an inorganic material. This process turns the hides blue. They are inspected, washed, shaved (shavings, unfortunately, end up in landfills) and cut. The smell in this part of the plant is a bit strange - unlike anything I've smelled before.

The material is then placed in enormous drums, where it is treated with whatever dyes and chemicals are needed for the end application. They stay in these drums for 12 hours, and are then dried.

Material for use in automotive must be stretched before its dried. These hides must be dried in driers (as opposed to hung). They are then manipulated through several processes to make them soft a supple.

B'Leather ships these automotive hides to the US for use on Toyota and Lexus vehicles.