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Plastic Design, Inc. COVID-19 Efforts Highlighted by Bentley University

Daryl Flynn, President of Plastic Design, Inc., was recently highlighted in an article by his alma mater, Bentley University, for the company’s efforts in supplying medical frontline workers with personal protective equipment (PPE). Read an excerpt below:

Unlike other alumni who are running into production roadblocks due to a lack of materials amid the pandemic, Daryl Flynn ’93, co-president of Plastic Design, Inc. is lacking people. Namely, workers at his custom plastic fabrications company in Chelmsford, Mass. When we spoke, Flynn was overseeing a limited staff of 13 — far lower than the usual 40 on the factory floor.

“It’s fear,” he says. Pick a crisis: fear of the virus, fear of spreading the virus. “You can’t manage fear,” he adds. “That’s something they really don’t teach you.” However, Flynn himself isn’t afraid. “I’m a realist,” he explains. “I look at the numbers. I wash my hands. It’s contagious, but I’ll take my chances.”

Because what’s on the line are nine-inch face shields — thousands of them. A plastic line of defense far surpassing any cloth mask an essential worker can find on Etsy.

Flynn’s parents bought Plastic Design, Inc. in the mid-’80s. At 19, Flynn started working at the company, and joined up full-time after graduating from Bentley in 1993, as did his brother Kurt ’95, two years later. Since then, the duo has kept the family business in stride with the times, evolving from custom display cabinets to biomedical products and even casino tables. If you’re playing roulette at Foxwoods, chances are you’re sitting at a table made by the Flynn brothers.

When COVID-19 struck, Flynn answered the call of a friend: an anesthesiologist looking for safety glasses. “I had some extra material lying around, so I asked him if I could make a face shield instead,” Flynn says. He went into work the next day and mocked up a design using existing materials from a project he had done for the U.S. Navy — plastic shields used to encase wires on the ships. “He said it was great.”

To read the rest of article, go to Bentley University.