Auckland manufacturer Acron Plastics is showing how a traditional small business can modernise without losing the specialist service that made it successful in the first place.
The Glenfield-based company has been operating since 1989 and provides thermoformed plastics solutions for customers across New Zealand. Its work includes vacuum forming, CNC machining, fabrication, assembly, tooling and product design.
For many years, Acron Plastics ran largely on paper. Orders, stock records and production notes relied on handwritten documentation, spreadsheets and people remembering the details.
That kind of system can work for a while, especially in a specialist manufacturing business where the team knows the work deeply. But as the company changed ownership and continued handling custom jobs, management saw the need for stronger systems.
Business & Sales Manager Mark Wong has been part of that transition, using manufacturing software MRPeasy to bring more structure to the company's workflow.
The system now supports the business from the moment a quote is accepted. Once an order is entered, it connects the bill of materials, process times, job structure, stock requirements and production schedule.
For a company like Acron, that matters because every job can be different. The business sits between a custom job shop and a mass-production facility, often handling smaller production runs that are too specialised for standard injection moulding.
The shift has helped reduce reliance on memory, minimise missed steps and give customers clearer updates.
Acron Plastics is a useful example for other Kiwi manufacturers facing the same challenge: how to keep the flexibility of a small business while building systems that make growth easier.
