ZEELAND — Mark Mason likes to think of his company as the Google of manufacturing.

For 12 years, Stone Plastics & Manufacturing Inc. has helped customers make complex manufacturing processes more “simple and easily digestible,” said Mason, the company’s president. But while plastics is in the company’s name, Mason said plastics are only part of what Stone has to offer.

“We do injection molding, but we’re [also] experts in automation and developing lean manufacturing,” Mason told MiBiz. “We’re a tech company that does manufacturing. We manufacture other people’s products so they don’t have to.”

Mason operates with an “innovate or die” mentality. He encourages his team to throw out ideas and experiment with new processes. He said he wants open-minded employees that can be creative and develop novel solutions, but that can also admit failure and move on.

“We always do things differently,” he said. “If we do things like someone else, we can never be better than them. It’s good to benchmark and understand where other people are at, but you should never use it for a target. With the right people, you can develop the right culture for innovation. It’s all about trust and respect and integrity and excellence and perseverance.”

The company’s history includes many innovations, Mason said. When faced with purchasing an off-the-shelf process monitoring system, the company opted instead to develop its own system that would provide them with more robust data. The system his team created could monitor all of the cycles for the plant’s injection molding machines and help pinpoint any issues with greater accuracy, he said. Armed with that data, Mason said his team could better monitor processes and maintain consistency in production.

“Our people always wanted to figure out a new solution versus make it a science. To turn it into a science, they needed all the information,” he said.

The company has grown from meager beginnings in rented space in Grand Rapids to a new 165,000-square-foot facility with 57 molding machines. But Mason wanted to turn the company’s innovation process more into a science. While the company developed some useful solutions, he said he wanted to improve its success rate for innovating.

A year ago, Mason enrolled in innovation management certification courses at NewNorth Center for Design in Business, based in Holland.

“I wanted to learn how not to be a commodity in a commodity world. You need to innovate and bring more value to the customer than just handing them the product and taking orders,” Mason said. “We can do a lot of innovation and we’ve been successful, but the trick is how you get your success rate higher.

“When you do not have the systems in place, it’s hard to have repeatability in innovation. It’s one thing to have a great idea. It’s another thing to have a great idea that brings value to others and actually make those ideas happen.”

NewNorth taught him ways to be more intentional in the innovation process and not leave success to chance, he said.

Stone Plastics serves mostly the automotive, housing/construction, appliance and office furniture markets. The company weathered the recent economic downturn by acting quickly and making tough adjustments before it was too late, he said.

As the market improves — and Mason sees “lots of opportunities for growth” — he said the company has struggled to find the right talent despite the relatively high unemployment. He said the company has had to redouble its efforts in human resources as a result.

“The issue is to try to find the right people who believe good isn’t good enough,” Mason said.

The personnel philosophy carries over into the plant floor where he said he wants people to continuously beat customers’ expectations and provide them with more value, which will help the company continue to grow.

“Our goal is to be the supplier of choice for what we do,” he said. “We aren’t good at being salesmen — we’re just a bunch of engineers. Our sales strategy has always been all about satisfying the customer and going above and beyond expectation. Our customers become our advocates and sales persons.”