MTD Micro Molding, a medical molder and mold maker specializing in extremely small parts, has officially opened its expansion, and it picked a perfect person to honor.At a May 27 dedication ceremony in Charlton, Mass., MTD Executive Vice President Gary Hulecki unveiled a cornerstone plaque honoring Dennis Tully, MTD’s late president and visionary leader who before his unexpected passing in 2019.Tully was 58 when he died of a heart attack in 2019, just weeks before the family company was named Plastics News’ Processor of the Year. He was named to the Plastics Hall of Fame in 2020.”[Dennis] would never tell you what to do or how to do something, but you could always count on him to help you frame the problem and think through the issues you needed to consider before proceeding,” Hulecki said.The exterior was completed in late 2020 and the interior was completed this year.In addition to increased production space, MTD’s expansion provides more personal space for employees and a gym, so “employees can better maintain their well-being,” the company said.The work “allowed us to reach this major milestone for the company and for Dennis’ legacy,” MTD owner Darlene Tully said. We know about plastics used in car safety systems to protect passengers. Now auto dealers in hail-prone regions are also using plastics to help prevent damage before the cars even leave their lots.Our sister paper Automotive News has a story about a Colorado auto dealer that invested in a overhead canopy to cover the cars in its lots after seeing $200,000 in damages to cars in 2018, with an especially bad run of weather in June.”That month we purchased three new dealerships on the east side of Denver, and within a 10-day period they were hit with hail three times,” Michael Dunlap, vice president of business development at Schomp Automotive Group, told AN. “We had cars that were damaged, repaired, put back onto the front line and then damaged again.”Langley, British Colombia-based company WeatherSolve offers the barriers made of nylon, polyethylene and other plastics that can be deployed during bad weather.Unlike hard canopies or tents, customers can easily scout out cars in the lot. And once hail season subsides, the dealerships can roll up the canopies and store them. Of course hail storms are just one element of the rapidly increasing cost of doing business during turbulent weather.We all know the disruptions from Hurricane Laura in August or the extreme cold in Texas this year, but a new report from the National Centers for Environmental Information says there were a record-breaking 22 weather and climate disaster events in 2020, up from in 16 in 2017 and 2011.And the group notes that severe weather is causing increasingly expensive impacts on the supply chain.And the very real threat of more frequent and severe storms will require transport and supply chain managers to take lessons learned from past disasters and incorporate them into future risk and contingency plans., told Supply Chain Drive supply chain professionals need to take the long-term view of risk as they expand networks or routes into areas prone to storms.”The severe weather events may be inevitable, but the damage doesn’t have to be,” Klosowski said. Do you have an opinion about this story? Do you have some thoughts you’d like to share with our readers? Plastics News would love to hear from you. Email your letter to Editor at Staying current is easy with Plastics News delivered straight to your inbox, free of charge. Subscribe to Plastics News Plastics News covers the business of the global plastics industry. We report news, gather data and deliver timely information that provides our readers with a competitive advantage.Customer Service: