As a global leader in consumer products, most of us use 3M’s products every day. They make ACE bandage products, Command strips products, Filtrete filters, Futuro braces products, Littmann stethoscopes, Nexcare bandage products, Post-It notes, Scotch Tape, Scotch Brite sponges, and Scotchgard protectant products. Here in Medina County, the plant makes thermal transfer labels, sheet labels, digital labels, security labels, flexo labels, overlaminates, tire labels, and transfer adhesives for other manufacturers to apply to their products. One example is on power equipment there are safety labels. Those labels are most likely made in Medina. 

The best laid plans often don’t go as intended. And in scientific research, that happens more often than not. A person wants to develop a new product and in the course of figuring it out, stumble on something even more important or useful. That is the story of 3M. Their first product was intended to be sand paper. You would think you take some paper, add an adhesive, glue on some sand or rocks or minerals, and ta da! Sandpaper! But it isn’t that easy. And while the company was making sand paper, they realized that having paper with a sticky side that could be put on surfaces and taken off was a big deal. And tape was born! Later in the company’s history a similar story would result in the Post-It Note. So 3M’s history is full of great inventions we use every day.

When COVID hit, we struggled to get the materials we need to manufacture our products. As things got better, we noticed the quality isn’t as consistent as we like, so we are now working with suppliers and vendors to determine what quality we need, what is available, how we can keep it consistent, and what to do if what comes in isn’t what we usually see. Consumers are seeing similar issues in the number of M&M’s in a bag at the same price as they were before the pandemic or the number of potato chips. We also have had to transition our team from being laborers who just ran machines, to understanding how to problem-solve. Our equipment is more computer-driven and when something goes wrong, the person running the machine has to know how to figure out what happened and why. And then hopefully how to solve it quickly!

We are a global company, but one of our strategies is to have manufacturing done near customers and distribution centers. About 80% of our materials are sourced in the United States and about 75% of our customers are on the East Coast and Central United States. 

We are very proud to be a landfill-free facility. We have no trash pick up at all. We recycle everything we can and any scrap that normally would be picked up actually goes to a local Medina company who turns it into a fuel source for other companies, a ‘waste to energy’ program.

It is really important to 3M as a whole to create partnerships with our government entities. We never want a situation where we’re being inspected, or need to work with an agency, and they don’t know us. That relationship helps both sides get what they need and we all want to succeed together. We work closely with the city of Medina and Medina County because we want this to be a great place to live and work. 

We post our openings to all the major job boards, but our best employees come from referrals. Our staff and customers send us people who want to work here because they have heard about us from people they trust. 

Why do employees like to work here?

 3M is a really good place to work. We have reliable work and reliable schedules, which can be new for some of our folks when they start. We work as a team and collaborate on things so our staff knows what we are doing and why we are doing it.