Business & Pleasure

Formplast s.r.o.
Purkert

The facility was very impressive!!

The timing was right so took the opportunity to visit Aleš Pomikálk's company in a nearby town for its 25 year open house celebration.  The company had an open house on their 20th anniversary and it worked so well it was decided to have one every five years.  For that 20th year open house there was about 3000 people that showed up for the weekend festivities so the logistics for this one was impressive.  There were a series of charter busses from local area towns (the drunk-driving laws here are really strict) as well as an extensive food and beverage presentation - gratis.  I'm told this area of the Czech Republic is called 'plastic valley' for the several companies that produce various parts for the German auto industry.

Lukas, Ondrej, Hana, Sam, Veronika, BJ and
Dija with a shoe blowout in the shipping department

Formplast has about 600 employees (400 here and about 200 in another location) and produces headlight assemblies mainly for Mercedes Benz but also for BMW, Audi, VW and Skoda.  The beauty of this facility is they design and produce the forms for the various products and then use those forms to produce the actual headlight assemblies.  The factory was spectacular!  Being an engineer by training I was fascinated by the orderly processes.  There were production lines open during the open house so we had a good chance to get acquainted with the systems.

 A Piece of Cake
Soon after we got to Letohrad we were chatting with Lida Stejskalova - Lida lives just on the

BJ and a Dort Fix

A patient wait

adjoining street and has visited Annapolis a bit ago during one of FPC's youth exchanges.  We noticed a rather large dog being walked down the street and thought it odd that someone would want to keep such a 'beast' in a populated area.  Lida informed us his name was Dort.  Now .... that might not seem too odd until you realize the Czech translation for dort is 'cake'.  We didn't think much of it at the time.  Later as we made one of the gazillion trips back and forth to the church there was a house on the street across from Lida.. and in the yard was the 'beast'. Over the next few days we began to notice that if a local passed the yard, Dort just looked, but as soon as he heard our voices his tail began to swing wildly and he bounded up to the gate.  At first we were a bit hesitant to venture a scratch since we expected a bit of 'bait and switch' in which we would pull back a stub.  But we finally braved it and Dort really proved to be a piece of cake.  He is wonderful.  Over the weeks we would see him and his 'father' out on a walk, or see him tied up outside a local market.  It was not until a few weeks ago BJ and I took a long stroll up by the chapel on the hill (you know, John's chapel --not Jana's!!).  There is a very long, narrow trail just past the chapel.  As we progressed up the trail we saw something a bit up the way...we stopped... it was big and menacing.  As we slowly began to backtrack there was something about the profile.... so what the heck... on we went.

Dort on the trail

Yep, it was Dort as we soon realized as he heard our voices and bounded toward us.  Immediately Dort's father emerged from the woods, he had been cutting some small kindling... we exchanged hellos.  Dort had to be restrained for us to leave.  Since then we often drop by the gate to get a Dort fix... which is always followed by a hand washing since Dort is rather exuberant in his greetings.