Great legacies grow into long lasting icons…

R&D Tool and Engineering was founded in 1976 by the husband and wife team of Ivan and Ardith Drienik as a job shop serving the tool and die markets. In 1978, they purchased property in Lee’s Summit, Missouri and built a 9,900 square foot building which has grown into a campus with 170,000 square feet of floor space.

In the mid 1980’s, R&D was heavily involved in the plastics industry; designing and building custom injection tools, ISBM, SBM, and extrusion blow molds. In 1995, Ivan and Ardith purchased DK Mould in Sutton In Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, England. The new UK division of R&D quickly became proficient in injection stretch blow tooling where they have doubled in size to 32,000 square feet with a sales team fluent in at least eight European languages.

Since the mid 90’s, the US facility has offered prototype services, IBM, preform molds, and on-site product development for custom injection, ISBM, SBM, IBM, and extrusion blow molds.

The new millennium added medical injection molds, CD/DVD/Blu Ray molds and aerospace components to the US team, and an expanded Product Solutions Laboratory for the UK facility. Leverage is our creative design studio added to facilitate consumer research, and create brand building manufacturable product and package designs.

Although Ivan passed away in 2007, Ardith and the rest of the R&D/Leverage® team continue with his legacy by never forgetting the foundation the business was built upon as R&D Tool & Engineering.