Today's Mold Makers Use Technology and Good Management to Remain Successful

By Laura Carrabine, Editor

Scott Basilius, president of Basilius, Inc. (Toledo, OH) oversees a full service plastics part supplier that can support as much or as little of product development as its customers require. The company provides the technical assistance for part design, mold building, and injection molding to assist customers from product conception to production. The organization is family-owned and was established in 1952. It works as an extension to customers' needs driven by accountability, responsiveness, and service excellence.

Basilius, Inc. focuses on several key factors including design that encompasses 3D surface and solid modeling capabilities. In addition, it addresses flow analysis to optimize part tool design and rapid prototyping.

Basilius addresses tool building in terms of networked manufacturing from engineering to the shop floor; high- speed hard machining; four-axis wire, and EDM capabilities; four-axis RAM EDM capabilities; advanced manufacturing techniques; grinding; and in-house tool trials. The company's injection molding advancements offer high performance auxiliary equipment, as well as robotic control for part removal and cycle consistency. It employs accurate gravitational blenders for mixing materials.

Basilius employs 34 workers. Scott Basilius says, "As a mold builder and mold supplier, about 50 percent of our business is automotive related. The rest is represented by other industries such as medical and consumer goods."

Robert Hoffmann is vice-president of operations of CACO Pacific Corporation (Covina, CA), a state-of-the-art provider of custom molds for leading international manufacturers. Through continuous technological advances in mold engineering and manufacturing, CACO gives its customers the edge in productivity and speed to market. High volume manufacturing companies in 27 countries worldwide rely on CACO Pacific to gain a competitive advantage. Its primary objective is to acknowledge its customers' products and market competitiveness.

CACO Pacific manufactures precision, high cavitation, high production molds for a variety of industries including personal care, medical, writing instruments, packaging, and optical media. CTI (CACO Technologies Inc.) produces a series of standard products for the molding industry, including hot runner temperature controllers, a full line of hot runner bolt on systems, MPR (Mold Rotating Plates) for multi-material molding, and LIT (Low Inertia Technology) for multi-material molding.

Edward Mack, president of Tri-Mack Plastics, a twenty-nine-year-old operation, oversees the management of this 70-person firm based in Bristol, RI. It produces high performance plastic parts for critical applications and services the aerospace, medical, electronics, chemical processing, and industrial equipment industries. "We are a manufacturer of custom plastic parts with a lot of materials expertise. We work closely with our customers, performing concurrent engineering and plastic product development, in addition to tool making, injection molding, CNC machining, and screw machining," says Mack.

Changes in the industry

As a third-generation company head, Basilius has seen some changes in the industry. "Over the past 20-25 years, we've seen a big change in the technology in terms of equipment used to manufacture the molds. In the last two years, that technology hasn't changed quite as fast. But what is more pervasive is the competition from offshore manufacturers."

In terms of new technology, Basilius takes advantage of hardware and software innovations that are now part of the marketplace. For instance, Basilius, Inc. uses Moldflow software for plastic flow analysis. The organization also uses Delcam Powermill for contour machining.

"Our customers want products quicker and cheaper, a mantra that other manufacturers are facing around the world," says Basilius. "We are being forced to compete with the lowest cost competitor on the globe. I think that European manufacturers are probably feeling the same pressures as American operations. It's the offshore Asian nations that offer low wage labor that are acquiring jobs that traditional US and European mold makers typically obtained."

Basilius says that offering services like Moldflow flow analysis is helping them remain competitive. "In terms of being involved in tool design, we normally run an analysis to determine if there will be any problems prior to cutting steel. That's a cost and time saving for us and for the customer. By using the Moldflow software upfront in the design phase, we can investigate and solve any problems before real costs are associated to the project. We perform flow analysis as a service that's as much a benefit to us as to the customer. Whatever costs and oversights we can eliminate using the software helps both parties. Our customers have learned that our upfront Moldflow services are well worth the investment. We use Moldflow Mold Adviser^TM software (a module of the Moldflow Plastics Advisers^® (MPA^®) product line) analysis for most of our jobs. We've recognized return on investment for the technology many times over as a result of purchasing MPA," says Basilius.

Hoffmann says that the mold making industry has changed significantly over the last decade. "The environment is much more competitive," says Hoffmann. "It's extremely important to have innovative solutions to provide added value for our customers to increase their efficiencies. Without innovative products and solutions, a mold maker can only compete on price and delivery in a market where many mold makers are happy to take a job at a loss to keep doors open a few months longer. Competition from lower labor cost regions of the world is accelerating the push towards unattended machining. By utilizing new equipment and manufacturing methodologies, we are able to reduce the machinist labor hours required to manufacture a mold." The company also uses Moldflow software to help verify its designs and ensure that its molds are production ready with the least amount of testing and debugging possible.

Mack says that the biggest areas of change are in new technology and efficiency that result in higher productivity. "In terms of customers' business models, we are seeing a real evolution in their desire to utilize supplier expertise rather than keep all the expertise in-house. This new strategy has allowed us to add value to our offerings. We can participate in the concurrent engineering of their parts. One of the biggest changes in the aerospace industry, for instance, is traditionally a customer would provide us with a print of a part. Many times there were features in the part that could be problematic but the customer didn't want to discuss the issue. The engineer's design was pretty much etched in stone. Nowadays, there is much more give and take between the customer and the supplier. The result is lower cost parts and much quicker time to market."

Tri-Mack rarely receives 2D drawings anymore. "We import 3D CAD models today,” says Mack. "The biggest area of concurrent engineering is in utilizing CAD models. Some of the characteristics that make them desirable for injection molding are items like wall thickness and proper draft angles. We typically get a model that is not drafted and do a lot of work to clean it up and address any issues that come up in terms of injection molding."

Tri-Mack uses Moldflow Part Adviser^TM software (a module of the MPA product line) as part of every job. Mack says the software is so easy to use that it's a simple step in the development process of each part. He says that using the software differentiates his company from other tool makers. "I think that being able to offer concurrent engineering services and vertical capabilities such as participating in part design through tool design, tool building, debugging, and tool making offers our customers tremendous value. The software gives us confidence to quickly move through that process. Traditionally, a customer took several steps in the development of a new part. From going to an outside part designer or mold designer, to a tool and die shop to get it built, to an injection molder to manufacture the parts, to another shop to do secondary work or assembly. This strategy creates many opportunities for mistakes and added costs."

"Using the old methodology with four or five vendors involved, it was unclear as to who would run Moldflow and absorb the cost," adds Mack. Instead, Tri-Mack offers all of the product development steps under one roof.

Elements of change

"The pressure is on large OEM companies to show a profit to shareholders on a quarterly basis," says Hoffmann. "This has caused a shift in purchasing strategies.” He says that the economic downturn has caused many OEM companies to abandon sound mold purchasing practices. "In the past," notes Hoffmann, "these companies were focused on buying tooling that would cycle the fastest and last the longest — providing long term profitability. For many companies, the current philosophy is to purchase the cheapest tooling possible in an attempt to regain short-term profitability. This trend has accelerated the move of manufacturing to China and other low cost regions of the world." Hoffmann adds, "In the process, these OEM companies are inadvertently transferring decades of manufacturing know-how to other countries. Considerable knowledge can be transferred even in the quoting stage of a project if previous mold designs are used as the basis for the new quote."

CACO Pacific has always had the philosophy of providing innovative products to help its customers achieve the highest manufacturing efficiencies possible. During the last few years, its level of innovation has grown exponentially. In the end, this is the only philosophy that can prevail. Hoffmann says, "Poor mold purchasing decisions by OEMs to obtain short-term profit will in the end become evident when cheap tooling is run on the production floor. At the same time, we are continuously improving our manufacturing process to produce our high quality, high production molds at the lowest costs and with the lowest number of attended labor hours possible."

Success stories

Basilius says one of the company's specialties for tooling is automotive radio bezels, where there are a lot of openings in the parts for the buttons. The gate locations on these parts are very critical to the ability to mold a quality part. "It's advantageous that MPA allows us to do multiple test runs to determine the best gating locations." He also says they run several Moldflow analyses on parts that are of medium to difficult complexity. "We evaluate the results and show our customer the results,” adds Basilius. "It's a great visual tool that provides another set of data that we can study and use to discuss with our customers. Prior to doing any tooling, we can review the data and decide how we want to build a part." He says that using Moldflow is a good differentiator as a sales tool. "We include that as part of our mold design cost," says Basilius. "We build molds for ourselves as well as for other molders. Other molders are very interested in the Moldflow data and how the mold is designed. The end user, who is buying the plastic part, doesn't care about the mold as much as getting a good plastic part, because they have to live with how that tool functions." Basilius is pleased with the MPA automated update functionality. He's the sole MPA user at the organization. Hoffmann says that recently a customer wanted to increase production to produce a multi-material part. "In response," notes Hoffmann, "we developed our patented LIT system to increase the number of cavities that could be obtained in this type of mold. We assembled the entire molding system in our test lab and made it production ready. On the shop floor, we have implemented palletized systems and robots integrated with metal cutting machines and CMMs that handle our mold components and allow for dramatic increases in unattended machining. These are just two of many innovation or improvement examples." Tri-Mack Plastics has excellent customer loyalty. "Return business is significant," affirms Mack. "New purchase orders from existing customers are the best compliment a supplier can ask for."

Images provided courtesy of Basilius, Inc.

For more information about these companies, go to www.basilius.com; www.cacopacific.com; and www.trimack.com.