Demands for full service transforms Mack Molding

Three years ago, IMM took you on a tour of what was then Mack Molding's new HQ and manufacturing facility in Arlington, VT (see "Lucky Seven-Mack's Masterpiece," July 1996 IMM, pp. 88-91). Based largely on growing demand for its product design/development and contract manufacturing services from blue-chip customers like Hewlett-Packard, Kodak, IBM, Motorola, Apple, and Lego, Mack saw that there needed to be some additional changes made, and fast. It revised its 10-year, $35-million, full-build expansion plan and is now six years ahead of schedule. And Mack Molding's parent company formed a new prototyping division to better meet its customers' full-service demands.

A 12-month, $16-million expansion was completed this year that has nearly tripled manufacturing space and doubled molding capacity in Arlington. The plant was 120,000 sq ft when we toured in 1996. Now it is 310,000 sq ft. Its 117,000-sq-ft warehouse is 10 times larger. There is a new 16,000-sq-ft toolroom serviced by two extended bridge cranes, each capable of effortlessly moving molds back and forth between the workbenches and the presses. Mack Arlington has about 140 active tools.

An additional 40,000 sq ft of assembly space was added, which includes a room for confidential new product prototyping. There is also a new lab for quality and test engineering. Mack has even built a new dining area, in addition to improving lighting, air circulation, and sound dampening.

Sara Hatcher, HQ plant manager, explains how the evolution of Mack's business from custom molding to full-service product development and contract manufacturing influenced the expansion.

"As a contract manufacturer, we receive a host of bulky and very expensive electronic and metal components. We move approximately a million parts per week through this plant. How we receive and move that material is critical to timely, flexible distribution to our customers."

Contract Manufacturing Plant
Mack's larger warehouse has allowed it to store all parts in Arlington, streamlining overall trafficking for contract-manufactured products. The company also has added 13 loading docks, bringing the total up to 19. Faster response to customer requests also is facilitated by Mack's new racking system. It has minimized wasted space with two rows of racking for every row of aisle.

Mack stuck with its choice of Engel presses (300 to 1000 tons) and its use of three-axis traversing servo robots from Star Automation. It still uses Engel's plantwide production monitoring system. But there have been a few improvements. For example, Jeff MacKenzie, molding manufacturing manager, tells us that the 15 new Engels have downsized barrels to better suit the parts running on them. Downsizing, he says, allows Mack consistently to meet or exceed its customers' tolerance requirements.

The molding room runs virtually unattended. Only three people per shift are on the shop floor at any given time-a senior process technician, a mold setter, and a materials handler.

There have even been new developments underneath the lights-out molding room's poured-concrete, epoxy-coated floor. A new Una-Dyn centralized materials handling system has been installed downstairs. Rather than feeding each press individually by separate dryers, the centralized system can receive resin from one dryer or silo (two 42-ft aluminum silos also are new) and simultaneously supply several presses running the same resin. This reduces the number of times dryers have to be cleaned and prepped, and minimizes cross contamination risks. They use 50,000 lb of material per day in Arlington.

Mack is selling much more than machine time these days. Its capacity expansions and added services have significantly redefined the meaning of the term "one-stop shop." In fact, the company may have to redefine its own name. After all, it now sources only 26 percent of its business from custom molding. Contract manufacturing accounts for 74 percent of its sales, which are good and growing. "Mack Molding" hardly tells the whole story any more.

Mack's moves in prototypingMack Molding's parent company, $457-million Mack Group Inc. (Arlington, VT), which operates 10 other facilities in the U.S. and Scotland, has followed up on its acquisition of prototyper Compression Inc. of Shelton, CT, reported on by IMM in June (see p. 107), with the acquisition in July of yet another prototyper, Apple Pattern Co. Inc. of Gardner, MA. The new division combining the two acquisitions is called Mack Prototype.

Mack Prototype Gardner will concentrate on large parts, primarily for IT, medical instrumentation, consumer electronics, and telecom. Customers can avail themselves of the company's SLA and CNC rapid prototyping, PUR molding, and model finishing services.

Mack Prototype Shelton offers a full complement of product development services-CAD, CAE, SLA and SLS, PUR casting, prototype and bride tooling, and low-volume molding of small parts. By the way, Mack also created Mack Design (Rochester, NY) in 1997. It has 18 design seats today.