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Maintenance contracts keep work steady, save customers moneyMaintenance contracts keep work steady, save customers money

March 1, 2001

2 Min Read
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Mold maintenance and repair can be costly for large, medical device molding operations. To help its customers offset those costs, Prestige Mold Inc. (Rancho Cucamonga, CA) designed a repair and maintenance contract for those customers wanting to even out the bills. 

The R&M contract is fashioned much like the "equal pay" or "budget bill" plans that have been developed by some utilities. With such a plan a customer pays the same rate each month based on that customer's average monthly use over the course of a year. Customers receive a monthly statement detailing the work done on each mold and the actual cost for doing that work. 

Rodger Foster, technical sales engineer for Prestige, notes that two customers have already signed up for the program. "They want to keep their repair costs low and as predictable as possible," he says. 

Foster says Prestige began the program because repair and maintenance of molds is becoming a booming business for the company. Prestige specializes in building high-cavitation hot runner molds for medical device companies, which comprises about 70 percent of its business. 

The R&M side became so big, in fact, that Prestige created a separate division just for that business. "Everything's a panic in tool repair," notes Foster. "We have to keep our scheduling separate and have moldmakers available to accommodate quick turnarounds. It gets moldmakers off the hook and keeps them from having to stop working on a new mold to fix an [existing] mold." 

Foster adds that one reason the R&M department is growing so rapidly is the fact that many OEMs are going offshore for tooling. "They get the molds back and they're not production ready or changes need to be made, and they can't send the molds back to China for that," he explains. "Often, we get an opportunity to build the next generation of molds if they have a bad experience offshore." 

Currently, Prestige has 10 people dedicated to repair and maintenance working 20 hours (two shifts) per day, which means some jobs can be turned around in 24 hours. 

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