Industry Watch 20307

NAFTA NEWCOMERS
In recent months two offshore suppliers have set up shop in North America—a Pacific Rim press supplier and a European tool engineering firm.

Yuh Dak North America Inc., a subsidiary of Yuh-Dak Machinery Co. Ltd. of Taiwan, has established a sales, service, and demonstration facility in Aurora, ON. Its mission is to market what a company source calls its high-productivity, easily maintained, and very affordable line of vertical machines.

Gram Technology Inc. in Scottsdale, AZ is the U.S. office of the Danish mold engineering firm of the same name. Gram Technology’s specialty is its Spin Stack technology, which features rotating core/cavity segments within a stack mold.

This approach is said to double the output of more conventional rotating stack molds, while allowing any number of automated finishing operations to be performed prior to part ejection. It licenses its technology. Nypro and The Tech Group reportedly have signed up. You can see them at K 2004 in the Tech Mold booth (Hall 1, Stand D29).—CK

SAYONARA, BIG THREE
U.S. automotive suppliers continue to shift their loyalties and their resources to Japanese customers, leaving the Big Three in the dust. That’s the big news in the annual OEM-Tier One Supplier Working Relations Study. It was conducted in July by Planning Perspectives Inc. (PPI; Birmingham, MI).

The study says U.S. automakers continue to hammer suppliers for price reductions and multimillion-dollar cash givebacks, while continuing to give their suppliers less support. The Big Three treat their suppliers more like adversaries than partners, and are lousy communicators (see Table 1).

Here’s what the report says is going on:

Overall results of the annual surveys are summarized in PPI’s OEM-Supplier Working Relations Index. Japanese automakers continue to climb the quality partnering scale, while U.S. automakers remain stuck at the bottom (see Table 2).

The 2004 survey involved responses from 223 Tier Ones, including 36 of the top 50, and was based on 852 different possible buying situations. PPI sources say the suppliers participating in the survey have combined sales representing 48% of the OEMs’ annual component purchases.To get a copy of the survey, call PPI at (248) 644-7690.—CK

TRAINING TOMORROW'S SPECIALISTS
Are you planning to attend the SPE Antec in Boston, MA next year (May 1-5, 2005)? If so, you’re in for an extra-special treat.

Buses departing from Antec Boston on the morning of May 2 will whisk you away to Lowell, MA. The Dept. of Plastics Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Lowell is celebrating its 50th anniversary during Antec week and you’re all invited to tour its brand-new labs.

You’ll be shuttled back to Boston just in time for those Antec presentations and, later that evening, an alumni reception, dinner, and speaker program hosted by UMass Lowell.

What you’ll see when you tour its 30,000-sq-ft laboratory facility are the results of a five-year master plan engineered by UMass Lowell and its industry sponsors.

The labs have been equipped with some $710 million worth of leading-edge manufacturing technologies and computer system upgrades, with 90% of the financing coming from corporate support. All of the equipment is there on consignment, and none of the equipment is, or ever will be, more than three years old.

Robert A. Malloy, chairman of the department, says the plan is to ensure the future existence of the department while creating an ever-evolving environment for training the type of engineering specialists the industry will need over the next 50 years.

Malloy invited IMM to a preview. We were joined by the department’s IM corporate allies, each a sponsor of the newest molding labs—the Milacron Injection Molding Lab, the Nypro Precision Injection Molding Lab, and the Moldflow Process Simulations Lab.

Joining us were Angelo F. Sabatalo, corporate director of organizational development and training at Nypro Inc. (Clinton, MA); A. Roland Thomas, president and CEO of Moldflow Corp. (Wayland, MA); and Fred Charpentier, director of North American sales at Milacron Inc. (Batavia, OH).

It’s just another beginning at UMass Lowell. Malloy says an optical media cleanroom is nearing completion and the University has its sights set on nanomanufacturing.

You can find more information on the anniversary celebration at http://plastics.caeds.eng.uml.edu/, or by calling Gail Sheehy at (978) 934-4000.—CK

R.I.P., NICK ROSATOIn tribute to his undying legacy of contributions to industry, the name of a new departmental library now under development at UMass Lowell will be The Dominick V. Rosato Memorial Library. Plans reportedly were already under way for the library to bear his name before he died this summer at his home in Chatham, MA.

Nick Rosato, as he was more popularly known, was a 60-year industry veteran, an inventor, editor, entrepreneur, and the author of the first Injection Molding Handbook as well as more than two dozen other books, and a member of the Plastics Hall of Fame. He was 83 years old.—CK

SHORT SHOTS