Mold guarantees precipitate timely delivery

Previously,in the December 1995 issue of IMM (p. 64), we reported about a moldmakerin Crystal Lake, IL who provides some of his customers with awritten mold guarantee backed up with monetary penalties for failureto make the scheduled delivery. It's been five years and we thoughtwe'd see how Accura Tool & Mold's guarantee program was faring.We revisited Brian Beringer, general manager at Accura, for anassessment.

The quick and dirty is this: In five years, Accura has paidout less than $15,000 in penalties. And it's been a great marketingtool. "It's gotten us four new customers," says Beringer.

In addition to prompting customers to be more timely with informationand make decisions faster, the guarantee has forced Accura todevelop internal systems that allow the company to "do whatwe say we'll do," Beringer adds.

The Guarantee

In case you've forgotten, or in the unlikely event that you'vemisplaced your December 1995 issue, here's how the Accura programworks. Accura's written guarantee, which is provided to a limitednumber of customers, states that for every work day past the duedate that Accura fails to deliver on time, the company will imposea penalty on itself of .5 percent of the total quoted price.

Accura began offering mold guarantees after evaluating thenumber of jobs it delivered late and why. It determined that difficultyin getting information from customers in a timely manner was aprimary factor.

"Some customers are indecisive and unwilling to make decisions[regarding the mold] and will drag the process out forever,"explains Beringer. "And, as moldmakers, we don't like toget tough and say, 'Hey, you're preventing me from meeting thisdelivery.'"

Accura also penalizes itself "in event of a return duesolely to our mistake from receipt of the mold/inserts and necessaryinspection information, to be offset by the number of workdaysof early delivery," says Beringer.

This guarantee, however, is null and void if the customer doesn'tcooperate. Beringer says the most difficult thing to get customersto understand is that scheduling is critical in a mold shop. Oncethe schedule begins to slip because an engineer or marketing personcan't decide if the design is optimum or functional, the wholeproject can fall significantly behind.