Moldmaking alliances = package solutions

A high degree of automation of tools, parts, and process control allows Husky's plate manufacturing line to operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The more than 25,000-sq-ft facility specializes in the design and manufacture of hot runner systems for a wide variety of molding applications, and molds for PET bottle preforms and thin-wall containers.

Since it began, Husky Injection Molding Systems (Bolton, ON) has focused on providing complete mold, molding machine, and product handling system solutions to its customers. However, Husky recently restructured its own moldmaking strategies to concentrate on better serving its core customers. Today, Husky builds only PET preform and thin-wall container tooling. In the meantime, though, Husky introduced its G series of general-purpose molding machines, bringing it into a number of different, nontraditional markets, like medical, telecommunications, cosmetics, and automotive.

In March, Husky formally launched a new program that will expand its ability to provide complete system solutions to customers in its noncore tooling markets. On a project-by-project basis, Husky has begun partnering with moldmakers that already specialize in serving such markets. Its new Mold Alliance program gives Husky's sales force the ability to provide an alliance partner's mold with a Husky molding machine and product handling auxiliaries in a fully tested system, thereby expanding and diversifying the company's customer base.

Al Robinson, Husky's Mold Alliance manager, says the customer is the biggest beneficiary: "Our customers are ensured the best solution no matter what their application, and they can deal with a single supplier source for all equipment and integration services."

Husky describes its Mold Alliance partners as being world-class moldmakers. Each specializes in a certain range and type of mold. Many of the current alliance partners have demonstrated their expertise through existing relationships with Husky. Many are long-time customers of Husky's hot runners, for instance.

Alliance partners currently include the likes of Unique Mould Makers, Tech Mold, Top-Grade, Precise, and Reddog. Another alliance partner and long-time customer is Weber Manufacturing Ltd. (Midland, ON). As a matter of fact, the concept of the Mold Alliance program was something Weber had also been considering.

An Alliance Partner Profile

Jerry Smith is sales and marketing manager at Weber Manufacturing. "We were the first moldmaker to begin discussions with Husky leading up to the creation of the Mold Alliance program, even though we weren't the first partner," Smith says, smiling. That honor went to Top-Grade Machining, a leading maker of pail molds, since Husky was closing down its industrial container mold plant in Auburn, MA and needed to continue to meet customer demand during the Auburn plant phaseout. Curiously, Smith believes that the alliance concept originally proposed was considered as a viable possibility by Husky because, unlike Top-Grade and other companies that are now alliance partners, Weber was never a direct competitor of Husky's moldmaking activities before Husky restructured its moldmaking strategies.

Weber Manufacturing, through its two divisions, Weber Tool & Mold and Nickel Tooling Technology, specializes in big molds - molds greater than 3 ft square for molding machines 1000 tons and up to 9000 tons, and molds for pallets, TVs, appliances, aerospace, and automotive.

Weber is big in automotive. Within the year, it expects to receive its TE 9000 certification (a spin-off of the Big Three's QS 9000 for toolmakers). And it has been a customer of Husky hot runners over the years, even though it also builds its own. In fact, Weber is building some big tooling for Saturn right now with Husky hot runners.

Weber, with average sales of $20 million this year, ships molds worldwide for all major molding processes, and employs 147 people, 85 percent of whom are designers, programmers, moldmakers, master moldmakers, and NC machinists. For the past 30 years, Reinhart Weber, chairman, has built one of the most technologically advanced moldmaking operations anywhere in the world.

Since 1992, Weber has invested almost $20 million in sophisticated capital equipment and in building and construction. Its capabilities sheet is the stuff of dreams. One of its most spectacular recent acquisitions is a $3 million Ingersoll full five-axis CNC high-speed machining center with five interchangeable spindles. Weber bought its first NC machine in 1979. Today all machines are NC or CNC with more than 80 percent being CNC in the 100,000-sq-ft facility.

For example, when it comes to programming, all of Weber's machines are networked to Weber's engineering offices through its own company intranet. Disks are only occasionally used. Neither are drawing tables. CAD/CAM is used 100 percent of the time. Weber has 34 Silicon Graphics workstations, running Camax Camand and Euclid/Matravision ware. The entire plant is online, and Weber also is online with its customers. Weber has been actively using the Internet for years. It uses e-mail extensively ([email protected]), has its own website (www.weberman.on.ca), and almost always now works with customers who transfer mold design data via FTP through the Internet.

Weber Manufacturing feels no urgent need to pressure Husky into landing projects through the Mold Alliance program. Nevertheless, Smith believes the program will eventually lead Weber to new customers it can pursue here at home and in the global marketplace, like South America, where the business for big molds has big potential. It's a win-win situation for Husky, too. "By working with such moldmakers, we can provide better local support, and supply complete systems to a wider variety of customers," says Robert Schad, president of Husky Injection Molding Systems.