Feng Ping, Fiocchis blend East and West with great success—Part 3

"Of the hundreds and hundreds of sales calls I've made around the U.S., I've never had a guy say, 'I just had someone come in exactly like you.'"

Seated at a small table in the hotel lounge, James Fiocchi is flanked by a box of sample parts on one side and a three-ring binder full of business cards on the other. It's an overcast spring day in Colorado, and Fiocchi has set up a temporary home at a hotel near the airport from which he's making sales calls. In between his morning and afternoon appointments, we talk about the business he founded with his brother, John, which, at that point, is not even one year old but already growing rapidly.

As he flips through the binder, each page is a Who's Who of custom injection molding in the U.S. James say his company's primary customers are American molding and tooling businesses, accounting for some 90% of Feng Ping's sales. Don't let the Chinese name and wholly owned operation there fool you. "We are in fact, Americans, building for the American molder and the American toolmaker," James says. For some American shops, the high-quality tooling, reliable service, and low cost of Feng Ping have allowed them to double the size of their molding business in the last two years.

'Let's stop lying to each other'

The second floor of Feng Ping's Feng Gang, China manufacturing facility consists of a parts showcase and conference room at one end, electrical discharge machining (EDM) on the other, with administrative and engineering offices in between. Along the back wall are two larger office spaces with four desks apiece. These house Feng Ping's management, including James and John Fiocchi, who sit in a common room with their direct reports, sharing space but no walls or boundaries with people they have worked with for nearly 20 years. Each room features a traditional table for serving tea, which is offered immediately and involves multiple, ritualistic steps to prepare.

Feng Ping, Fiocchis blend East and West with great success—Part 3

John's at his desk recalling nearly 27 years of doing business in China. Now a molder and moldmaker, he's been on the other side of the negotiating table in China, trying to source production in the at-times mercurial country. "At Feng Ping, we have a U.S. thinking process, not a Chinese one," John says. "I call on people and they say, 'We've got our guy in China, we're happy.' I say, 'Let's stop lying to each other.'" At this point, Feng Ping's sales calls are often about getting prospective customers out of the mindset that all Chinese molds require repairs, with molders applying the savings in upfront costs on stateside retooling.

The nerve center

At the heart of Feng Ping's success is its mold design and moldmaking operations. On the second floor, opposite John's and James' offices, is the company's "nerve center," as James describes it. Four distinct cubicle areas distinguish four different business operations: production management, QC and PPAP, design, and buying management. The company has Pro/E and Unigraphics design software, with 14 seats when IMM visited, as well as Autodesk Insight Advisor Advanced for flow simulation. At the time, the company also operated 15 sinker and wire EDMs apiece, along with 12 CNCs. Maximum mold-build weight is 20,000 lb, with a 15,000-lb tool for a generator base being crated out during my visit.

The company has 10 designers, with the 32-year-old head of the department having designed tools since he was 16. Feng Ping works to turn around tool designs to customers within 24 hours of receiving an order. In my short time at the plant, staying three nights, Feng Ping takes orders for six tools and tool programs.

While the company doesn't do heat treating, it does have in-house polishing, a skill that has largely disappeared in North America. Dressed in blue shirts, the polishing team consists entirely of women who work at a table on the main floor just off the surface grinders and CNCs, hand-polishing molds with homemade and mechanical tools, including small polishing stones connected to chopsticks for difficult-to-reach areas.

Typically, Feng Ping estimates lead times of 20-30 days for most tools, with up to 40 for more complex, larger ones. That's not to say they can't work faster. Among the company's parts showcase is a hands-free towel dispenser. Feng Ping took on the entire project, including assembly, building 23 molds in 30 days and even sourcing custom springs and rubber rollers in half a day. Another mold build, with a seven-plate construction and 816-part bill of material, was constructed in 32 days.

Tooling masters

On the machining floor, the operation is run by Feng Ping's tooling masters, a title that can only be bestowed on an individual if he has built more than 500 molds. When IMM visited, Feng Ping had six tooling masters, with an EDM, wirecut, and CAM master on the floor at all times. Each tooling master can supervise eight to 10 workers, and the company now has nine, with three more working through its apprentice program. That program is part of the company's effort to raise new talent in-house. "There's a Chinese saying that one bug can bring a tree down," John says. "Well, one bad worker can bring a factory down." One worker on the cusp of becoming a tooling master is nicknamed Superman, for both his strength and determination. At the far end of the shop, two 100-lb dumbbells rest on the shop floor. "If you can't lift those, you have no business in a mold shop," James says, explaining one of the first steps in the interview process.

Feng Ping's future

Now largely vacant save for a piecemeal line in the works, the third story of Feng Ping's 75,000-ft² plant holds a big part of the company's future. "Assembly is the next phase," John says. "When you're selling tooling, you have to sell every day. When you're selling assembly, you just have to wait for a reorder." When IMM visited, Feng Ping's business had been split 80:20 between toolmaking and assembly. Directly adjacent to Feng Ping's operation is a mirror-image facility that would allow the company to double its space. In November 2010, that prospect became a reality.

Feng Ping signed an expansion lease on the factory next door and is scheduled to take delivery on the site in February 2011. In the five months between that November update and IMM's tour, the company also added 35 employees and a host of new equipment.

New machinery that's being utilized 24/7 includes a 520-ton Haitian injection molding machine, featuring a U.S.-made screw. A 630-ton Welltec, L-style, two-shot press with a 1.2 meter rotary platen, reportedly one of only two such systems in Southern China, and a 350-ton Haitian are on order. On the machining side, the company added three CNC machines (Joint 1370, Everwin 1060, and a Everwin 75 with a 10-bit automatic tool changer), with two more CNCs on order, including another high-speed Everwin 1060 and Everwin 75 with 10-bit automatic tool changer.

As those investments would indicate, business is still booming at Feng Ping. John estimated that in 2011 the company would build 200-250 more molds than it did in 2010. "We are now in the process of planning to produce 450-500 molds in 2011," John said, "and have already ordered some of the equipment needed to support this growth."

Campfire songs

Three months after James Fiocchi laid out his and his brother's business plan at that airport hotel, I'm in Feng Gang, China, seeing the explosive growth firsthand. Sample parts on the table become real, complex tools in front of me, and molders from those leading U.S. shops in James' business-card binder are touring the facility with me in the flesh, taking in the amazing story for themselves.

These are heady times at Feng Ping, and celebratory fireworks are in order. With the entire plant gathered in an abandoned quarry a few miles from Feng Gang's factory, a 15-minute display of fireworks has come to an end, and Feng Gang's employees are gathering up the scorched cardboard remnants of the evening's pyrotechnics, building a pile at the center of the quarry. A fire is started, and when John can't cajole bashful workers into singing Chinese campfire songs, he starts one himself and the others quickly join in, a chorus of American and Chinese voices, singing in harmony by the light of a fast-burning bonfire.—[email protected]