Lessons on partnering with customers

What's a moldmaker to do when there is more work than employees to do it? JM Mold Inc., a Piqua, OH-based moldmaker with a plant in Easley, SC, ran into that problem two years ago. Ed Kinsella, sales and marketing manager for the company, tried to recruit local talent, but with so many mold shops in the Dayton area, JM wasn't having any luck.

Kinsella then got the idea for "partnerships" with molders and machine shops as a way to tap into local talent without raiding other shops for employees, and expand not only JM's business but other business in the area. Are these alliances as easy as they sound? No, says Kinsella, who learned some hard lessons about what it takes to be and have a "partner" after one relationship with a molding company fell apart.

The First Try

In December 1995, Kinsella approached a molding company to which he'd been referred as a possible partner. "We could do the molds and it could do the molding," says Kinsella, explaining how the partnership would work.

JM started off slowly at first. It took three months to get a few jobs from the molder, but on one job JM beat the delivery time by two weeks, doing a 12-week job in 10. Then came an emergency mold repair job on which JM pulled "some all-nighters" to finish the work and get the mold back in the press. JM's mold polisher, who owns his own airplane, even flew some spare parts down to the molder for an emergency repair.

"We really pulled out all the stops for them," says Kinsella. "It was a good relationship and we were doing a lot of things they appreciated." And the molder showed that appreciation by making payments to JM earlier than required. "It was a nice, easy relationship that evolved," Kinsella adds.

Trouble Brewing

However, behind the scenes at the molder, the engineer that JM worked with wasn't getting along with his management. He spent a lot of time at JM, something that his bosses didn't like because it took away from his job at the molder. And the engineer complained often to JM about his bosses. Then the inevitable happened; the engineer was gone.

JM then began dealing directly with the salesperson, which improved the relationship somewhat. Quoting seemed to be easier and things smoothed out. Then, the molder hired a new engineer who was thrust into a situation in which he was told, "Here's your job, here are your problems, and here's the tool shop you deal with." At the time, the molder had a very demanding customer who wasn't very knowledgeable in plastics, but knew what it didn't like. "The engineer was thrown into the fire and felt like he was forced to deal with JM," says Kinsella.

There were material shrinkage problems that threw the part out of tolerance. The engineer wanted JM to rework the steel, but JM wanted the molder to work on the problem through processing. At one point, the engineer told JM, "I don't care what the steel looks like, it's the part that matters to me." This didn't endear the engineer to JM's moldmakers.

There were some other jobs that had problems too, and the new engineer wasn't as patient or forgiving as the previous engineer had been. "It got to the point that the molder decided it didn't want us to finish the mold and pulled the job," says Kinsella. In a matter of a few months, JM went from hero to enemy, and a partnership went down the drain.

Lessons Learned

Kinsella says the lessons learned during the two years with that molder partner have helped him in forming subsequent partnerships. He has now established several "really solid" partnerships with molders and machine shops, whose relationships have benefited from the lessons learned. Kinsella calls his formula for maintaining successful partnerships "PIZZA."

To show appreciation to the molder's employees for accommodating the unexpected demands, Kinsella threw a lunch-time pizza party for the whole company. "Now, they want to sample molds for us because they remember that we brought them lunch for going above and beyond the call of duty," says Kinsella. "That's the key: appreciating the whole organization."

Perhaps one of the best rules of thumb when creating a partnership, says Kinsella, is to have more than just one person on your side at the other company. This goes for alliances with molders, moldmakers, or with OEM customers. The first engineer at the molder thought JM walked on water; others in the molder's organization weren't as familiar with the company. When the engineer left, the relationship left, too.

"Develop relationships with those all up and down the food chain in the partner company," says Kinsella, whose truck driver gave JM logo hats to the shipping and receiving department at one molder. Now, JM's truck gets unloaded first; the receiving department doesn't make him wait. "Even if the specific individual doesn't leave, it's still important to develop relations with everyone," says Kinsella.

Another molder became a partner after performing mold sampling for JM, which allowed the molder to see the type and quality of molds JM builds. The molder soon began asking JM to quote molds for its customers. Kinsella says that the way to approach a potential partner is to go to a company and say, "'Hey, I've got some work for you.' This approach works a lot better than saying 'Hey, have you got any work for me?'"