This Just In ... Three Leadtime Leaders Form a Joint Venture

Now this is working together, and what a powerful trio of three Leadtime Leader Award winning shops. Called The Plastics Technology Alliance, this collaboration among Mold Craft, Westminster Tool and Extreme Tool and Engineering offers ease of sourcing engineering, molds and production programs via a single quoting source that provides access to three state-of-the-art facilities specializing in innovative design, automation development, tight tolerances, and best-in-class processes and procedures for program design through production.

Leveraging each other’s best practices is instrumental in overall success. Ray Coombs, President of Westminster Tool believes, “there is strength in collaboration and Westminster Tool is excited to partner with fellow world-class organizations, Mold Craft and Extreme. Partnering with these two companies provides us an opportunity to learn and improve our operations while providing expanded offerings to our clients. Together we offer a wide range of services that will enable us to better address our clients’ diverse challenges.”

The Plastics Technology Alliance is focused on offering clients a trusted go-to source with capacity, versatile experience and expertise that can’t be beaten.

“Looking back we can see tracks in the deep snow that show innovation and unique company cultures that have helped each individual company to push the moldmaking industry to a new level and this is yet another example of collaboration and innovation. These are major factors in MoldMaking Technology’s Leadtime Leaders,” Justin McPhee, VP Engineering, Mold Craft (Willernie, Minnesota) says.

When I asked how these three competitors can collaborate, Coombs says, “The truth is, I view Mold Craft and Extreme Tool & Engineering as friends and mentors versus competitors. We created Plastics Technology Alliance because we share common core values and recognized the potential for our organizations to grow. For these reasons we are excited to improve not only each other, but the moldmaking industry.”

Mike Zacharias Extreme Tool & Engineering President elaborates, “Justin, Tim, Ray and I have known each other for 15-20 years. The AMBA has helped cultivate the relationship we have, as did Amerimold and MoldMaking Technology magazine. We have helped each other over the years, informally, and we have known for quite some time we could count on each other when we need to.”

Believe it or not, their discussions began fairly informal in nature, but began to pick up steam over last six months. AMBA events have been a common thread as all of them work on and serve this organization together and many of their in-depth discussions occurred in conjunction with AMBA activities.

“We knew that collaboration and formal refinement of our Alliance would NOT be easy, especially since it’s ‘different,’ but we believed in the ‘why’ far too much to let this sit still without some serious soul searching and action. Collectively, there are things that are special and different about each of us, when we bring these talents, capabilities, and capacity to the market TOGETHER, THEN we make a Difference!”  Zacharias says.

 

 

“For example, Extreme recently sent two teams to Westminster Tool for a full day of culture immersion. We sent six people from our plant to work ON our business versus IN our business, which is never easy to do. More importantly, we asked the Westminster Team to take a full two days away from their day-to-day client activities to do nothing but teach us what the Westminster Way is all about. I can honestly say, I have never seen a better investment of time with anyone else, anywhere, as my team returned energized and excited about what we could become and what they saw Team Westminster already was from a culture and teamwork standpoint,” Zacharias says. 

The Plastics Technology Alliance is focused on offering clients a trusted go-to source with capacity, versatile experience and expertise that can’t be beaten. “The desire to continue providing world-class solutions, continuous improvement and increase capacity bandwidth were drivers in developing this joint venture. Many of our clients already work with one or more of us. Now, they have access to the best of each company through one central, easy-to-use, resource. We expect clients to benefit from different perspectives, capacity, capability, innovation and total turnkey solutions,” states Mike Zacharias, President of Extreme.

The partnering companies will be attending NPE2018 in Orlando, May 7-11, to discuss more about how the Plastics Technology Alliance will leverage their expertise and specialties to offer a single source for engineering, moldmaking and production needs.

“Now, they have access to the best of each company through one central, easy-to-use, resource. We expect clients to benefit from different perspectives, capacity, capability, innovation and total turnkey solutions.”