Moldmaker Investments in 2017

Now that we have introduced each of the 11, new editorial advisory board members, we are taking this last issue of the year to share their companies’ best investments in 2017 and the return on investment that they experienced. In the words of our new editorial advisory board members:

“We purchased and implemented a CRM for our sales and engineering team. It’s been helpful having customer information documented in one location that’s easily accessible by multiple departments.”

“On the molding side of the business, replacing older, hydraulic injection molding machines with new, all-electric ARBURG, Inc. machines has been our smartest investment. This purchase greatly improved our efficiency on those presses and increased our capacity, which has helped us as we prepare to build a new medical molding facility for additional capacity in the first quarter of 2018. On the tooling side, our new, five-axis machining center and the proper training for this technology has been our best investment. It has given us the ability to manufacture much more efficiently by eliminating a lot of setups and manual tasks and by helping us be more aggressive in our pricing strategy to win more projects for both businesses.”

“The vertical growth of the manufacturing process into our own facility in California. We have experienced better control of product quality and time to market.”

“Exhibiting at Amerimold. We made relevant introductions with 30 companies and we’re already quoting for a few of them. Some have already toured our facility and the conversations are ongoing. Our all-in investment was around $5,000 (which included the booth, marketing materials and travel). We anticipate being awarded the mold and molding to produce four-part numbers for a new automotive customer. We experienced ROI in under three months!”

“People and training. We hired some fresh faces, brought a few up through our apprentice program and did some software training. It will pay off in the long run when the newbies catch on and perform like journeymen.” 

To continue this sharing theme, we are bringing back our EAB Insight column that features member perspectives on a variety of moldmaking-related topics. Visit the MMT page on EAB Insights to read past articles.