Analysis_b

Running head: custom molds, inc 29th August Introduction Custom Molds Incorporation is a US based firm that embarks on production of designed molds as well as custom made plastic connectors. Having being founded by Tom and Miller in 1987, Custom Molds is headquartered in Tucson Arizona. The success of the company significantly depends on the skills of Tom and Miller who are mechanical and chemical engineers respectively. The original goal of Custom Molds was to produce high quality molds to the manufacturers of electronic connectors. Despite efforts to meet the needs of its customers, Custom Molds faced some issues in early 2009. The manufacturers joined partnership with the parts suppliers an aspect that made Custom Molds sales to decrease. During the same time, the company experienced delivery problems. According to the customers, the orders were taking four to five weeks instead of the normal three weeks to be delivered. As compared to the time of establishment when the company was producing unique products in a timely manner, Tom and Miller were now not in a position to determine when a particular order would be produced for delivery. The problem that Custom Molds face is slow production process that results to the delays. It is important to solve this problem since it will make the delivery time to be shorter thus creating strong customer loyalty, repeated purchases and increased sales for Custom Molds.
Prior to the low production process, Custom Molds was working as a team where once an order was received, a design team that consisted of a design engineer and 13 master machinists thus making it possible to produce the products in a timely manner. Once the production process, the company spent one day to test and inspect the mold and another day to clean, polish, pack and deliver the mold. Basically, the company maintained a culture of a lead time of nine weeks for delivery of the molds. Based on the changing molding industry, companies such as Modern Molding, Inc and Modern Molding Technologies among others have turned into using effective technology in their production facilities. Improving the technology in the production process is thus one of the actions that Custom Molds should adopt in order to remain competitive in the industry. For example, by the use of Thermoplastic in addition to Thermoplastic Elastomer Injection Molding, the company would be able to address the current as well as future delays in the production processes (Teich, 2008). However, the company will incur more financial resources to invest in the new technology even though the cost would be offset by future benefits in terms of higher sales and revenue. Another action that the stakeholders including the designers, machinists, customers as well as Tom and Miller should adopt is In-Process Controls. These include process cycle records as well as detailed work instructions that will ensure that quality is not compromised once the production process is normalized. One of the major issues facing Tom and Mason Miller is lack of bringing on board third parties to make their contribution regarding the performance of the company. The stakeholders should therefore come up with Design for Manufacturability (DFM) conferences that will ensure customers provide feedback and ideas on the performance of Custom Molds.
Conclusion
Once the Custom Molds improves its technology, the company would not only eliminate the delays that the customers are complaining about but also it would increase its output. Another alternative that Custom Molds has is to merge with another company such as the Modern Molding Technologies which is well established. Tom and Mason Miller should consider the financial implications of the two alternatives. In this way, the company will divert the extra resources needed to invest in new technology to other areas such as research and development or employee’s training. I think the best solution to the problem is to improve the technology in the production process since merging with another company will be a complex process that will need more financial resources to compensate the shareholders and to cater for legal process.
References
Teich, H. (2008). Technology and the Future. New York: Wadsworth Publishing.
Appendix
Figure 1: Flow chat