Tooling Product News

Tool Transfers – Strategies for Success

By Glen Embry

Transferring tools can be a very tricky business. There are at least four main types of tool transfers; new tools transferring from a tryout shop or tool builder, an intra company press to press transfer, an intra company plant to plant transfer, and an external transfer from a customer or a competitor anywhere in the world. Tool transfers can be friendly, neutral or hostile, as you can imagine, with significant differences between the extremes. According to the Plante & Moran North American Plastics Industry Study it is estimated that upwards of 360,000 injection molding tools will be transferred this year due to the downturn and restructuring of the injection molding industry.

In this article I would like to focus on plant to plant tool transfers. We will explore a couple of different scenarios of plant to plant transfers with a couple of different scenarios played out. Let's start with an all too common tool transfer, with the current state of our economy.

Your biggest customer calls and says, "XYZ molding company announced a week ago, that they are going out of business. The employees arrived this morning to find the doors of the factory chained closed. We have selected your company to receive 30 of our tools immediately that XYZ had been running for us. We will need production parts tomorrow morning from two of the tools. We will need production parts by next Monday on three other tools. We have a two week bank (safety stock) on the rest of the tools. Oh by the way the people on our production line are not very happy about the plant closure, because many of them had relatives that worked at XYZ, which could cause them to scrutinize the parts a bit more in the beginning, so the parts will have to be flawless."

That's what you get for being such a great supplier. Now what do you do? Thirty tools that have to be sampled in two weeks or less and you have no information about the jobs. I have lived through similar scenarios in my career. Sales says "yes we can do it," we will figure out how when the molds arrive. In this example we would be lucky to get any information about the tools, machines, process set-ups and could actually receive molds that have not been cared for very well, or maybe deliberately abused. You can be sure that the quality expectations are going to be higher than ever.

Another example of a plant to plant transfer might go like this. Your corporate office calls and says "Plant One” has been awarded a new project which will overwhelm their machine capacity. We have a 30-mold program currently running in Plant One that we would like to move to your plant (Plant Two) to open up machine time at Plant One. We have checked your machine list/capacity and you should have more than enough available time in identical machines in your plant. We have budgeted for you to send tool makers, process engineers and quality people to visit Plant One to observe the jobs running and collect critical information. We will have their counterparts at Plant One available to spend as much time as needed reviewing the jobs with them. Plant One is currently building a six week bank of certified parts for each tool. We will have the Plant One team that your people work with follow the tools to your plant. They will assist with the sampling and the start of production. All the processes have been developed and documented using DECOUPLED MOLDING^SM techniques, learned through Systematic Molding classes. These tools all have cavity pressure sensors and thermocouples installed. The in-mold process templates will be transferred through our network to Plant Two's for process matching. Our customer has agreed to this plan and will send the appropriate people to assist during sampling and production start ups as well."

In the second scenario you would have total cooperation from all sides. You have all the information you can hope for, all the way down to the in-mold cavity pressure and temperature data (templates) to match. You also have processors at both the sending and receiving plants that have gone through the same training programs and use the same systematic molding methodologies.

Which one of these transfers would you want to sign up for?

If your reaction to the second scenario is, "no transfer could ever be that good." Ask yourself why not? We have customers that do it this way regularly. If you think this scenario would cost too much, just think about the costs associated with doing it blind. Not to mention the mistakes, the black eyes, time wasted and the after costs that come from just slapping the molds in machines and squirting plastic, that is, if the tools even fit in your machines. I have witnessed tool transfers where the customer was standing there ready to watch the sample, when the team realized that the mold wouldn't fit between the machine’s tie bars, or there was the time the tool fit but the barrel didn't have enough shot size to fill out the mold cavities..... Not fun.

Bottom line, there is always risk associated with transferring tools, but that risk can be evaluated, managed and minimized. The more information about the tools you can get before the transfer, the better your odds are for success. Cavity pressure data is the best method to capture and match an injection molding process, but if cavity pressure curves (templates) are not available, the process can still be documented in such a way as to make it a machine independent universal set up.

Experience has taught me this; the first step with any tool transfer has to be an evaluation of the risk factors for transferring the mold. It is essential that you gather as much information as possible about the mold before it arrives, if possible. Simply knowing if the tool made good parts in the machine it ran in prior to the transfer and verifying the machine you plan to transfer to is capable, is a good starting place. The more information you have going into the transfer, the more likely the transfer will be successful.

In today’s market, a competitor can purchase a building just like yours, they can purchase the same machines you have and they can hire employees like yours or they may even hire your employees. What sets your company apart from your competition is your knowledge and how you utilize it. Educating yourself and your team on what increases the risk during tool transfers and then arming yourself with knowledge and the tools to overcome the risks, is the only way successful companies will survive the onslaught of tools poised to move over the next few months. Keep in mind that on-time delivery and quality are expected in today’s market, but these services are no longer what will give your company a competitive edge.

Glen Embry is a consultant/trainer with RJG, Inc. Prior to his current position with RJG, Glen worked at World Class Plastics, Inc. and spent 19 years with DJ Inc./Nypro. Glen has held a variety of positions including set-up technician, processor, assistant foreman, cell owner, technical manager, process development engineer and plant manager. He has completed the US Department of Labor’s Molder Apprenticeship program and is an RJG Certified Master Molder Trainer.

For more information about RJG, Inc., visit www.rjginc.com.

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