Custom Mold Inc Case Study

Situation:

Custom Mold Inc. is a father-and-son firm located in Arizona that manufactures custom-designed molds for plastic parts and produces custom-made plastic connectors for the electronic Industry (Custom Molds, Inc. Case, 2012). It was formed in 1987 to manufacture custom-designed and high-quality molds for electronic connectors where the customer must work closely with the designer to provide a unique product according to standards. After the company reputation has grown for providing high quality molds, the owners decided to expand into limited manufacture of plastic parts. As the years went, total order numbers have remained the same but clients’ needs have shifted. Therefore, the changing strategies within their customers’ business changed order needs in an unexpected way. All fabrication and production operations were housed in a single facility and like processes and similar equipment grouped in various places in the planet as shown in Figure 1.

Complication:

The design team which consists of 13 master mechanists and one design must meet with each customer that has unique specifications for their orders. The same mechanist each time reviews the specification for each customer and approves the design. Each customer has different specifications where a unique customized mold and parts must be designed. The raw material wouldn’t be ordered until the purchasing department received the specification of the customer order. This can lead into a delay in the order fulfillment process. Another complication that was facing Custom Mold Inc is changing of the industry and customers’ requirements where the orders for customized parts have increased and the molds decreased over the years.

Problem:

As the number of orders for plastic parts increased, the company was unable to deliver the order to the end customer on time. There was a bottleneck in production of parts but no one was able to figure it out. Custom Mold Inc. has limited resources to produce huge batches of custom orders. This has led into late deliveries to the customers which might damage the reputation of the company. The quality of the molds and parts decreased because Custom Mold was unable to manage producing a large volume of customers’ orders which resulted into defective parts being returned. The resources such as labor and machines were not enough to handle the incoming orders. As illustrated in Table 1,

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