About Plastic Components

  • May 19, 2009

    • Modern Plastics


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    Many of our pages each year are necessarily devoted to the tools and materials - and their markets - that we think our readers need to hear about. But we also like to turn the spotlight full on those readers once each year, the processors who ultimately bring all the elements together. They're not an attention-seeking bunch, but nonetheless we want to recognize some of the outstanding people who make plastics happen. Here's our 2009 class of Notable Processors.

    Tom Duffey

    How many processors can say their best month ever was January 2009? Probably only a handful, and the others likely started business that month. But Tom Duffey's been at the helm of Plastic Components Inc. (PCI; Germantown, WI) since he opened it in September 1989.

    Duffey attributes his frim's success to two decisions, one made before it opened and one made about 5 years ago. As an MBA student at Northwestern's Kellogg school, he developed his idea of a fully automated injection molding facility. His professor scoffed but he pursued the plan, opening the shop "with three presses and some makeshift conveyors." Now PCI runs 42 full-automated cells. "We are automated as humanly possible," he says.

    That automation separated him from the pack for many years but, in about 2004, he saw the need for more, so he made marketing and new business development a strategic business initiative. Patience plays a part too. "We've two guys at (a foreign-owned OEM) today, " he said on the day he spoke with MPW, "but it took us two years to get the appointment." Once in the door, though, PCI rarely leaves without new business; the molder tools up about 60 new parts/yr, he says, with most of that new business from customers "who'd never even heard of us before."

    How can a molder afford to devote so much time, effort and payroll to marketing and business devlopment? Duffey turns the question around: how can a molder not afforrd it? For PCI, staying fully automated has freed the capital necessary to invest in marketing, business development, plus a major investent in Moldflow software and in an ERP system from IQMS.

     

    Originally published in the MODERN PLASTICS, April 2009.

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