Transforming Moldmaking into Digital Industrial Manufacturing

Not only has the acquisition of mold builders by SyBridge Technologies Inc. caught my attention, but their approach to growth through transparency, standardization and digitization has piqued my interest further.

SyBridge Technologies was created in May of 2019 and is based in Metro Detroit, Michigan. Crestview Partners, located in New York, saw an opportunity in the moldmaking industry, noting that it is very fragmented and without a global solutions provider. “The mold market overall is in the billions of dollars and within plastics, we see a lot of opportunities,” Tony Nardone, CEO of SyBridge Technologies, says. As a result, SyBridge decided to go with a rollup strategy that gives options to customers on a worldwide basis.

The team is focused on consolidation and diversification to grow into a global industrial technology company centered on mobility, life sciences and technology and services using best practices and standardization from concept to manufacturing.

“We do feasibility studies, prototyping, fixtures, end of arm tooling [EOAT], manufacture molds and even service the tool—offering a full solution to the customer,” Nardone says.

The first acquisition was Concours Mold in Windsor, Ontario. Today, SyBridge has 11 facilities within three business units:

1. Mobility (three facilities)
2. Life Sciences (two facilities)
3. Tech & Services (six facilities)

As part of SyBridge, two, three or four of these facilities can help manage and take on a customer’s work. In addition, they can take on larger packages. “We view ourselves as a true solutions provider, an industrial technology company that takes on a total package. We can take all the data and manage the platform,” Nardone says.

Moreover, as they build the company, they consider businesses based on reputation, longevity, quality, location and customer proximity. For example, SyBridge saw an opportunity to grow the Tech & Services business unit in western Michigan by acquiring Action Tool in Grand Rapids. This small shop has been around 25 years, has an excellent reputation and is close to many of SyBridge’s customers. “We plan to expand the facility with a 15,000-square-foot addition and a larger crane,” Nardone says.  As a result, facilities that make up the Tech & Services unit are geared up for the big stuff with 40- to 50-ton cranes. 

With other acquisitions on the horizon, including operations in Europe, SyBridge will be over $200 million in equity. When asked how big he wants SyBridge to get, Nardone says, “We’ll keep looking at every opportunity to serve our customers better.”

 

It’s About the People

“Growth demands a willingness to change. We want to grow organically and through mergers and acquisitions [M&A], so we must learn to work differently. What processes can we change? What do we need to do to build a mold differently? How do we do better program management? There’s always a better way,” Nardone says.

Change is scary, so human resources is key to managing the fear. Nardone emphasizes the importance of being transparent about the plan and knocking down the silos. “We are a matrix organization. People have dual reporting relationships across the business units,” he says.

Their strong centralized team helps manage the people and processes of each facility within the three business units. For example, purchasing, human resources, finance, IT and sales are centralized with standard processes in all the business units. All this yields more transparency within the business, so the workforce understands the business.

For example, leadership shares details about a job they are quoting, the size of the package and how much it is worth, so employees understand why the company is taking on different work with different margins.  

“At the end of the day, the customer is always going to drive mold builders, to be more competitive, so we need to figure out how to compete and be more efficient, and standardization and digitization are essential,” Nardone says.

 

It’s All in the Data

The key to acquisitions and growth is integration and standardization across the board. For example, SyBridge Technologies have one common customer relationship module. Everyone they acquire goes into one CRM, enabling the unit presidents to see their pipeline, current opportunities and high potentials and then manage the business. “There’s no data corruption. We can improve lead time because now we have one dataset,” Nardone says.

Next is a common ERP system to understand the financial rollups and capacities in each one of these facilities. The company says it is launching Epicor at the first facility in April/May of this year.

SyBridge is also moving into the digitization phase with Industry 4.0. “How do we take more of that data and use it to do predictive maintenance [PM]?” Nardone asks.

SyBridge’s platform for managing its tooling and manufacturing data is the SyBridge IOT cloud, making everything they do more accurate, efficient and valuable to its customers. This offering became a reality with the purchase of Toolstats in 2021.

“What we are accomplishing goes beyond just collecting and storing data in the cloud with easy access on mobile devices. We aim to provide solutions that make our customers more effective and efficient.

SyBridge offers it with every tool as their value proposition. It provides customers a cloud-based, digital services offering to manage products more efficiently throughout their lifecycles, from design to manufacturing, to service and repair. It marks a significant expansion in the digitization of manufacturing solutions offered by SyBridge.

“What we are accomplishing goes beyond just collecting and storing data in the cloud with easy access on mobile devices,” Nardone notes. “We aim to provide solutions that make our customers more effective and efficient. Not just hardware, but hardware combined with software and Industry 4.0-driven data solutions.

“Typically, when you build a new tool or service a tool, you either send the data on a thumb drive or on a CD, but instead, we put QR codes on our molds. Then, the customer takes a photo with his phone and downloads the data onto a computer, providing instantaneous data.”

The first phase of this process is to make sure that every tool has a SyBridge IoT tag on it, with a QR code. Then, the approved administrator clicks on the QR code to retrieve data associated with that tool. The next phase involves asset tracking, then maintenance tracking. This ultimately takes SyBridge and its customers to PM.

Currently, the company is working on some smart mold concepts with pressure and temperature sensors on their molds that talk to the press.

It’s all about data now, according to SyBridge—data analytics and data access—which supports SyBridge’s vision of doing it right the first time.