How EOS Helped a Mold Builder Boost Efficiency, Profits and Growth

EOS stands for the Entrepreneurial Operating System. It was founded by Gino Wickman, who wrote a book called “Traction”. Wickman took over his family's company as a young entrepreneur. The business had been operating for 25 years, was drowning in debt, and wasn't successful. This is a story that many manufacturing company owners can relate to, especially in the second generation when you have to change the narrative. Wepco Plastics discovered the book in 2017.

Wepco specializes in aluminum toolmaking and short to medium-run injection molding. Its expertise lies in producing four-by-six aluminum inserts with one to four cavity molds in under three weeks, and sometimes even in under a week. They focus on customers who require quick product launches, FDA approval or need to conduct trials in new markets. They also serve customers who need smaller quantities, ranging from five parts a year for a large assembly up to a million parts.

Wepco does not need to operate in an ISO or ITAR environment, giving them more flexibility in their day-to-day operations. Speed is their primary focus and what they promise customers. “On-time delivery is where we'll live or die. When our fairly young leadership team took over in 2018, we were making money and had profitability and customers. However, we were often late with deliveries. Our culture had become a lack of culture, and we knew it was hurting us,” Vice President of Operations Amanda Wiriya, says.

The then-CFO handed “Traction” to Wiriya, saying, ‘You need to check this out. I think this could really change our story.’ Wiriya finished the book in two hours and texted him saying, “We have to do this. This is how we change the narrative. This is how we prevent the past from becoming our future story.”

The Beginning

Traction aims to help your company have a vision, gain traction and become healthy. The "healthy" aspect was the main reason Wepco implemented this system. The team went off-site to start their EOS journey by answering the eight Traction questions to help guide the team in setting targets:

1. What are the core values?
2. What is the core focus?
3. What is the 10-year target?
4. What is the marketing strategy?
5. What does this business look like in three years?
6. What do we want to accomplish in the next year?
7. What are quarterly rocks?
8. What are the current issues?

Before starting this process, Wepco didn't even have a one-year target. “If you had asked us where we wanted to be in a year, our answer would have been, ‘Well, we want the doors open.’ We realized that wasn't a healthy outlook for our business,” Wiriya says.

Once they implemented EOS at the leadership level, they decided to roll it out to the molding, tooling and support departments, beginning with the toolroom because it was a smaller group and Wiriya anticipated better buy-in. Just as the leadership team did, the tooling team went off-site to work through the EOS process with Wiriya and the VP of Manufacturing who directly oversee the tooling department.

“Although the leadership team already set the company’s vision, we wanted the tooling department to establish their vision and focus based on Wepco's four core values: (1.) Always do the right thing (2.) Never stop improving (3.) Do more and (4.) Impact your community,” says Wiriya.

The results:

• Two core values based on phrases often used by their department head: “Knock it out of the park” and “God hates a coward.”
• Vision statement: “Rooted in purpose, driven by goals and fueled by passion.”
• Mission: “To transform our customers' tooling aspirations into tangible successes.”
• Goal: “To empower our customers in just three weeks.”

Next Steps

The next order of business was to identify the company's unique aspects.

Distinctive Qualities: “First is our speed: we create aluminum molds as quickly as possible. Second is our price: we offer our products at a fraction of the cost of steel tools. Third are our partnerships: we collaborate with companies like Westminster Tool to create unique solutions for our customers. Lastly, we have a proven process: we work on only two tools at a time to meet our lead times effectively,” says Wiriya.

People: Then every 90 days, they conduct feedback sessions (not reviews) to assess the team's performance and allow them to provide feedback on leadership. They evaluate based on the company’s core values and three EOS principles: Do they get it? Do they want it? Do they have the capacity to do it? This process helps leadership ensure they have the right people in the right seats.

Data: They collect and analyze data weekly, focusing on how to implement changes based on the findings. The team meets to review their weekly schedule, projections and actual performance. They use this data to identify issues and root causes.

During these meetings, they create a list of issues and work on solving them using the principles of "kill it, keep it or combine it." The goal is not to blame individuals but to improve processes.

Processes: Focus is placed on documenting the 20% of processes that produce 80% of the results. Findings included learning that it's better to document fewer processes thoroughly and ensure they're being followed than to attempt to document everything at once.

Goal Setting: Goals are set every 90 days, called ‘rocks’. These goals are established at every company level, from the president to the newest operator. They ensure that all goals are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-based.

Accountability:  Worksheets are used to help the team think more strategically about setting goals. They write down what they want the goal to be and why they want it – the motivation.

“For example, Steve, our lead designer, is working on training our team in Cimatron and increasing their knowledge. His motivation was to empower the team to answer their own questions instead of coming to him constantly. This showed me that he understood what we're trying to achieve,” Wiriya says.

Everyone reports their progress towards the goals every week in the department meetings, whether it's the leadership team or the tool room. The aim is to gain traction consistently over the 90-day period, rather than cramming at the last minute.

“We share accountability as a team. If someone is struggling, we offer help. This accountability extends beyond our individual goals (the ‘rocks’) and our culture. If we let deadlines slide in our meetings, it will affect our ability to meet customer deadlines and undermine the value of our goal-setting process,” says Wiriya.

“They ensure that all goals are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-based.”

Level 10 Meetings:  Weekly leadership team meetings are called Level 10 meetings, a concept from the Traction methodology. The name implies that the meeting should be valued at the highest level: a 10 out of 10. These 90-minute meetings follow a structured format:

• Share good news, often personal, to build connections.
• Review scorecard, looking at 7-13 data points per department.
• Check progress on the ‘rocks’ (90-day goals).
• Discuss people, addressing any training needs or struggles.
• Talk about customers.
• Go through to-do list, assigning tasks with a seven-day deadline.

“At the end of each meeting, we rate its effectiveness. If anyone rates it lower than a seven, we add it to our issues list for discussion the following week. This process helps us accomplish over 500 small tasks throughout the year, in addition to our larger goals. It's a sustainable pace that allows us to gain significant traction over time,” says Wiriya.

Results and Importance

Wepco implemented this system and it delivered results. In 2021, about four years after starting their Traction journey, they were 41% under their profit margin target. By realigning and being more disciplined about the EOS process in 2022, they exceeded their profit margin target by 147%.

This growth not only benefited Wepco but also allowed them to invest in three other manufacturing companies in Connecticut due to the increased workload. “While we don't expect such dramatic increases every year, our goal is to build towards a sustainable level of consistent growth, hours and pay for our employees and our customers,” says Wiriya.