MMT Chats: 5 in 5 with The Plastek Group (Tooling Divisions: Triangle Tool and Penn Erie)

This special MMT Chat series delivers five great tips and ideas from leading mold builders on ways to improve efficiencies with regards to technology, workforce development and business management, in a fast-paced 5-minute chat.

My guest today is Douglas Prischak, VP Global Tooling and Engineering for The Plastek Group.

1 How do you create and maintain an employee-centered culture?

Traditional incentives, the pay and benefits, which we offer competitive wages.  Beyond that we try to engage the employees in the process and in the process improvement, training and promotion.

2 What are your top 3 best technology investments/recommendations, and why?

High-end 3D scanner, 3D printer and simulation software.

3 What is your latest process improvement?

Measuring our unintended machine timing, tracking pallet moves.

4 How do you measure success/metrics?

Lead times and returning customers.

5 How do you stay competitive/take advantage of new business opportunities?

Making sure that we're monitoring our unintended time and our pallet moves to ensure that we can do it in a quicker timeframe than our competitors. By employing those tools that I mentioned earlier, that allows us to stay on the leading edge of both cost and lead time.

This episode is brought to you by ISCAR with New Ideas for Machining Intelligently.

To access our MMT Chats playlist, click here.