MMT Blog
Webinar: Maximizing Tax Savings for Mold Builders
In December Congress made the R&D tax credit permanent, and it was improved with the Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes Act of 2015 by allowing eligible small businesses to offset the Alternative Minimum Tax and select start-up companies to offset the employer’s payroll tax liabilities.
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Apple Employs an Abundance of Skilled Labor – In China
Did anyone see the December 20, 2015, edition of 60 Minutes, which featured an interview of Apple CEO Tim Cook? A colleague brought it to my attention recently and I watched it with great interest because it actually provided a very good view into a very secretive company and covered not only the issues of encryption technology and corporate taxes, but also why the company is not bringing work back to the USA from China.
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Reshoring Remains Strong in 2015
About 200,000 manufacturing jobs have been brought to the U.S. from offshore in the last six years, according to Reshoring Initiative calculations. That gain is the result of both new reshoring and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in our manufacturing sector. However, there has been some negative news about reshoring recently that Harry Moser founder and president of the Reshoring Initiative wants to address.
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Gardner Business Index: Moldmaking for November 2015
With a reading of 47.5, the Gardner Business Index for moldmaking shows that the moldmaking industry contracted in November for the sixth month in a row. However, the rate of contraction was considerably slower than in previous months, and the index clearly broke out of the downtrend it had been on since February 2015.
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Can You Build a Mold for This?
Over the years, I have listened as my dad related stories of how someone called him or came to his mold shop to enlist his help with making a new product that they invented, usually for the consumer market.
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NIMS Credentials Help Lead Next Gen Workforce Development
Maintaining national industry standards inside the classroom is no easy task but the faculty and staff of Eastern Westmoreland Career and Technology Center once again rose to the challenge and officially renewed the national accreditation of the Machine Tool Technology program.
Read MoreThink Outside the Box
By nature moldmakers are producers, problem-solvers and inventors. So maybe it’s time to actually make that unique product solution you have rolling around in your head, and Kickstarter can help.
Read MoreThe Designer's Edge: More on Lifters
Lifters can cause read through and gloss issues due to a lack of cooling, deflection (as mentioned in last blog) and the lifter not being flush with the cavity surface.
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More Companies to Benefit from the R&D Tax Credit!
After learning that the Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes Act of 2015 was signed into law late last month, I got a call from past MMT "tax" contributor Scott Schmidt of the Black Line Group. The vote on the Act prompted him to reach out to me to discuss the changes, so I wanted to quickly share them with MMT readers.
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Is Your Company Social?
Does your company utilize social media to promote its products and services? MMT was in receipt of a press announcement from MME Group, a St. Paul, Minnesota-based box build contract manufacturer of small- to medium-sized parts and products, telling us they’ve launched a new, two-and-a-half minute YouTube video and channel to promote the company’s services. It got us thinking about how many other companies, and in particular, mold manufacturers, are doing this, too?
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New Year, New Opportunities to Advance
Happy New Year! It’s January 2016 and that means there’s a whole new year ahead of us that’s filled with new opportunities to advance company goals and profitability.
Read MorePVD Coatings and Tool Steel Selection
Mold users are driving an increased use of physical vapor deposition (PVD) coatings, and this has generated questions and concerns from mold builders as they select materials from which to manufacture their molds. PVD coatings are a family of very thin (approximately 2 to 5 microns) metal layers applied in a vacuum chamber using a plasma process.
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