a system centering on sound manufacturing concepts to apply to the moldmaking process. It is effectively transforming moldmaking to mold manufacturing.

That is, they are assembling a series of standards and procedures that they know to be practical for everyone involved in the process to understand and to apply, which would yield predictable results in areas of design, programming and machining.

First-rate Mold is coupling that with a palletized system where they mount both electrodes and mold components to pallets and cut everything relative to a standardized, pallet-mounted gage ball. This gage ball also is intended to be the center of the mold component design and programming systems they use. The palletizing is done to speed setup time. The gage ball is applied to not only speed setup time, but to have one point of consistency in which to reference mold design, programming, machining and inspection detail.

First-rate Mold effectively associates its mold design, machine programming and material cutting in-line with the pallet-mounted gage ball. In that way they can certify that all they machine is exactly as all they design and program.

The idea is to drive the mold manufacturing process through mold design engineering and machine programming. In order to do that effectively, it is First-rate Mold’s master moldmakers who are being trained as mold designers/machine programmers. The main goal is to reduce the highest cost of moldmaking, labor by maximizing untended machining, including lights out night/weekend work.

Transforming moldmaking from a labor-intensive business into a capital-intensive business will allow mold shops to be on a similar cost structure as foreign moldmakers and be more adaptable for growth than the domestic competition. Pay for performance moldmaking is a very good way to offer customers something that the competition has not offered.