MTD invests $1M to expand production capacity
Courtesy/MTD Micro Molding
Dennis Tully, president of MTD Micro Molding
Charlton medical device manufacturer MTD Micro-Molding has added several new pieces of equipment to the floor, leading to the company surpassing its annual earmark for investment-related costs. The company has hired its first ever research-and-development engineer. In an interview with WBJ, President Dennis Tully spoke about those purchases and the company’s vision for the future.
What investments has the company made recently?
Major purchases were the Mitsubishi MX600 oil wire EDM Machine, two new molding cells and gas chromatography equipment.
Which of those was the most important?
The Mitsubishi EDM machine. It really helped expand our tooling capacity and increase our lead time on projects. The others were important, but this really stands out as the most important.
How much has MTD spent on those purchases?
It was a pretty sizeable year for investment. We spent a little over $1 million. We normally shoot for around 10 percent of revenue, but this year we were in excess of that. It was a hefty investment year.
Why was this year bigger?
These pieces were in our plans for a while. They just came together around the same time. The EDM machine was in last year’s plan, but we didn’t get it done. That’s why we wound up spending more this year than we thought we would.
Other investments we made last year were really to keep up with production. This was more about increasing capacity as well as keeping up with production.
How have these purchases made MTD better?
They support our core values: be the first, be the best and ever forward. The EDM machine helps us do that. It’s a piece of equipment giving us the ability to create geometry we weren’t able to create previously. It helps us maintain the edge in our tooling. We really need to have a great tooling capability, and this machine makes that a lot easier for us.
Why is the hiring of an R&D engineer significant?
Before we had someone dedicated to R&D, it was done when we had had time. It was done by people responsible for bringing new products online and solving and problems cropping up in production.
Being able to dedicate someone to that full time lets us take that list of things we wanted to do and makes sure we’re continually moving forward.
It’s important for our future to look at areas of concern helping us make our customers’ products better and to study things to enable us to promote smaller features and better control on the science behind the materials.
What other investments is the company eyeing?
The next piece of equipment we’re investigating is a CT scanning-type piece of equipment. We outsource that now, and that’s worked out well for us. Having that machine would be a little more convenient and allow us to stay ahead of our competition and do things faster with a shorter lead time.
Has the company made any progress on its 12,000-square-foot building expansion?
We have the zoning approved. That was the step that really needed to happen before we could invest too much in the project. That’s behind us, and we’re working with an architect now to finalize the details to get the building permit and go out to bid.
Our expectation is it will begin in the spring.
This interview was conducted and edited for length and clarity by WBJ Staff Writer Zachary Comeau.
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