Focus on silicone reinvigorates M.R. Mold

BREA, Calif.—Rick Finnie was worried his company didn't have a niche.

Back in 2000, the American Mold Builders Association brought in Clare Goldsberry to address mold makers during a time when the industry was losing a lot of production overseas, namely China. Fellow mold makers were trying to do everything possible to keep production in the U.S.—even lobbying Congress. According to Finnie, Goldsberry had a different solution.

He said she challenged the group to find a niche. After the show, Finnie, president of M.R. Mold & Engineering, didn't see a clear niche for his firm, until he took it back to basics and started focusing on silicone again.

“Most people don't seem to realize that we have a background in building plastic injection tools,” Finnie said while hosting the AMBA on a tour of his operations in February. “We seem to have ourselves centered to where we build silicone tools and plastic tools, which makes us ideal for overmolding projects. If we make both of the tools, we bear sole responsibility for how it's going to work out.”

The firm and its 30 employees have succeeded in chasing silicone-related business, including the medical industry. In 2008, M.R. Mold acquired another portion of the building where its primary facility in Brea is headquartered to open a technical center. It includes five molding machines and provides testing and sampling of tools.

In 2015, the firm purchased a five-axis tooling machine, which allows it to work with more complex geometries. The machine reduces setups significantly, removing the need to rotate the piece multiple times manually. It eliminated a substantial amount of its EDM operations because it is now able to machine a wider variety of items.

The firm invested $650,000 for the machine.

“It's been six months, and I'd say within the first three or four weeks there was a sigh of relief, because people were initially scared of it,” Finnie said. “After about four weeks, people started breathing a little easier. To this day, we're still discovering opportunities as to how to improve our process.”

Finnie said the silicone market has plenty of opportunities, especially in the medical field. One area is optically clear silicone that's being used in lenses and LEDs, a material that could begin to replace glass and polycarbonate in some applications.

The material is easy to mold and has excellent clarity. There's just one drawback, according to Finnie.

“Silicone looks like it's going to be the future of lenses,” he said. “The only drawback is that its price point is higher than glass and plastics, but other than that it has some wonderful attributes.”

M.R. Mold also began its “Five S” journey—which stands for sort, set, shine, standardize and sustain—in an effort to make its operations more efficient. Finnie said the firm has made good progress, but the next steps are to standardize what it is already started and make it consistent throughout the entire operation.

“We knew it needed to be done,” Finnie said. “I had wanted to improve our LEAN manufacturing for quite some time. Honestly, an instigator was the fact that these people were coming, and last week we also hosted a tour of a silicone training course. We knew we had two events coming up where we'd have a lot of visitors.

“Some of my guys think we're at the destination, but we're only a quarter of the way there. And there really is no destination; you keep trying to improve.”