'Extreme' Technology Sets Extreme Tool & Engineering on Top

If you’d talked to Mike Zacharias, president of Extreme Tool & Engineering in Wakefield, MI, a year ago, you might not have heard the excitement in his voice as he tells you everything the company has accomplished since its launch in July 1998.  But today is a different story for the company located a stone’s throw from Lake Superior.

 “2003 wasn’t a very good year, I’ll be honest, but this year is starting out unbelievable,” he says.  “Our backlog is better than ever and I think we’re on the front end of seeing the good side of lots of bad things that have happened within our industry in the last year.”

He’s referring, of course, to the downslide of the U.S. tooling industry that kicked into full gear over the last three years.  Extreme Tool was once a division of Global Tool & Engineering, but in 1998 several employees at the Ironwood, MI, facility purchased Extreme from Global and it is now 100% employee owned and operated as a separate company.

Zacharias will be the first to admit that Extreme Tool wasn’t on the supercharged path it’s on today when it first opened its doors.

“We started out with letters from 3 people that knew us, that said they would give us a fair chance at their business, and nothing more than that,” he explains. “Try taking that to a bank.  We did, and it worked!”

Extreme Tool and Engineering followed a path very familiar to many injection moldmakers.  They actively pursued a path of transformation from mold makers to mold manufacturers.  Zacharias notes that it wasn’t necessarily because they wanted to, but because they had to.

“Nobody makes changes in a company when times are good,” he explains.  “When you’re making easy money, you don’t think about it very much.  But when things get tough it forces you to really micro analyze your situation, and refocus your efforts.

"The biggest philosophical change we’ve made is that we started to really listen to our customers and understand what their needs are,” he continues. “What we found was there were injection molders making decisions to take a program on based on their current engineering capacity.  Our philosophy is that they should be making those decisions based upon on what their molding capacity will be when the project is approved.”

Realizing there was an opportunity to help their customers get to market faster and more cost-effectively, Extreme Tool began adding molding machines four years ago in order to offer mold sampling services.  Next came the addition of a Class 100,000 Clean Room molding area with complete HEPA filtration.  Zacharias explains that an electronics customer requested it in order for Extreme Tool to be able to debug and run pilot production on their pre-production tooling.  The customer required this investment if Extreme Tool wanted an opportunity at pre-production toolmaking, and Zacharias said his team felt the customer’s business was worthy of the investment.

“Having made this investment, we then decided to use these new capabilities to market ourselves to the medical industry. We also began actively marketing ourselves as a plastics product development firm – not just a toolmaker – and have been very successful at that,” Zacharias says.

Continuing to add additional services seemed like a logical step and progression. 

Extreme Tool next added sonic welding and assembly in a clean-room environment, and most recently they further developed their quality area by adding a fully automated Brown & Sharpe CMM Machine. All of the equipment including the CMM is programmed using six licenses of Pro Engineer, and having one Parametric Design and Manufacturing solution has also been key to their success, according to Zacharias.  An additional Modern Inspection Tool, an OGP Smart Scope is on order this year to complete yet another service strategy. 

“Those two pieces of equipment were added to sell complete PPAP and first article inspection along with our mold build,” says Zacharias.  “We also added Servo Robots to the molding machines, and currently build, program and debug end of arm tooling that will be shipped with molds to our customers to further streamline their mold procurement process.”

For Zacharias, his partners and the company, the concept is simple: Give their customers a complete package.  Include everything from tool design and build to sampling and debug, complete documentation and inspection services including a mold capability study, inspection equipment programs, inspection fixtures, end of arm tooling – everything they need to move rapidly into production.

“When they get the project in-hand, they’ve got the whole package instead of waiting a minimum of 6-8 weeks for preparation at their end,” says Zacharias.  “A lot of the equipment purchased has been bought and specified so that it’s compatible with our customers’ so that we can do this.  It takes very strong customer relationships to make it happen, but we’ve got good customers, and we work extra hard to help them be successful.

“We’re concentrating our efforts on the people who are going to be part of our future for the long haul,” he explains.  “We’re making sure we focus a lot of our energy on taking care of them.  We believe in the 80/20 philosophy, and plan to dedicate our energy to taking care of those that take care of us.”

Zacharias adds that having the capabilities that Extreme Tool now has, places the company in a much narrower field and that instead of competing against 500 other mold shops they’re now competing against five or six. Many of their best customers think first of Extreme Tool every time they get a program, and in many cases, the customer's customer further supports that same decision.

“We’re expecting 25% growth this year,” he says, explaining that Extreme Tool opened in 1998 with six people and except for 2003, each year brought 20%-30% growth.  The company now has 25 employees and will probably add 3-4 more in 2004.

"I’ve got the best partners in the world, and I’m convinced that our employee’s are as dedicated and talented as those anywhere in the world," says Zacharias. "Bundle that with Great Customers, a Great Location/Low operating cost, and we feel it’s a recipe for success."

What does the future hold?

Zacharias says the company is getting more involved globally with Molders and OEM’s requiring global suppliers.  He just returned from Europe where he met with 27 engineers and toolmakers from seven countries, all brought together by their mutual customer and OEM.

“We never knew each other prior to this meeting, but now we’ll all be involved in design reviews and share all the mold design and build information, and we’ll work together to meet this customer’s needs,” he explains.  “This customer has to know that no matter where their molds are built in the world, the resulting product will have the same characteristics.  Parts will look identical because of this approach and customers won’t see a difference. 

“I think being global is important,” he continues.  “Having global partners instead of just global competitors is another way to compete.  It’s a new concept and it’s pretty neat to be in the front end of developing it and helping make it work. We don’t plan to run each other’s business, just help each other succeed in meeting our mutual customer’s needs and expectations."