Wentworth Mold: Leading the Blow Mold Industry into its Future

While talking to Charles Carey, Senior Vice President and General Manager at Wentworth Mold in Hamilton, Ontario Canada, the word ‘leader’ keeps creeping into one’s mind.  Apropos, to be sure, since the company recently garnered Moldmaking Technology’s Leadtime Leader Award.  But since this company was established in 1947 as Wentworth Mold & Die Co., it has proven time and again that it is a leader in multiple ways. 

Carey has been with the company over 25 years, he says, starting right out of college where he initially studied metallurgy.  He’ll admit it’s still somewhat unusual in this industry to start an apprenticeship at age 21 in tool & die, but there it is.  He reflects how at that time, an NC machine was a big deal.  Now, 5-axis, high speed CNC capability is mandatory.

Wentworth began by building extrusion blow mold tooling for automotive, personal care and household containers, toys, coolers, and other items for the packaging industry.  In the mid- to late 1970s, Wentworth became a pioneer at PET blow mold tooling. 

“We probably made one of the original PET blow molds,” says Carey.  “There was a presentation at a recent conference in January that showed, among other things, a photo of a PET mold from the mid-70’s that we built.  The 1970s were really the beginning of PET blow molding – the soft drink companies were first, wanting to convert from glass to plastic bottles.  Then food products, water and sport drinks followed along with other beverage markets including the incredible potential beer bottles in PET brings.

“We took some quantum leaps because of this evolution,” he continues.  “The amount of molds that were being ordered was phenomenal.” 

Quantum leaps amounted to many internal changes and a higher level of commitment to Wentworth’s customers and to innovation, especially in the last five to seven years, Carey says.

While the company maintains a major focus in the manufacture of extrusion blow mold tooling, PET continues to be one of the industry’s fastest growing sectors.  The ratio of PET to Extrusion blow mold sales at Wentworth is probably a 60/40 split, he explains. 

“PET always dominates, but the percentage changes according to market fluctuations.” Carey says.  “Customers – especially the soft drink manufacturers – are always demanding distinctive characteristics be built into the packaging such as proprietary features, special textures or designs within the bottle.  This all takes additional tooling and definitely requires advanced technology.  That’s what drove us.  We had to be innovative in that field; we had to focus on what we do best.  So we did.”

Five years ago, Carey says the company went through some dramatic changes in order to streamline operations and provide a heightened level of service to its customers.  Basically, Wentworth decided to split its main facility so that its PET and extrusion lines had essentially their own plants within the larger building.  Taking that one step further as Wentworth expanded Globally they aligned their facilities in Kansas City Mo, Barrie Ontario, Mansfield UK, Poniatowa Poland to focus on core competence. This competence would be in capacities and technology either PET or Extrusion blow molds. That core competence covers many facets of mold manufacture including Injection Blow Molds manufactured at their facility in Millville New Jersey, Jersey Mold, Inc. Electra From Industries in Vandalia Ohio complements the PET package by manufacturing Injection PET preform molds.

“The focus on core competence helped us better meet market demands and do it more efficiently and cost effectively,” Carey says.  “Though PET and Extrusion molds are quite similar, each is also unique in its own way and we wanted to be able to focus on our strengths in each technology, by dedicating teams as opposed to an open plant environment.”

Carey says both business growth and customer demands forced the company to make these changes.  It made better sense. 

He stresses that delivery was and is a major driver of change also.  Wentworth’s PET and Extrusion operations are run like two business units.  Each unit has its own sales engineers who are dedicated to each account.  Because design can be an immediate bottleneck, Wentworth separated that out as well, even to the extent of engineering. 

“The most important factors are lead time and delivery,” Carey says.  “Not that there can’t be some cross-over of personnel handling PET or extrusion, but we gave each of the lines the resources and manpower they needed to be able to handle each in its own distinct way.  They have their own schedules, their own technology and equipment.”

Another significant change the company put into place over five years ago was going to a 24/7 operation. 

“That is kind of unique to our industry because working shifts was always kind of frowned upon,” says Carey.  “Overtime is a normal state of affairs in the tooling industry.  So we did something very unique.  We now work all our key CNC equipment around the clock.  We also added a weekend shift seven years ago.”

Carey explains that the weekend team was a tough sell at first because it was hard convincing the employees that it would work and be advantageous to them from a salary and benefits standpoint.  So Wentworth created a weekend shift team that works Friday, Saturday and Sunday as part of their 40-hour workweek.  There is virtually no overtime expense with this arrangement, saving the company time and money over the long haul, while providing customer service 7 days a week.

“It’s the same dedicated team that work every weekend and it works,” Carey says. 

“Overtime costs money,” he continues.  “The impact of overtime on your bottom line can be significant.  The weekend shift is not for everybody, but we eventually built a cache of people who are willing to do this.” We have introduced the same philosophy in several of our other facilities.

Carey emphasized that weekend workers have to be independent people.  They have to be very multi-faceted and talented people.  The switch to 24/7 with a solid team combined with the PET/extrusion split within the company and a stronger focus on core competencies has been one major key to Wentworth Mold’s ‘quantum leaps.’

Fast to Market Program

Carey says another key factor in the company’s transformation has been its Fast to Market Program, instituted in its main facility in Hamilton. 

“The industry was pushing us for fast deliveries,” he explains.  “Our customers came to us and said they needed to get product on the shelf fast…what can Wentworth do?  At best our customers can give us a good feel, maybe a month lead on product predictions, but they really can’t give us much.  So we had to do something at our end.”

Wentworth set out to find a solution, looking at all types of entities, including acrylic and starch models, stereolithography, everything.  Realizing that customers wanted the mold to be a full market representation of what product would look like on the shelf, those options wouldn’t work.

“We knew we had to give them a full-blown unit production mold,” Carey says.  “So we bit the bullet and started the Fast to Market Program.  We cordoned off a portion of our building out of deference to our customers’ needs for confidentiality, purchased only state of the art machines, and hired a team leader, toolmakers, CNC operators, a dedicated mold designer and a programmer.  We made this a very exclusive service. 

“We also put stock components on the shelf and it’s taken us to the point that what used to take four to five weeks to build can now be built in as quickly as three to ten days,” Carey adds.  “These are calendar days, not working days.”

Wentworth’s customers want to be able to say, “We like it, go,” Carey explains.  There is no longer time to construct acrylic models so Wentworth was able to eliminate that step and build a real mold that shows the customer a finished product.  Carey says the customer pays for the service, but it’s worth it to them in a dog-eat-dog competitive market.

Electra Form Industries (EFI) took this one step further in creating a web-based online ordering system. Basically customer access the system through the company’s web site and a completely confidential ordering system to place their Injection Preform PET mold orders.

“This has truly set us apart and taken substantial non-value added time out of the process,” says Carey.  “Wentworth Mold has followed suit.”

As if that wasn’t enough, Carey calls out what he says is perhaps the biggest driver of Wentworth’s success: Reduced design times that don’t compromise quality.

“Quality is a given,” he says.  “It has to be correct, done right the first time.  You can’t sidestep that and be innovative.  So to further reduce production times for rapid unit tools we designed automation programs for mold engineering.” 

Using automation, Wentworth created a blow mold design program in conjunction with EFI’s automated program and reduced design time to as little as 20 minutes for PET blow molds, when historically it would take up to 30-40 hours to complete.  Carey says it was a necessary step because the company’s deliveries are no longer weeks, but days and sometimes hours.

Standardization on designs and components also helps, he continues, saying it doesn’t make sense to reinvent the wheel every time.  Wentworth keeps a library of frequently used items, albeit limited, on the shelf to save time.  He stresses getting rid of the “That’s how it’s always been done” mentality as a survival strategy for any company.

“Price, delivery, quality, know-how, global – it’s a complete package,” Carey states.

“Think global, act local.”

Carey credits the company’s willingness to evolve technologically and operationally with its noted 20% growth each year for the last five.  The company has made Profit Magazine’s list of the world’s fastest growing companies for six years in a row and that growth hasn’t slowed.

The Poland plant is undergoing some changes that began at the end of last year.  Wentworth opened up what it calls its Super Cell.  It’s a dedicated manufacturing cell that manufactures PET blow molds.  Its capabilities will be expanded eventually, Carey says, and it is modeled after the successful FTM format of the other Wentworth plants. 

“The growth of the PET market globally drove the creation of this cell,” Carey explains.  “We’re able to offer customers a low-cost manufacturing facility and faster delivery by being in Poland.”

The Poland plant was acquired in 1999.  Carey says it has a solid manufacturing base and knowledgeable, experienced workers whose wages are about one-fifth of U.S. wages.  Where equipment is concerned, Carey states the company has to buy state of the art, and the plant has all German machinery, one he mentioned was a Hermle high speed 5-axis machining center.  So saving on labor is the key for Wentworth.

“We were able to grow incrementally due to the changes we’ve made,” Carey concludes.  We’ve added customers, and we provide the very best service we can.  There’s strong competition, good competition.  We’re at the forefront, but you have to work to stay there.”

For more information about Wentworth Mold, visit the company’s website at www.wentworthmold.com, or call the company’s headquarters at 905-574-0010.