Short Lead/Delivery Times "Precision Mold Making With Aggressive Deliveries.” It’s the slogan you’ll find on the side of Westminster Tool’s delivery truck and if you ask owner Ray Coombs II about it he’ll laugh and tell you it stemmed from an inside shop joke with much cruder wording. Nevertheless, it’s key to what has helped this, Plainfield, CT, company become a frontrunner in the tooling industry.
“We went from $50,000 to about $1.8 million in sales over about three years,” he concludes. Coombs started his company in 1997 out of his garage and basement with a Bridgeport and some end mills. He couldn’t build molds just yet, so instead he built bracketry and was job-shopping for two customers in the beginning. He gradually added the needed machinery and says he was “kicking butt” for a while, but then his competitors started to catch up with his mode of building molds faster and cheaper than anyone else. So he started to grow his company in a way that would keep him a step ahead. “I have a
Bill Parcels mentality: If I’m going to build my team I want to pick the
players,” explains Coombs. “I wanted to build the dream team. The good thing
about building a championship team is champions want to play with champions. I
had a couple of good guys working with me and that drew other talented guys who
wanted to work with us.” Now Westminster employs 15 people. Coombs says his place may be a lot bigger than where he started out, but he keeps a low overhead mentality to be able to continue to offer his customers lower prices on high end (over $75,000) tooling. He automated wherever possible; offers in-house design that he says is one of the best around and he still maintains an aggressive delivery strategy. Since putting his dream team in place Coombs says they built about two premium jobs a month. After three consecutive years of 100% growth, everything slowed down, as it did for most other manufacturers. Coombs and his team didn’t panic — they refocused. “I’ll tell you the secret, though it’s really not a secret,” he says. “Build tools to print. We’re very big in design and that helps make us competitive. We make everything to print; and we standardized some things. We stock cavity sizes. If you’re going to make one and you think you’re going to have to make it again, you make four of them. You tie up a few bucks in overstock so you have components ready and spend less man hours on the job later. When the next order is placed there’s no problem because a lot of what you need is already sitting on the shelf. “The other thing that made us competitive is that we are specialized yet cross-trained,” he continues. “Each guy in my shop has a second area that he is trained in so when we really have to put horsepower into certain jobs, we can react in a timely manner and get them done. One of my guys is trained in multiple areas.” Coombs also decided it was time to compete against foreign competition. “At the time of the slow-down I was looking to expand the company by branching out into other areas,” Coombs says. “I wanted to have something in place that would highlight what Westminster does. The thing was, I’d be quoting about 50 jobs a week and if I was lucky I was getting two. Some never got placed, but many of them that were placed won on price.” So Coombs started researching the country of Taiwan, deciding he would find a way to compete with its market. Westminster established Alliance Engineering, Inc., got a broker’s license and hooked up with two vendors in Taiwan, using them for mold construction the same way its own shop was used. “We design molds here and send them to Taiwan to be built according to print,” Coombs explains. “The end user sees a 20%-30% savings over what they would have paid Westminster. It opened a lot of doors for me. It was something we did to stay competitive. We design jobs so we have total control, but the build is done at a savings. We do this with smaller molds that aren’t as sophisticated as what Westminster can build.” Coombs says the final factor that has helped Westminster Tool compete is efficiency. “Everything is paperless. Whenever I started a guy, his computer was here before he was here. My guys all view their blueprints on the floor using Master Cam. Even the youngest kid is being trained without knowing it on the system because when he changes machines, he develops skills as he goes.” Coombs says Master Cam has helped save a lot of time because it keeps his guys in the shop at their machines instead of having to stop everything, walk into the office and ask the designer questions when they aren’t sure of something. In addition, Westminster invested in a relatively new design program called Top Solid in order to get even more efficient output from his designer. “You always have to be thinking there has to be a better and faster way and you have to convey that thinking to the plant floor,” he says. “You have to make change a priority. You don’t have to do it all the time, but you should always be asking, ‘What if?’ “If I’m doing things the same way we used to three years ago, I don’t think I’m doing my job,” he adds. Coombs also
has a strong philosophy on selling. His motto, he says, is ‘We’ll mow your lawn
if it will feed our children.’
“We’ve always had that attitude. In other words, we’re not too good to do anything,” he explains, adding that if he had not been out there selling back when times were good and he didn’t have to be, he wouldn’t be where he is now. He says it’s a case of the toolmaker mentality vs. businessman mentality. He chose the businessman’s view. Westminster specializes in multi-cavity molds for cosmetics (unscrewing, hot manifold tools), consumables, medical and some automotive products. Caps and Closures account for probably 50% of the company’s business, as opposed to 0% three years ago.
“We were arrogant enough to put it on the side of our truck because you have to do what you say and say what you do,” he explains. “It’s that simple.” To find out more about Westminster Tool, log onto www.westminstertool.com or call 860-564-6966. |
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