Running a tool room at a plastic injection molding company with a mere 4 employee staff in our department is no easy task. I have the occasional case of the “Mondays”, where nothing goes right, and I feel as if I should’ve just stayed at home. Sometimes a cutter I am machining with (and have run a simple program one hundred times prior) breaks, and the feeling of slamming my fist through a wall comes over me. Originally, I wrote this in second person. But guess what? This happens to me, and I own it. These days are real, and they crop up! In the environment of tool making, every component of a mold is critical, from the simplicity of drilling return pin holes or clearance holes in a pin plate, to the complexity of machining a cavity cut with multiple shutoffs in a 34 hour program (for you non-machine its/programmers, I apologize for the examples!) Bottom line is, there are plenty of different variables that come into play when building a mold from start to finish. And this is where, in my opinion, communication plays the biggest role in the mold-making process.
Now first, I must take you back in time. I may be out-dating myself, but in the summer of ’94, I got my first job as a Sunoco gas station attendant, which ended up being one of the most dilatory jobs, in my opinion. It’s not that I don’t appreciate what they do, but as a former employee, I remember watching the clock as time passed slowly, waiting for the next car to come in so I’d have something to do. Well one day, after my tedious wait, I had a customer come in and give me a piece of advice that sticks with me to this very day. This customer’s name was Joe Pesci. Yes, that Joe Pesci from My Cousin Vinny or Goodfellas.
While waiting for the slowest gas pump in the world to fill Pesci’s car, he asked me questions about a 4-wheel ATV we had parked outside of the shop. After many of my mumblings and staggering sentences, he looked at me utterly confused. I guess in my ripe age, I didn’t have the best communication skills, because at the end of the conversation, he pulled out a wad of cash and handed me $3 and said, “here’s a tip, stay off the streets kid.” Surprisingly, I didn’t take it as an insult. But not until now did I consider it a good enough reason to work on my communication skills.
Fast forward over 20 years, and many, many jobs later: I am no longer pumping gas and mold-making is where I have landed with a great team alongside me. When I first started at Wepco Plastics, the culture wasn’t like it is today. I’m not saying it was all bad, but there is a difference in the way we communicated then versus how we have learned to communicate now. Without the proper communication skills, a mold doesn’t align, and a part does not eject from the molding machine.
I’ve learned in a short period of time that there are too many components that come into play that can hinder a well-made tool. Difficulties and roadblocks occur when not everyone on your team is on the same page, and as this destroys cohesion within a team, it also disrupts the job. Communicating well with your team will relieve most of those struggles. For example, letting your designer know during the design process which cutters you intend to use as a programmer during the machining process helps him or her with deciding on whether electrodes need to be designed for certain areas or not. It’s also as simple as a morning fist bump to your teammates or a rock-n-roll hand gesture to the guy in the molding department— yes, that’s healthy communication, too.
Here at Wepco Plastics, we’re striving to emphasize the importance of communicating the right way. It’s not always easy, and I for one, must work on it every day. The “old school” approach of yelling, stomping your feet, and throwing something against the wall are long gone. And I say old school, because that is how I was brought into the work environment at a very young age. Learning to tell a story to the people you work with not only helps in your everyday life, but in a process like making a mold to the best of your ability. Paint a picture for your team with the proper steps on how a tool should be built, and the process will be much easier with less humps along the way. Just think, if I would have communicated the right way with Joe Pesci, maybe the $3 he gave me would have been $10, and maybe I would have made a friend.