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Midwest Precision Molding (MPM) facility in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, covers 60,000 ft². Source: MPM

Larry Austin’s first act came at Miniature Precision Components Inc. (MPC), in Walworth, Wisconsin. Founded as a family ����ý in 1972, MPC grew to more than 1,500 employees, with multiple facilities in the U.S. and Mexico, and revenues in excess of $260 million. Austin, who’s background is in accounting, advanced along with the ����ý, becoming part of the management team that led the company. MPC was eventually acquired by the Novares Group in February 2019 for an undisclosed amount.

Austin left MPC in 2010 and began searching for a plastics company he could purchase. “It was a good run [at MPC],” Austin says. “It was a real textbook version of growing a company from nothing — a really good operation.”

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Austin’s search targeted shops in an hour-and-a-half radius of his home. Sending inquiries to ����ý owners via FedEx, he eventually heard back from and visited around 10, including Craig Ferguson, the owner and founder of Plasti-Coil, based in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. At first, Ferguson wasn’t interested in selling the company, which he originally founded in Woodstock, Illinois, before moving to Wisconsin and building a new facility in the Lake Geneva ����ý park in 1998. In July 2015, however, Ferguson did opt to sell to Austin, whose plans for the ����ý were shaped by his experience at MPC.

“My goals were not to grow it to a $200 million company,” Austin says, “because I went through that, and it wasn’t fun — it was crazy. My goals were just to get a company here in the U.S. in Wisconsin and try and keep jobs here because manufacturing was going away.”

MPM’s newest machine is a vertical press from Sodick, which is the center of a new lights out manufacturing cell. Source: Sodick

In November 2016, Austin also acquired Tri-Tec Corp. in nearby Darien, Wisconsin. A 20,000-square-foot addition was made to the Plasti-Coil building in Lake Geneva, creating space to bring Tri-Tech into the same facility, which would now include a full tool room. In 2021, the combined companies completed a rebrand to become . “We put everybody together,” Austin says. “Everybody works for one company now, and it works really well. All the customers have switched over, and it wasn’t a big deal at all.”

In addition to sharing a combined space, many of the employees share a common background and local ties. C.J. Garecht, director of tooling at MPM, came over from MPC and actually started his career with Tri-Tec where he started as an apprentice. “[Garecht’s] dad and I were both on volunteer fire departments and rescue squads here because that’s what you do,” Austin says. “We know a lot of people, and we get a fair amount of people that came from my previous company that want to come and work here.”

Overmolded in a reel-to-reel automation cell, the fuel injection components exit the Sodick press and head toward automation which will separate and test them. Source: Sodick

Scott Mercier, currently the director of manufacturing at MPM, is another old hand with long ties. “We have a great core group of people here,” Austin says. “[Mercier], our plant manager, runs all the molding machines, and he was here when they opened the building. [Garecht’s] a really, really good toolmaker, and [Mercier] can get a molding machine to do whatever we want, so it works out really, really well.” Austin notes the other members of MPM’s leadership team, Alec Buccanero, director of quality; Kyle Ketterhagen, director of sales and marketing; and Luke Jacobson, controller, all have years of experience in manufacturing.

Making It Happen Every Day

The main hallway in MPM’s front office space is adorned with two things: photographed portraits of all the company’s employees taken by Austin, who counts photography among his hobbies, and hand-painted script reading, “Cheers to the People Who Make It Happen Every Day.”

Upon entering the shop floor off that hallway, visitors are greeted by two very different work cells that call back to Plasti-Coil’s past while reflecting MPM’s future. Installed in February, a Sodick VLine VT506 vertical press insert overmolds an automotive aftermarket fuel injector component, featuring 25% glass-filled nylon and metal terminals. The metal terminal component is fed from a press-side spool through the 8-cavity tool via reel-to-reel automation. A type of bobbin, the component runs lights-out, save an hourly check on any diverted reject parts, thanks to a complete automation cell created in conjunction with Sodick. As the name suggests, the original Plasti-Coil enjoyed much of its success creating high-precision bobbins, gears and similar components.

MPM installed this Bausano Type E-GO 60/30 series 60-mm single-screw extruder to help a local customer reshore a tubing product. Source: MPM

Behind the Sodick cell is another turnkey production and inspection system centered on a Bausano tubing extrusion line. The Type E-GO 60/30 series 60-mm single-screw extruder features a 30:1 L/D ratio. Bausano provided tooling as well as downstream cooling/sizing, pulling and cutting technology. A Zumbach inspection system verifies the tubing’s inner and outer diameter. The customer, which reshored production of the tubing to MPM, hails from nearby Walworth, Wisconsin, and is a manufacturer and distributor of breeding equipment and supplies for livestock and companion animals.

Patrick Austin, MPM’s president and son of Larry Austin, says the company maintains some ties to the gears and bobbins which were its hallmark, while pursuing new, broader prospects. “We’ve kind of diversified, not necessarily intentionally, away from former markets,” Patrick says. “Opportunities arise in different industries that make sense for us, and I think a big thing that we look for is: What’s a good fit? We’re not going to go chasing after every potential sales opportunity. It has to make sense, and it has to be a company we want to work with who’s going to treat us with respect and vice versa.”

That sense of mutual respect and win-win relationships extends to MPM’s supplier base. The company initially encountered Sodick at NPE2018, purchasing its first press from the Japanese supplier at the time and adding 12 more since then, including the new vertical cell. “Sodick has become one of our most valued and important partners,” Larry says, “and we look forward to continuing that going forward.”

MPM names its presses and the machine at the heart of the newest cell is dubbed “Dragon” after the nickname of one of the Sodick team members who spent a week installing the system and training MPM’s employees on its operation. The inspiration for the cell came while Patrick visited Sodick’s facility in Japan and saw some of its automation capabilities in its Future Technology Center.

In addition to the press, Sodick provided tooling for the vertical overmolding cell. Source: Sodick

Sodick built the machine, tool and automation for “Dragon.” In addition to the automation feeding the reel of metal through the mold for overmolding, a robot on the backside of the press removes the sprue and runner system. Postmolding, additional automation performs quality inspection and cuts terminals. If a terminal is bent, the system rejects it, and probes are used to test connectivity, with finished parts coming out the other end. The cell runs lights-out, with the only human intervention being someone from quality checking once an hour to see if any parts have been rejected. Patrick notes rejects are usually a result of a bent connector from the original metal reel.

MPM’s facility covers 60,000 square feet with more than 40 injection molding machines ranging in clamp force from 17 to 360 tons and approximately 50 employees. The fully equipped , which can build and repair molds, features sinker and wire EDM equipment, as well as grinders and mills. Including modular inserts, MPM has around 1,000 active tools.

The quality lab features multiple pieces of equipment especially designed for gear testing, including a Vari-Roll unit to determine concentricity of gears, a Keyence unit for quick dimensional checks on parts, as well as a Mettler Toledo moisture analyzer used in some jobs to determine if resin has been completely dried, among other technologies. Beyond gears, many of the parts MPM molds feature threading and other precision elements. Across the floor, automation is deployed liberally for many postmolding operations, minimizing employee engagement with repetitive tasks.

Where a cell to hot stamp foil onto a water softener gear once required three people to hand load the parts, only one is needed now. The gears are placed in a 6-station turntable that sounds an alarm if they’re loaded incorrectly with a vacuum in place to suck up any loose foil postapplication.

Keeping Manufacturing in Wisconsin

For the people in the portraits being saluted in MPM’s hallway, Larry Austin has one objective. “Our goal is to keep manufacturing in Wisconsin, while keeping co-workers employed, and it’s going well,” Larry says. “We’ve kept our employees going, and we’ve kept them even through slow times so that when we start growing now, we have a good group of people.”

Targeting “organized, controlled growth,” Larry says MPM’s ����ý in the first quarter is already up over 2024, but it needs to keep moving. “You can’t stay still,” Larry says. “You’re either shrinking or you’re going to be growing. We’ve got to get on a steady path of growth.”

Part of that growth path includes succession planning. Patrick spent 10 years in manufacturing at four different midwestern companies while earning his MBA at Marquette University. He then came to work full time at MPM in 2017, originally as the CFO, but has been involved in all aspects of the manufacturing process, including adoption and integration of an Epicor ERP system. Starting in 2022, Patrick took over the day-to-day running of the ����ý. “I want to make it so that if anything happens to me, the operation continues,” Larry says. “I feel that MPM is structured to succeed and grow for years, and will help maintain manufacturing in Wisconsin and the U.S.”

The day after Plastics Technology visited, MPM was planning a pizza party for its employees in honor of Pi Day (March 14; 3.14) with a sign where they clock in reminding employees of the event. A busy ����ý, but one where pizza parties are still possible, is the sweet spot where MPM wants to be. “With the equipment we’ve added, we want to be steadily growing, if we can, and without driving everybody crazy,” Larry says. “A lot of us have been through that, and it’s not fun. I’d much rather have a pizza party on Friday and keep growing and getting work done, than be stressed and having to figure out who’s running your third shift.”