Conference Hours
June 23-25, 2009: 8:00am – 4:15pm

Workshops
Half-Day Workshops
[LOGO] AMBA-sponsored: Techniques and Technology for Keeping Your Mold Manufacturing Competitive in a Global Marketplace
OSG Tap & Die
Camtool (Graphic Products North America)
Creative Evolution
This interactive four-hour workshop focuses on late-breaking technology and techniques for optimal 3-, 4- and 5-axis milling productivity for molds and dies. Highly attended for the past three years, this session is constantly updated to keep its content up-to-date. Industry experts in programming, tooling and CNC milling technology interactively discuss and demonstrate the tools and methods of using them to maximize productivity of your equipment—and your people. Actual application examples provide the basis for much of the materials, including extensive video demonstrations.Q & A time will follow the presentation.

The Key to Understanding How Your Customer Will Use Your Mold and Measuring the Risks
Extreme Tool & Engineering
RJG, Inc.
How do you know if your customer is giving the mold a chance to perform? Do you know if they have it in a capable machine? When you cut steel to meet dimensions, why are they off when the customer tries out the tool? Mold builders need to be thorough in bringing molds to production at a faster rate and understand the risks. If you understand how the end user will use the mold, you can help them succeed. This session will cover:

• What are the key things to consider before cutting steel?
• How do you measure the risk of molding parts in this mold, with their machine and with that material?
• Learn how to develop a setup sheet for the process before cutting steel.
• Why does the mold size matter when designing a tool and what are the main things to consider about the cavity?
• How does runner size and shape affect flow balance and part consistency?
• What do consider when determining the placement of cooling lines.
• Why is it important to know what size machine the mold will run in, and whether it’s pressure limited, making it incapable of running the mold?
• How does a change in viscosity affect the pressure in the mold?

Three-Hour Workshops

Develop Your Strategic Plan for Competing with Southeast Asia
GF AgieCharmilles

This workshop will present a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) matrix for a typical American job shop in relation to a typical Southeast Asian competitor, and then identify suggested markets, ideal workpiece characteristics, and tactics for the American shop to take advantage of its strengths and overcome its weaknesses. During the workshop you will customize the “typical” concept to fit your shop’s unique situation. For a preview go to: http://us.gfac.com/industry. Too often, shops speak of overseas manufacturers as if there is nothing we can do to establish a competitive advantage. While Southeast Asia and other low-wage regions present a real challenge to U.S. shops, success is still achievable. It is vital that today's North American manufacturers carefully analyze their markets and capitalize on all available advantages. SWOT analysis provides a particularly effective tool for taking inventory of your shop's position and maximizing your potential for profit.

Slash Mold Maintenance Cost: Eliminate Cleaning from Benchwork
MoldTrax
Blue Wave Ultrasonics
Cold Jet
How much time and money did you spend cleaning your molds last year versus other bench-related repair activities like tooling replacement, fitting, reworking, polishing and other corrective action tasks?  Are you still cleaning molds by hand?  Are you achieving your target scrap rate? Is your mold maintenance program supporting your lean manufacturing processes such as Total Productive Management (TPM), 5S and Six Sigma? In many cases, the time required just to clean molds makes up anywhere from 50 to 75 percent of the time a mold spends in the shop.  And the majority of this time is spent in the inefficient and risky practice of hand-cleaning critical and expensive mold tooling.  This seminar will cover everything you need to know about minimizing down time, reducing damage and resulting scrap, while improving efficiencies in mold cleaning.   This seminar will guide you through the evaluation of how to separate, collect and utilize cleaning data to target high cost areas for improvement and leverage new cleaning technologies that will improve your processes and outcomes. Ultrasonic and dry ice blasting methods will be covered in depth by experts who will discuss your specific questions, concerns and key issues and how these complementary technologies can dramatically improve the way your shop operates. This workshop will focus on best practices of these environmentally-responsible methods for cleaning molds and components as well as data analysis that can save your shop hundreds of labor hours per year.

Two-Hour Workshops
Straight Talk Roundtable: Technology and Business Challenges of Moldmaking Today
Millstar
Industry End-User Panelists TBA
As a result of the success of last year’s impromptu roundtable discussion on the challenges of the manufacturing process with a focus on the one "fatal flaw" that is keeping moldmakers from reaching ultimate success, we are bringing it back, but in a more formal format. A panel of speakers in a town hall setup—representing all levels of employment within both small to mid-sized mold shops (ownership, programming and machine operators) from across North America serving all industries—will offer some straight talk on mold manufacturing-specific technology and business challenges, and allow the audience to steer the discussion in any direction they wish to make it the most productive workshop for them, covering topics that are top-of-mind for today’s mold manufacturers. A facilitator will encourage audience participation to get specific answers pertaining to their questions from these front line experts. Attendees will get out of this session what they put into this session.

Servicing Today’s Injection Molders: Thermal-2-3D, Hot Rod Water, and Improve Part Quality and Consistency
NCII North Coast Industrial Imaging
PSG Plastic Service Group, Inc.
Customers TBA
A look at what demands we see coming from today’s injection molders. How will we as an industry rise to meet the global pricing pressure? How will we improve quality without adding cost over the life of the program? This panel will stress the necessity to have all levels of the supply chain working together as earlier as possible, and also will take a look at thermal-2-3D, a new technology used to build better molds. Panelists will review how to use the now-affordable technology of thermography to diagnose and correct existing tooling problems through part evaluation as well as perform tooling audits during production runs. The audience is encouraged to ask questions after our presentations and can be addressed to the specific presenters present.

Taking Care of the Business of Mold Manufacture
Getting Grassroots: How to Influence the Political Process for Moldmaking Interests!
Moore & Van Allen, PLLC

Tom Mullikin, author of "The Winning Position: The Art of Management" and "Truck Stop Politics," willdiscuss how manufacturers can take proactive steps to advance their political interests and effectively influence the political process byutilizing the grassroots strengths of American industry.Mullikin'slist of simple rules, developed over decades of issue and campaign management, demonstrate thatthe success and failure of managing the complex issues we face every dayhinges on our ability to engage and mobilize our customers,our communities, and ourselves.

An Intro to Export Opportunities and the Basic Steps to Begin
Meinert Market Services, LLC
Customer TBA
In this presentation, we’ll first present 10 steps of global trade as a simple set of directions, and then we’ll elaborate on each step, citing examples or success stories centered on those who have used these simple ideas to achieve remarkable success in the global marketplace.

• Assess the needs of the potential market—identify potential customers.
• Assess your own capability to meet those needs.
• Identify the required tools—technology, finances, regulatory expertise.
• Begin to match specific capabilities to specific needs.
• Lay the groundwork for an initial meeting with the client.
• Hold the first face-to-face meeting.
• Following the meeting, assess the results. Focus on the “soft” side of the business relationship, the cultural and philosophical differences. Having done that, refine the needs and capabilities. Define follow-up and the products and services to be offered, the partnerships to be formed, the contacts to be suggested.
• Hold a second face-to-face meeting to discuss specific business relationships and to agree on follow-up.
• Implement the sales or partnership agreement.
• After an agreed-upon period, evaluate the arrangement, analyze the lessons learned. Review the experience for its applicability to other markets.

In addition, we’ll toss some added ingredients into the recipe—enhancements such as “going beyond mere selling” and the “service center” concept—in order to give the “global marketing student” a well-rounded mixture of text book information and real-life-experience case history.

The Power of Networking for Moldmakers in Challenging Economic Times
Elite Mold & Engineering
TEC Detroit
Looking for improved decision making, increased accountability, commitment to action, personal and professional growth, overcoming isolation, anticipating and managing change, and networking nationally and internationally? Well, networking is key, and the right kind of networking makes all the difference. Learn the benefits of networking, sharing and learning on ground OUTSIDE of moldmaking, and how to make it work for your business. Discover methodologies and principles of an organization—regular meetings throughout the year, in small groups from non-competing businesses to candidly and confidentially discuss issues affecting their companies—that delivers a unique blend of business resources and personal support that changes lives, increases profits, improves careers and makes the challenges of running and growing a business both fulfilling and worthwhile.

Hypothetical, Real and Imaginary Shortfalls in the Moldmaking Workforce
Industrial Engineering, University of New Haven
Commercial Tool & Die
Procter & Gamble
Workforce analyses show that young people are not entering the skilled manufacturing workforce at a rate that will replace those who are retiring from it. Yet many small metal-cutting shops are at full capacity and tend to have enough employees, while others are laying off skilled people as business declines. Few firms appear to be committed to apprenticeship programs or to hiring fresh graduates from technical high schools and community colleges. Many such graduates have poor work habits and unrealistic expectations. They compete with immigrants anxious to enter manufacturing, and with older, experienced workers laid off from troubled manufacturing sectors. Hypothetical critical shortages are not readily observed in day-to-day operations, and in some cases supply appears to exceed demand. These workforce contradictions are discussed and analyzed from the perspective of metalworking firms seeing increased business from domestic customers, more financial uncertainty, and a continued competitive pressure from overseas suppliers. Remedies are suggested.

Lean Mold Manufacturing Will NEVER Happen without Lean Design
Munro & Associates, Inc.
Customer TBA
Even in times of growth, the challenges from competition keep a tooling supplier searching for opportunities to improve the success rate in winning orders. However, when it comes to periods of difficulty driven by stagnant markets and overseas intrusion, then new and sometimes unusual methods must be used to survive. Manufacturability is directly linked to a product’s design and development! All the product’s total cost and potential profitability are established at the CAD stage and no amount of lean manufacturing can ever undo a bad design. For years the folks on the floor have been told to be lean and mean when in actuality they have turned into emaciated and disheartened! By leveraging the power of Lean Design® and taking a strategic and holistic team approach, manufacturers of all kinds can create products, which can literally blow away any competition. In a fast-paced, interactive, presentation that gets the audience involved whether they are ready or not. The presenter’s many project experiences in automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, and of course moldmaking allows him the unique ability to talk, not only in theory, but also from a down in the trenches perspective.