Make-over at Milacron

Modern Machine Shop, Oct, 1990 by Mark Albert

Make-Over At Milacron

Cincinnati Milacron is re-entering the market for standard machine tools. Can Wolfpacks turn this builder into a lean and hungry leader on the prowl?

Something's howling at "the Mill". Like packs of killer wolves, small interdisciplinary teams are designing new products, revamping the shop floor, cutting costs, and aiming to capture new markets. These "Wolfpacks" have already left fang marks in the market for standard machine tools, a business Milacron got away from in the last decade.

The company's new Sabre-750, a vertical machining center built in its Birmingham, England, plant, is not like any machine tool this company has offered in years. It's a basic, standard machine that is not over-designed over-built, or over-priced. The market for small machining centers is extremely tough. Only the companies that can produce low-cost, high-quality machines on a global basis, and make a profit, will be contenders. Milacron has suddenly become a contender.

The Sabre-750 is the first machine tool created using what is, for Cincinnati Milacron, a very different approach to designing and developing a new product. This approach has been adopted across the corporation under the name Wolfpack. It stresses a team effort to new product design based on the principles of simultaneous engineering.

Wolfpack, however, does not represent merely a new methodology for designing new products. It signals a radical change in how the company sees its purpose and mission. Wolfpack is apparently nothing less than Milacron's blueprint for becoming a world-class manufacturer of a complete line of machine tools with global competitiveness. It is a strategy for new product development, modernization and process improvements in all divisions, beginning with Milacron's core businesses of machine tools and plastics machinery. It is also a strategy for re-energizing its workforce and creating a new attitude among employees at all levels.

This change in corporate culture is the most important aspect of this program. Although each Wolfpack team has a specific project to complete and follows a rather well-defined procedure, Milacron's top managers clearly want the Wolfpack mentality to permeate the entire organization. In fact, it seems that Daniel J. Meyer, Milacron's new president and chief executive officer, and his division managers seem to be a kind of unofficial wolfpack themselves, whose project is to revitalize the entire corporation.

On another level, Milacron's make-over has a larger significance for the American machine tool industry. Cincinnati Milacron has long been regarded as this country's premier builder. The success of the Wolfpack strategy will determine if any American company can position itself as a world supplier of quality machine tools across a complete range of product categories. If the Mill can do it, so can others, and machine tool building in this country will still be a factor in a world economy.

Strategy, Not Just Methodology

Initially, the Wolfpack program will focus on developing more standardized, lower-cost products in all of its divisions. In machine tools, this means standard products such as small machining centers like the Sabre-750, a market that the company now concedes it abandoned to foreign competition when it shifted its concentration to providing more customized, highly value-added products like aerospace profilers and special machines.

The principles behind the Wolfpack strategy are not new. Each team brings together the expertise of design engineering, project management, production engineering, sales, marketing, accounting, purchasing, and assembly. This team designs and develops a new product based on clear-cut objectives: reduce lead time, streamline manufacturing, and lower cost, but at the same time, improve quality and enhance value to the buyer.

This approach emphasizes reducing the number of parts, making greater use of standardized components, and designing for quality from the beginning. "Get closer to the customer" is a key Wolfpack maxim.

The Wolfpack program is a major financial commitment for Milacron. The company plans to spend $250 million over the next five years, mainly in support of Wolfpack programs. This represents a doubling of capital investment compared to the previous five years.

A Team Approach

The Wolfpack program evolved from a team-oriented product redesign program which began in 1985 in Milacron's plastics injection molding machine division. The Vista line of machines was redesigned with an eye on both manufacturability and marketability. On average, the number of parts in these machines has been reduced by 50 percent with 30 to 40 percent of the cost of producing these machines taken out.

According to Harold Faig, Vice President and General Manager of the Plastic Injection Machinery Business, 19 new Vista products have been introduced over the past few years, making Milacron the leading producer of plastics injection machinery in the United States.

This experience also showed that new machines could be developed in approximately half the time and get into full production much sooner than before. Other advantages also became clear. These new products required less inventory, tied up less working capital, and provided a much higher rate of return.