Montrose Molders
“It’s important to come to work and feel as if you’re a part of the team, as if everyone is working together to achieve a common goal,” said Brendan Wilson, vice president of operations at Montrose Molders. For 40 years, Montrose Molders has been in the business of custom injection molding solutions. The Piscataway, NJ-based business is about more than its tools and equipment: the family-run company also believes in providing a strong family culture. Through its focus on communication, quality, and exceeding expectations, Montrose has succeeded in doing just that: making both employees as well as customers feel right at home.
The path to growth: “A diverse offering equals success.”
Montrose Molders began its journey in 1966 as a 22-person tool shop, specializing in the manufacture of tight tolerance tools for the injection molding industry. It was in 1972 that the company invested in their first injection molding press: since then, the company has made it a priority to diversify its offerings to its customers. Today Montrose Molders prides itself on being a “one-stop shop” where customers can fulfill a wide variety of needs.
Customers at Montrose Molders can choose from a broad range of services, going beyond injection molding to include tooling, part decoration, and assembly. According to Wilson and Todd Nicolay, Montrose Molders Vice President of Sales, it’s all of these different services combined that contribute to Montrose’s success.
“A diverse offering equals success,” mentioned by both Wilson and Vice President of Sales, Todd Nicolay, is a perfect mantra to describe part of the company’s philosophy toward providing consumer satisfaction. The ability to offer customers a wide variety of options and solutions, along with providing every tool a client could possibly need for a single project all at one location, has ultimately allowed Montrose to stay relevant—even through harsh economic times.
With 51 injection molding presses that vary from 50 tons to 1000 tons, Montrose has the capability and the capacity to execute projects of a wide variety of sizes and complexities. When it comes to tooling, their 50 years of experience enables them to design and build tools in a board range of industries, often on tighter than average lead times. Assembly has also become a popular service, as customers can choose to receive assistance with the decorating, packaging and, assembling of different projects that include hot stamping, pad printing, heat bending and more.
Valuing Customers: The Montrose Way
Montrose Molders values its customers, and understands that, while each customer is different, each one should be given all the help they need for a successful outcome. “Customers are king,” Nicolay said. This notion is the seed for the adoption and execution of what’s known throughout the company as the “Montrose Experience” or the “Montrose Way.” The Montrose Way pays heed to providing consumers with three important deliverables: quality, superior project management, and the latest engineering technology.
This begins with a full service in-house tooling design and engineering department to help clients bring even their most complex injection molding ideas into reality. That process is supported by the assignment of a personal project manager to follow each project. As the company has stated, “We believe that thorough, continuous, and honest communication is necessary in order to properly manage a project in our industry.” The project managers that Montrose assigns its clients are highly trained to understand the manufacturing process, capable of relaying the scheduling realities of production and logistics to give clients the clearest picture possible. This process helps clients feel supported and keeps the lines of communication clear all the way from order placement to final delivery.
The last deliverable of the Montrose Way is quality—and at Montrose Molders, the ultimate benchmark of high quality is high customer satisfaction with the finished product. Montrose Molders strives to exceed customer expectations in this field with a rigorous Quality Management System—a system that trains its Quality Assurance staff to not just maintain the status quo, but to continuously monitor operations to identify areas where quality and production processes can be improved. The company also engages its customers in the process directly, using that open line of communication to establish and clarify those expectations so that it can always evolve and improve.
“Because we’re a custom injection molder, it’s critical that we customize our quality oversight to each customer and to each job. Our Quality System allows us to do that,” said Wilson. “Montrose Molders Corporation is committed to the improvement of the quality of our product and the way we do things because we understand that the satisfaction of our customers is essential to our growth and survival as a company. We provide the necessary tools and resources to employees, in all aspects of the business, so that they may continuously improve Montrose's processes and products and implement improved technology in an effort to meet the challenges of the future.”
A LEAN journey into the future
For several years now, Montrose Molders has been on a “LEAN” journey. The company has been incorporating ideas of the lean manufacturing business model in an effort to eliminate unnecessary waste. This process has helped Montrose Molders to deliver products that are both high quality and efficiently produced.
When asked about future changes of the industry, Wilson noted the appearance of reshoring as a major trend: after decades of outsourcing, more and more injection molding work is actually coming back into the United States. As work that was once being conducted in China and in other countries overseas is now returning stateside, businesses like Montrose Molders are finding new client opportunities and further potential for growth.
That is a crucial part of the future of Montrose Molders: the company is expected to keep growing and expanding. Bringing the conversation full circle, Wilson contributes one major aspect of this growth to the family culture of the business. “The company started as a family business,” Wilson concluded,” and it continues to grow as one.”
