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Business Planning 32 MoldMaking Technology November 2014 Mold Craft moved to a heavily automated process long ago, and business planning hasn't changed the essentials of how work moves through the shop. Technology, however, is constantly upgraded. Installed last November, this Sodick AG40L sinker EDM and Erowa Robot Compact were the frst in a series of recent purchases amounting to more than $1 million. ing large numbers of interchangeable inserts. However, molds with less-stringent requirements can turn the advantages of the shop's production strategy into a noose—one that, prior to 2010, often choked off any chance for profit before the steel hit the floor. "At Mold Craft, doing a quote right takes days, not hours," Bartz explains. "We can't afford to just throw darts at the board and quote millions of dollars a day." Once a quote was awarded, an ingrained culture of perfection made lower- ing standards difficult even when work called for it, he adds. As he puts it, "Tolerances don't really mean a lot when your people strive to make everything to zero." Therein lay the crux of the problem that led the shop to adopt the one-page business plan. After taking the reins at Mold Craft in 2007, Bartz and McPhee didn't have much time to acclimate to their new positions before the bottom dropped out. Before long, they found themselves forced to pursue work that the shop simply wasn't set up to handle cost-effectively. Even as the economy improved, they lacked a reliable system for identifying customers that appreciated the level of qual- ity Mold Craft could provide (and for weeding out those that didn't). Crystallizing a Vision Enter Ted Capistrant, whom the co-owners met at a business conference around the same time they decided they were tired of spinning their wheels. Business planning is a big part of Capistrant's focus at Profit Builder Network, the Minneapolis consulting firm he founded in 2005, and Mold Craft's leadership was enthused by his ideas. "We had dis- cussed doing a business plan before, but everything we had seen was so extensive—pages and pages, like a quality manual or something," says Jim Lidell, sales manager. "That just seemed too overwhelming while we were focused on getting orders and keeping the doors open. Ted's single-page concept seemed like wizardry or Jedi mind tricks." That's not to say Mold Craft expected a quick, effortless process. Indeed, given the realities of run- ning the shop, finalizing the plan took a year and a half of soul- searching and periodic consultations with Capistrant. Rather, they recognized that the end result would be something they could actually use. That is, they recognized that coming face-to- face with the crystallized essence of the company's vision day in and day out would help avoid misplacing priorities or inadver- tently veering off the chosen path, Lidell says. The business plan is organized into four quadrants: Vision, which outlines where the company sees itself in the future (The current version, unveiled earlier this year, projects to fis- cal year 2017.); Guiding Principles & Strategies, which broadly outlines the values and priorities supporting the vision; Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), which identifies how to measure progress toward realizing the vision; and Milestones, which identifies improvement projects to be completed within the coming year. For example, one long-standing line item under Vision reveals that Mold Craft aims to target "discerning, perfection- driven customers." To that end, Guiding Principles & Strategies dictates that the shop "direct 80 percent of resources toward customers that deserve attention," specifically those in such industries as medical disposables and consumer products. KPIs include such line items as winning a specified number of contracts per year for molds with at least eight cavities, or for tooling valued at a certain minimum dollar amount. The next major milestone is adding another customer with enough sales to be ranked as one of the country's top 100 injection molders.