Dickten Masch Plastics LLC

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Dickten Masch Plastics LLC

N44 W33341 Watertown Plank Road
Nashotah, Wisconsin 53058
U.S.A.
Telephone: (262) 367-5200
Fax: (262) 367-5630
Web site: http://www.dickten.com

Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Everett Smith Group, Ltd.
Incorporated: 1941 as Dickten & Masch Manufacturing Co.
Employees: 400
Sales: $70 million (2006 est.)
NAIC: 326112 Plastics Pipe and Pipe Fitting Manufacturing; 333514 Special Die and Tool, Die Set, Jig, and Fixture Manufacturing

Dickten Masch Plastics LLC is a Nashotah, Wisconsin-based manufacturer of custom injected molded plastic engineered industrial parts as well as tools, dies, jigs, and fixtures. The company offers a wide range of services and technologies to such industries as automotive, small engine, electrical, hand and power tool, building and construction, water treatment, and foodservice. Dickten Masch engineers help customers design parts using computer-aided design programs as well as practical knowledge. The company's goal is to eliminate potential problems before they occur, thereby speeding up a product's introduction to the market, improving performance, and controlling costs.

Dickten Masch, which began as a tool and die shop, is especially strong in toolmaking, helping customers with the design and production of tools, capable of producing quick prototypes as well as production molds that can turn out millions of shots. The company also maintains and preserves molds to ensure they are ready when a customer again requires parts. Dickten Masch employs both thermoplastic molding and thermoset molding technologies. Capabilities include multi-shot molding, combining parts into a single molding process to eliminate further assembly; insert molding, a method that uses the injection of thermoplastic or thermoset materials to incorporate metals, ceramics, and other materials in a single component; microcellular molding, which incorporates microcellular thermoplastic polyurethane in products such as hand tools that need shock absorption and a resistance to chemicals; gas assist, the introduction of high-pressure nitrogen during the molding process to prevent warping, eliminate sink marks, increase part rigidity, and achieve other benefits; and in-mold decorating, which uses film inserts in a mold to produce decorative surface finishes and eliminate a production step.

Value-added secondary services include automated and manual assembly; spin welding; ultrasonic welding; hot stamping, pad printing, and engraving; and packaging and logistics management. In addition, Dickten Masch offers analytical lab services to lend expertise in the design process; determine the impact of a particular color on the plastic materials being used; conduct physical testing, thermal analysis, and chemical testing; and perform failure analysis to determine what may have gone wrong with a part and how to fix the problem. In addition to the main 150,000-square-foot plant in Nashotah, Dickten Masch maintains an 80,000-square-foot plant in Ankeny, Iowa. Dickten Masch is a subsidiary of the Everett Smith Group, Ltd., a Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based private investment company.

COFOUNDER EMIGRATES TO UNITED STATES: 1926

Dickten Masch was founded by Erick Dickten and Al Masch as Dickten & Masch Manufacturing Company. A native of Germany, Dickten was in his early twenties when he paid a visit to the United States and decided to live there. In February 1926 he officially emigrated to the United States, settling in Milwaukee, heavily populated with people of German heritage. He became a tool and die maker at Cutler-Hammer Inc. in the city. It was here that he met and became friends with Masch, another German immigrant. The two men decided to go into business for themselves and in 1941 established a small tool and die shop in Milwaukee. Their plans soon changed, however. By the end of the year the United States was involved in World War II and the new company was drawn into the production of war materials. In 1942 the fledgling company looked to fill a need for plastic molding and added the necessary injection molding capabilities to produce thermoset periscope parts for Army tanks.

After the war ended in 1945, Dickten Masch remained involved in the plastic injection molding business, turning to the domestic market, and in time it replaced tool and die making as the company's primary business. In 1949 the company purchased its first thermoplastic machine and began producing parts for the growing small appliance industry. It was also around this time that Masch died from a heart attack. The company carried on under Dickten's leadership and enjoyed steady growth in the 1950s, leading to regular expansions in Milwaukee. By the 1960s demand for its services led to Dickten Masch looking for space outside of the city. In 1962 it opened a new plastic molding plant in Nashotah, Wisconsin, a small town west of Milwaukee. The company continued to maintain its headquarters and other operations in Milwaukee, however. It was not until 1978 that the headquarters and the tooling operation were relocated to Nashotah. At that time thermoset molding capabilities were added to the newer facility as well. Another decade would pass before Dickten Masch consolidated all of its operations in Nashotah and the Milwaukee facility was sold.

To remain competitive Dickten Masch was willing to invest in the latest technologies. Starting in 1983 the company began to invest in the equipment needed to analyze material chemistry. Such equipment was necessary in order to pursue so-called scientific molding, a disciplined and systematic approach to mold processing that focuses on what is happening to the plastic during the injection molding process, relying on hard data provided by the new instrumentation in order to control the viscosity of the material. As a result, Dickten Masch was able to prevent defects and produce parts of a consistently high quality. Scientific molding capabilities was also a key component in the company's ability to offer part and tool design services.

COMPANY PERSPECTIVES

Dickten Masch Plastics functions as an extension of our customers by providing plastics expertise, creative technical solutions, and highly responsive customer service throughout the product life cycle. In this way, we enable our customers to remain competitive and increase market share.

In the late 1980s Dickten Masch formed the Analytical Services group, a laboratory that used analytical tools to perform dynamic mechanical analysis, thermal analysis and melt viscosity, spiral flow testing, and moisture detection. This information was then used to determine if certain materials were suitable for a particular component. Through testing, Dickten Masch researchers could show how a component using a particular material would fare over the course of time. In some cases the group was able to win business for the company by demonstrating that a competing bid for a project, while less expensive, was not a wise long-term approach because the material being used to make the component was fated to experience significant breakdowns. In addition to the selection of material, the group could also establish how the material performed over a range of service temperatures, as well as how molding conditions impacted the service life of a molded component. All of these factors were key to the pursuit of a process optimization approach to component development and production that Dickten Masch would fully embrace. In 1990 the company expanded its service offerings to include direct consulting. The capabilities of the Analytical Services group were made available to end users to aid in parts and tool design. Material suppliers and custom molders not in direct competition with Dickten Masch also made use of the group's capabilities. "Ten years ago, people thought we were crazy starting up a materials lab," president John Onzik recalled in a 1998 interview, continuing, "but it's paid for itself many times over. It's become a separate profit center for the company. It didn't just become something that added to our press rates. Today it stands on its own."

Another significant improvement to Dickten Masch's operation was the 1989 introduction of a production monitoring system used in the thermoplastic operations. Initially the system was used to determine machine capability but was quickly expanded to improve machine scheduling and lower scrap, the latter resulting in excellent cost savings. Prior to the new system, scrap cost the company 5 percent of sales. Moreover, equipment utilization was optimized, reducing the need to invest in new molding presses. By 1993 Dickten Masch increased annual sales by $3 million yet only had to invest in three new presses in order to meet the increased demand.

Dickten Masch expanded its operations beyond Milwaukee in 1998. In order to be closer to three major customers—Cooper Power Systems, Milwaukee Electric Tool Co., and Kohler Engines—the company decided to open a $4.5 million precision custom molding plant at Hattiesburg Industrial Park in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, to produce injection molded thermal plastic and compression molded thermal plastics products. The company also hoped to attract other customers in the region—and a Mississippi plant helped to alleviate a labor crunch in Wisconsin where the economy was booming.

FOUNDER DIES: 1999

By this time Dickten Masch had long been under the day-to-day leadership of John Onzik, Dickten's son-inlaw. In truth Dickten never retired from the company and remained active in its affairs even as he reached 90 years of age. He especially enjoyed visiting the tool room and conversing with the mold makers. Finally he died at home in August 1999 at the age of 93.

Although Dickten Masch entered the new century without its popular founder, the company's pioneering spirit continued. In 2003 the company introduced microcellular molding to the marketplace. The company's Hattiesburg plant was also winning important new business. In 2003 the Mississippi subsidiary received a $1.5 million contract to supply interior plastic parts for Nissan trucks, cars, and vans produced in the automaker's new Canton, Mississippi, plant through Nissan supplier M-Tek Inc. Earlier Nissan had done an assessment of Mississippi's plastic molders, giving a favorable opinion on Dickten Masch, and the assessment was then sent to all of its Tier one suppliers, including M-Tek, which conducted a site assessment survey and ultimately selected the Dickten Masch Mississippi unit as a plastic component parts' supplier.

Dickten Masch remained under the ownership of the Dickten and Onzik families, majority controlled by two shareholders. One of them was no longer active in the company while John Onzik was getting ready to retire, and both wanted liquidity. The other shareholders, in addition, were reluctant about supporting the future capital needs, and a consolidation trend was underway among midsize industrial custom molders such as Dickten Masch. Hence, the family members decided the time had come to sell the business. The board of directors hired Mertz Associates, Inc., a Wisconsin-based mergers and acquisitions advisory company to assess the company's situation, and several months later buyers were sought.

BUSINESS SOLD: 2004

In October 2004 Dickten Masch, including its operations in both Wisconsin and Mississippi, was purchased by the private Milwaukee-based investment firm of Everett Smith Group Ltd. Among its holdings were two other acquisitions, including Trostel Specialty Elastomers Group, a Lake Geneva, Wisconsin-based company that offered microcellular and insert molding and in-mold decorating capabilities, producing automotive and truck components as well as products for the fitness, medical, and general industrial markets. A year earlier Trostel had acquired Techniplas Inc., an Ankeny, Iowa-based injection molder with rapid prototyping capabilities. Combined they generated about $30 million in annual revenues, about $10 million less than the amount of business done by Dickten Masch.

KEY DATES

1941:: Dickten & Masch manufacturing founded in Milwaukee.
1949:: Al Masch dies.
1962:: Nashotah, Wisconsin, plant opens.
1978:: Headquarters are moved to Nashotah.
1988:: Milwaukee facility is sold.
1999:: Erich Dickten dies.
2004:: Company is sold to the Everett Smith Group.
2005:: Everett Smith molding companies are merged to become Dickten Masch Plastics LLC.

For several months Everett Smith elected to operate its plastic companies as stand-alone units, but in 2005 the three companies were brought together under a single corporation, Dickten & Masch LLC. The units continued to operate under their own names while Everett Smith considered a branding strategy. About a year later, in August 2006, the decision was made to do business under the single brand of Dickten Masch. In the meantime, the company had taken steps to consolidate the business. The Lake Geneva plant was closed by early 2006, its equipment transferred to other Dickten Masch plants. Later in November 2006 the Hattiesburg plant was informed that it would be closed by May 2007, its operations transferred to the Nashotah plant. Yet Dickten Masch was not simply contracting: in 2006 30,000 square feet of space was added to the Ankeny plant. While looking to improve its cost structure, Dickten Masch also continued to invest in capital improvements. It increased the company's dual shot injection molding capabilities by acquiring a new 550-ton Engel Modeling Press.

Ed Dinger