A SIMPLE PLAN

RICHARD LOCKWOOD IS HAPPY TO tell you what the key to his moldmaking shop's success is. It's no big secret and is quite simple. Bottom line: Maintain a talented, ambitious workforce, constantly upgrade with new technology and provide extensive customer service.

In its beginnings, Holbrook Tool

& Molding Inc. (www.holbrooktool.com) opened with two machine tools and a two employees, Lockwood and co-owner Dale Barnard. Today, the shop has 40 employees and more than 50 machine tools. It has had only two years of flat growth since its inception twenty-five years ago and has posted gains in its other 23 years of business.

Like most U.S. moldmaking shops, Holbrook's biggest challenge is staying competitive in delivery and pricing. "We have no time to build anything any more, and we have to compete with job quotes coming from China," says Christopher Knierman, a design engineer at Holbrook.

The shop overcomes competitive challenges by choosing the right machine tools that allow it to take on the high-end work and molds that are too complicated to go to an overseas supplier. In addition, Holbrook furnishes its customers with complete mold packages and service - build, sample and debug. And it always tries to find ways to help its customers improve their part designs, make their molding processes easy and cut costs for their tooling while making that tooling more robust.