down and talk about prices and what they want for added
features and come up with a price. MC: Talk about the GM partnership. Why have they been
a good partner for you? What makes them unique? JM: I believe the strategic partnership began with a
GM need. Tey decided they needed to stay in the casting business. Tey discovered they didn’t have all the talent and facilities needed to do it. Tey determined we and our Alliance partners could help them. Tey gave us an oppor- tunity to prove what we could do for them, and we proved we could do what they wanted in the way they wanted it. Te engineering team at GM has worked in unison with our own manufacturing teams. We are growing together and developing process understanding. Te other key ingredient to our relationship with GM is its purchas- ing group has grown to understand the mutual benefit to working together to help keep the casting arm of their business healthy and growing. Tey’ve allowed us to be
something besides a commodity. MC: You launched a new business, Anderson Express, in early 2011 to serve small to medium-size metalcasting
facilities. Why? BM: When I came on board three years ago, one of my
initiatives was to drive sales and marketing and evaluate new metalcasting facilities we can bring into Anderson Global. We found we couldn’t compete for smaller volumes of tooling and with smaller casting manufacturers at AG, but there was a demand from those growing businesses for a more sophisticated service with CAD engineering, for example. Anderson Global could not do that and be price competitive. We evaluated where our growth and strengths were and realized we needed a separate
entity to grow the marketplace. MC: What are the needs of that market segment? JM: Tey need competitively priced tooling in a hurry.
Sometimes they need CAD and foundry processing help they can’t get from a typical smaller sized tool maker. What we are trying to do is balance the advantages and costs of the latest technology. So it’s a situation where many times, since we have new equipment and the latest CAD systems, we will be able to produce a set of tooling in maybe half the amount of direct labor hours as a smaller shop without CAD. Our cost per direct labor hours might be higher, but
the number of hours is lower. MC: How do you decide whether Anderson Global or
Express will quote a project? BM: Our sales and marketing team works for both
Anderson Global and Anderson Express, and whenever we are evaluating a new project or customer, we discuss where it will fit. Because we have both businesses, there is some cross-pollination on a few jobs. And sometimes due to demand, a job might graduate from Anderson Express
to Anderson Global. JM: It depends on the size of the project and what size
machines it will fit on. We have larger capacity machines at Anderson Global. At Anderson Express, we are focused on quick turnaround, so we try not to get a project that will be on a machine longer than a week.
February 2012 MODERN CASTING | 33
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