UK, Midlands based Amco Group have been working hard throughout 2018 to strengthen their end to end plastic injection tooling proposition due to customer demand. The new offering has resulted in Amco’s recent contract to provide plastic injection mould tooling, tooling movement logistics and finished parts supply to the Morgan Motor Company.
The company has been servicing the global logistics needs of international organisations, 1st and 2nd tier manufacturers and OEMs across Automotive, Aerospace and Defence for over 35 years. Part of their services to these customers has included tool movements, handling, and shipping, customs clearing and all the complex processes from worldwide locations to the end users manufacturing facilities.
Customers involved in these services asked Amco if they could find quality partners and establish processes to be managed by a specialist team to handle all the aspects of plastic injection tooling production and logistics. Paul Andrews, Amco Group CEO led the Amco team to develop these processes, partnerships and an end to end proposition that are proving to be competitive and add value through becoming a single source supplier.
Morgan Motor Company tooling and parts production
In 2018 Amco were appointed by the Morgan Motor Company to ship and distribute finished vehicles to their world-wide dealerships and to handle and manage the shipping of V8 engines to Morgan’s plant in the UK from BMW Munich for the Plus 8 and Aero 8 models.
Amco were invited by Morgan, and successfully won an RFQ for a tooling requirement and were subsequently tasked with producing a tool for a plastic injection mould for manufacturing a three piece plastic steering column shroud. This tool was to be made from CAD drawings supplied by Morgan’s talented engineering team, and was destined for a secret new model now known as the Plus Six.
Amco were also asked to cost for producing the parts and to consolidate the tooling, production, transport and logistics into a single source agreement
Paul Andrews, Amco Group CEO, who led the project said. ‘This project is a clear demonstration of how the Amco Group add value. We already work with the Morgan team, shipping cars to dealers world-wide and engines to their factory. This opportunity allowed us to build further on an already strong and growing relationship.’
‘We had the tool built by one of our partners in Shenzhen and we were then commissioned by Morgan to produce the parts as our pricing was very competitive. We managed our DFM (Design For Manufacturing) process to optimise each stage of the manufacturing functions. We completed the mould flow analysis, and in this case we identified in T0 (Initial Trial Parts testing) that the original material specified was not suitable. From the UK we shipped into Amco’s facility in China, high quality, European specification plastic resin granules, which together with some engineering changes required by Morgan, led to successful T1 parts production, which were run before graining, and were 1st fit 1st time.’
Andrews continues. ‘The tooling and the parts were required for Morgan for the all new Plus Six for the Geneva Motor show and therefore time and quality critical. Our transport and logistics skills came into play one more time as the parts were ready in China on the Thursday and we delivered them to Morgan on the following Monday morning, hand carried by our Project Engineer! We managed the transport, documentation and customs clearance – basically the total supply chain from RFQ to delivery of finished parts, logistics, tooling and parts supply.’
Steve Morris, CEO of the Morgan Motor Company, commented ” Amco have proved themselves to be a business that will reach out, consult and problem solve. We started working together on engine movements and latterly time sensitive logistics and shipping of new vehicles to dealerships around the world; and now they are building quality plastic injection mould tools and making, shipping and delivering parts for the longest running production car in the world, and its latest showcase model the Morgan Plus Six.’
What is end to end tooling?
Amco have the infrastructure and ability to provide full Purchase Order to parts delivery service using partners in the UK and China. The Amco Group tooling proposition includes having capacity to build low-volume (LV) and serial tooling, tool prototyping, 3D modelling, tool manufacture mould flow analysis and parts production.
Amco’s Tooling Division are considered unique in the market with a tooling service that includes the ability to fund tooling builds, offering competitive and flexible payment terms to PSW (Part Submission Warrant) and amortisation options.
Amco have a proven and successful track record in international supply chain management and logistics, currently providing logistics services to many major Automotive OEM. 1st and 2nd tier customers including Futaba, DENSO JLR, BMW, FORD, GM, Nissan, Toyota, Morgan, Lear Corporation, MAGNA, Grupo Antolin, Komatsu and Brose.
