Just in time for Christmas comes evidence that Windsor’s bellwether industrial sector – automotive tooling – is pointing to two exceptionally strong upcoming years.
Not only are the survivors of the machine, tool, die and mould making (MTDM) industries finishing 2011 in robust financial health, they promise to do even better in 2012 and 2013 – much better, in fact, observers and insiders say.
“The next two years should be rock solid, better than we’ve seen in a decade,” say Craig Wiggins, whose T & C Capital Inc. arranges financing for tooling programs on both sides of the Detroit River.
“2011 wasn’t bad – it was picking up. But I’ve been looking at the forecasts and 2012 is double that, 2013 is looking even better,” Wiggins said this week. Much of the work is already booked and the steel already ordered or “sitting on the floor” as inventory ready to be cut into new automotive tools and dies.
During six years of downsizing and bankruptcies, the region’s 200 MTDM employers were slashed in half or worse, putting thousands of people out of work and leaving dozens of empty plants scattered through local industrial parks.
In 2009, the number of jobs in the sector stood at about 8,500, down 6,000 from its peak. Up-to-date figures are not available.If you wish to use a third party payment gateway with your ecommerce solution,
Most of the surviving companies are now flush with work,MDC Mould specialized of Injection moulds, going seven days a week again, stockpiling steel and even turning down offers to bid on new vehicle programs.
This is good news for the region and the provincial economy. If there’s an infallible canary in Ontario’s economic coalmine it’s the huge MTDM sector, one of the largest in the world and once the largest employer in the Windsor region.
“If we’re not still first, we’re second to automotive parts and assembly,” Wiggins says.
When too many of those shops start to slow down, as they did in 2005, or start going out of business as they did in 2008, hearts freeze with fear around these parts.
Professor Tony Faria, a long-time automotive consultant and expert observer at the University of Windsor’s Odette School of Business, says he detected a distinct improvement of the mood in the MTDM sector this fall as he took classes on tours of a half dozen of the leading local shops.
“In most of our visits they were very busy and really upbeat about the new business coming in,” Faria said this week. “They all talked about hiring. I think things are perking up.”
Wiggins says the improvement is due to a confluence of factors, from a rush of new cars and trucks being brought to market by the automakers to renewed competition between fewer surviving plants.
“We have a nice effect going on right now – the dollar is a little bit better,Our company focus on manufacturing Plastic mould , there’s lots of work out there and the tight lead times don’t allow the manufacturers to go overseas to get their tooling,” Wiggins said from his Tecumseh office on Friday.
Billions of dollars worth of mould-making and other tooling work has gone to China in recent years. But there are timeline penalties for the companies that do so in an industry where short launches produce higher profits, because fresh product is a major competitive edge.
In some cases, delayed automotive programs have been given the green light too close to the launch dates for work which recently would have been outsourced to China. “Now they can’t afford to have it sitting on a boat for three weeks,” Wiggins said.
Nagging quality issues with some Chinese suppliers have also reduced the appetitite of the automakers and their Tier One suppliers for some of the outsourcing, he said.
The short lead times has also lead to a shortage of tooling steel, which is a specialty product, rather than a commodity readily available.
Wiggins said many tool shops have found waiting lists of up to six months for the kinds of steel they need, which is unusual, and some automakers have even been cutting cheques in advance for the steel to ensure their toolers have it, which is unheard of.
Faria said the slow pace of the recovery “has been a bit of blessing in disguise” for the industry. It prevented MTDM companies from over investing when the downturn ended, and they weren’t tempted to quickly hire people as soon as some work started re-appearing.
“This bodes really well” for the OEMs, Faria said – the Original Equipment Manufacturers, as the Detroit, Japanese and German automakers call themselves.
Thanks to a flood of new models being planned by a rebounding automotive industry, the order pipeline for the MTDM sector is now crowded for months in advance, Wiggins said.
General Motors, Ford, Fiat-Chrysler and Toyota all have full portfolios of new product booked years out that require new tooling, “Honda not so much.”
The shops are getting toward the end of the new dies and moulds they have been cutting for the 2013 model year. The last of those tools must be shipped to the manufacturers by mid summer of 2012 for production ramp-up.
“The 2014 stuff is what’s jamming up the floor right now, and the 2015 stuff is starting to materialize,” Wiggins said.
The record year for work in the MTDM sector was 1995, when all the automakers had plenty of new product in their pipelines and General Motors put the mother of all tooling programs out for bids: the GMT 800, otherwise known as the GM truck family of full-size body-on-frame pickups and SUVs. The value of the GM work totalled several billion dollars.
“A lot of new boats got bought that year, and a lot of new houses got built on (Riverside) Drive,” Wiggins said.
The entire GMT family – the Chevy Tahoe, Chevy Suburban, Chevy Silverado, Cadillac Escalade, GMC Yukon and GMC Sierra – is being either redesigned or re-engineered again for the model year 2014, which is causing part of the industry’s latest cyclical boom.
Tooling for each of those vehicles is dominating the work order sheets in local plants, along with last minute work on the 2013 Cadillac CTS crossover, the all-new 2014 Jeep Grand Wagoneer and a re-engineered 2014 Dodge RAM 1500.
Also being refreshed that year are the Chevy Cruze and the Impala and Corvette are being redesigned, but less of that work has been awarded in Windsor, Tecumseh and Lakeshore.
For 2014,As a professional manufacturer of China ceramic tile in China, Automotive News reports that Ford is redesigning the Edge and the Lincoln MKX, restyling the Fiesta (which requires less new tooling than a redesign), and “freshening” the Explorer and F-Series Superduty, although the last two could be pushed out to the 2015 model year.
There’s only one cloud on the horizon, Wiggins said: “Hopefully the banks will lend them the the money” to do the work, he says of the tooling sector. Toolmakers are normally paid for each billion-dollar tooling program after production starts and the new cars and trucks are rolling into showrooms, not before.
Two years ago much of the MTDM industry was facing bankruptcy along with GM and Chrysler. But persistent lobbying of the U.Buy oil paintings for sale online.S. and Canadian government convinced Ottawa and Washington to force the automakers to pay off their debts to the sector.
Not only are the survivors of the machine, tool, die and mould making (MTDM) industries finishing 2011 in robust financial health, they promise to do even better in 2012 and 2013 – much better, in fact, observers and insiders say.
“The next two years should be rock solid, better than we’ve seen in a decade,” say Craig Wiggins, whose T & C Capital Inc. arranges financing for tooling programs on both sides of the Detroit River.
“2011 wasn’t bad – it was picking up. But I’ve been looking at the forecasts and 2012 is double that, 2013 is looking even better,” Wiggins said this week. Much of the work is already booked and the steel already ordered or “sitting on the floor” as inventory ready to be cut into new automotive tools and dies.
During six years of downsizing and bankruptcies, the region’s 200 MTDM employers were slashed in half or worse, putting thousands of people out of work and leaving dozens of empty plants scattered through local industrial parks.
In 2009, the number of jobs in the sector stood at about 8,500, down 6,000 from its peak. Up-to-date figures are not available.If you wish to use a third party payment gateway with your ecommerce solution,
Most of the surviving companies are now flush with work,MDC Mould specialized of Injection moulds, going seven days a week again, stockpiling steel and even turning down offers to bid on new vehicle programs.
This is good news for the region and the provincial economy. If there’s an infallible canary in Ontario’s economic coalmine it’s the huge MTDM sector, one of the largest in the world and once the largest employer in the Windsor region.
“If we’re not still first, we’re second to automotive parts and assembly,” Wiggins says.
When too many of those shops start to slow down, as they did in 2005, or start going out of business as they did in 2008, hearts freeze with fear around these parts.
Professor Tony Faria, a long-time automotive consultant and expert observer at the University of Windsor’s Odette School of Business, says he detected a distinct improvement of the mood in the MTDM sector this fall as he took classes on tours of a half dozen of the leading local shops.
“In most of our visits they were very busy and really upbeat about the new business coming in,” Faria said this week. “They all talked about hiring. I think things are perking up.”
Wiggins says the improvement is due to a confluence of factors, from a rush of new cars and trucks being brought to market by the automakers to renewed competition between fewer surviving plants.
“We have a nice effect going on right now – the dollar is a little bit better,Our company focus on manufacturing Plastic mould , there’s lots of work out there and the tight lead times don’t allow the manufacturers to go overseas to get their tooling,” Wiggins said from his Tecumseh office on Friday.
Billions of dollars worth of mould-making and other tooling work has gone to China in recent years. But there are timeline penalties for the companies that do so in an industry where short launches produce higher profits, because fresh product is a major competitive edge.
In some cases, delayed automotive programs have been given the green light too close to the launch dates for work which recently would have been outsourced to China. “Now they can’t afford to have it sitting on a boat for three weeks,” Wiggins said.
Nagging quality issues with some Chinese suppliers have also reduced the appetitite of the automakers and their Tier One suppliers for some of the outsourcing, he said.
The short lead times has also lead to a shortage of tooling steel, which is a specialty product, rather than a commodity readily available.
Wiggins said many tool shops have found waiting lists of up to six months for the kinds of steel they need, which is unusual, and some automakers have even been cutting cheques in advance for the steel to ensure their toolers have it, which is unheard of.
Faria said the slow pace of the recovery “has been a bit of blessing in disguise” for the industry. It prevented MTDM companies from over investing when the downturn ended, and they weren’t tempted to quickly hire people as soon as some work started re-appearing.
“This bodes really well” for the OEMs, Faria said – the Original Equipment Manufacturers, as the Detroit, Japanese and German automakers call themselves.
Thanks to a flood of new models being planned by a rebounding automotive industry, the order pipeline for the MTDM sector is now crowded for months in advance, Wiggins said.
General Motors, Ford, Fiat-Chrysler and Toyota all have full portfolios of new product booked years out that require new tooling, “Honda not so much.”
The shops are getting toward the end of the new dies and moulds they have been cutting for the 2013 model year. The last of those tools must be shipped to the manufacturers by mid summer of 2012 for production ramp-up.
“The 2014 stuff is what’s jamming up the floor right now, and the 2015 stuff is starting to materialize,” Wiggins said.
The record year for work in the MTDM sector was 1995, when all the automakers had plenty of new product in their pipelines and General Motors put the mother of all tooling programs out for bids: the GMT 800, otherwise known as the GM truck family of full-size body-on-frame pickups and SUVs. The value of the GM work totalled several billion dollars.
“A lot of new boats got bought that year, and a lot of new houses got built on (Riverside) Drive,” Wiggins said.
The entire GMT family – the Chevy Tahoe, Chevy Suburban, Chevy Silverado, Cadillac Escalade, GMC Yukon and GMC Sierra – is being either redesigned or re-engineered again for the model year 2014, which is causing part of the industry’s latest cyclical boom.
Tooling for each of those vehicles is dominating the work order sheets in local plants, along with last minute work on the 2013 Cadillac CTS crossover, the all-new 2014 Jeep Grand Wagoneer and a re-engineered 2014 Dodge RAM 1500.
Also being refreshed that year are the Chevy Cruze and the Impala and Corvette are being redesigned, but less of that work has been awarded in Windsor, Tecumseh and Lakeshore.
For 2014,As a professional manufacturer of China ceramic tile in China, Automotive News reports that Ford is redesigning the Edge and the Lincoln MKX, restyling the Fiesta (which requires less new tooling than a redesign), and “freshening” the Explorer and F-Series Superduty, although the last two could be pushed out to the 2015 model year.
There’s only one cloud on the horizon, Wiggins said: “Hopefully the banks will lend them the the money” to do the work, he says of the tooling sector. Toolmakers are normally paid for each billion-dollar tooling program after production starts and the new cars and trucks are rolling into showrooms, not before.
Two years ago much of the MTDM industry was facing bankruptcy along with GM and Chrysler. But persistent lobbying of the U.Buy oil paintings for sale online.S. and Canadian government convinced Ottawa and Washington to force the automakers to pay off their debts to the sector.
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