There are many key factors to operating a successful injection molding company. I want to talk about one that I think is one of the most important and that would be having a foreman that is dedicated and also knowledgeable in injection molding. The title “Foreman” in a large injection molding company does not have the same meaning as it does in a smaller injection molding company. The difference is the list of duties that they are responsible for. In a large injection molding company, the foreman’s duty is to oversee the whole operation and have the heads of other departments report to him or her. In a small injection molding operation, the foreman is responsible for just about everything that is going on. I want to mainly talk about a foreman of a smaller injection molding company.

Toth Mold/Die Inc. is a small custom injection molding company.  Our foreman has been an employee of Toth Mold/Die Inc. for 32 years.  She started out as an operator, which is a must, so the person can see and experience the process of running an injection molding machine. My brother, Steve Toth, Jr., ran our injection molding department until his untimely death in 1991.  Steve trained our current foreman the way he ran things for five or six years. By training and teaching someone the way you run an injection molding department that has no previous experience, has a big advantage over hiring someone that has their own way of doing things. It is a hard task asking someone to change what they have been doing for a long time.  This usually causes problems and affects the whole injection molding operation.

Our foreman has a number of duties.  She has to turn on all the dryers, hot water units, water cooling system, and all of the machine heats. Once that is completed all the machines must be started and made sure the parts are running consistently. Once production is running smoothly, she must check and fill all the hoppers with material.  Sometimes a colored material is being run and she must mix up a batch of material with coloring. She must then give all the operators their morning breaks as well as their lunch breaks. All of this needs to be done for six out of the seven injection molding machines that we have. With all of the above mentioned duties the most important one is that she is constantly inspecting parts to make sure they are running smoothly.

Toth Mold/Die Inc. is grateful to have a foreman that is very dependable in all aspects of our company. Without a key employee like this, it is almost impossible to be successful in our industry.