Three Ways to Spend Your TimePage3

Fast Design for Fast CarsPage5

Next-day Rapid Injection MoldingPage6

in this issue:

2007Issue 2 Published by Protomold

Rapid injection Molding

> executiveview

At Protomold, we help customers speed up their product development process. As Protomold’s CeO, I deal with the accelerating pace of our own business and the demands of 24-hour-a-day global markets. But in thinking about the theme of this issue of the Journal—speed—I was reminded of an area that is greatly impacted by the increasingly hectic pace around us and affects virtually every one of us, but which we don’t often consider: our families.

The problems are obvious: work makes demands on parents, school and activities make demands on kids, information comes at us all at light speed, and distractions are everywhere. I’m not the first father to suggest that kids are growing up faster than ever, but they really are. All you really have to do is look around to see it.

Thanks in part to technological innovations, “young adult” attitudes and expectations come increasingly from the media rather than from their families. Parents have little control over peer relationships developed via Myspace® or information channeled through Google®. The very idea of influence begins to feel dated in a world of cell phones, iTunes®, and the Internet.

If families seem farther apart, you can take some comfort in the possibility that the child sitting across the room talking on his cell phone may also have three other friends on the line. And if your daughter isn’t asking for “a ride

to Heather’s,” it may be because she’s IM-ing a friend in Australia. While change always challenges existing generations, it fuels and energizes those who grow up with it.

speed is, by its nature, relative. When things around you move faster than you do, you are at their mercy. When, on the other hand, you are keeping up with or outrunning them, you have control. The good news is that the same technology that puts pressure on individuals and families can also help them thrive.

My daughter recently showed me how to configure my wireless network. I don’t know where she gained that knowledge, but it certainly wasn’t from me. My son has, on his own via the Internet, become an expert on turbochargers. These children, for whom we once arranged play dates, now manage their own busy lives via cell phone and PDA. And they’ve even allowed me access to their busy lives, taking my speed-dialed calls—from office, car, or some other country—to touch base with my son on his drive back to college or to make sure my daughter will be home for dinner. While I sometimes feel like I’m running to keep up, it reassures me to know that the next generation is comfortably in the driver’s seat.

Brad Cleveland CeO, Protomold

FastandtheFamilyWhen things around you move faster than you do, you are at their mercy.

2

> overview

They say that “time is money,” and while you can’t put it in the bank, time is, in many ways, a currency. It’s no coincidence that we talk about how we “spend” it or how we “save” it. We can even find ourselves “living on borrowed time,” which is particularly interesting since running out of time can be just as problematic as running out of cash—maybe worse, since there’s a well established infrastructure for borrowing money and nothing similar for borrowing time.

Of course, there are situations in which you can “buy” time. One of them is product development involving injection molded plastic parts. By shipping real injection molded prototypes in as little as one day, Protomold is selling customers time (and quite inexpensively, we might add). The question is, what can a customer do with that time? We see three equally valid options.

Faster to marketThe first way of using the time saved through faster prototyping is to be faster to market. This is an indisputable advantage in an age in which product life may be measured in months rather than years. With consumers and businesses alike eager to embrace new products, it’s an opportunity to earn mindshare, to become the “iPod®”

rather than an unnamed MP3 player. In some cases, it’s the opportunity to make a significant percentage of the money a product will earn before rivals even appear in the marketplace.

More thorough testing Another way to spend the time created by fast, accurate prototyping is on more thorough product testing. This can be functional testing to make sure the product works as well as possible, or it can be market testing to maximze a product’s appeal to potential buyers. In either case, the process takes time but can greatly increase the likelihood of success in the marketplace. In some cases, it can even allow a product to take market share from one that arrived earlier on the market but which doesn’t perform as well or have equal appeal to buyers.

Multiple product versions Finally, faster prototyping can allow the development of multiple versions of a product. We no longer live in an age of mass markets, but in one of niche markets. Quicker prototyping allows marketers to target niche markets with user-specific products, and at the same time, address multiple niches across the broader market to maximize market share.

Obviously, each of the above is its own strategy, but they are not mutually exclusive. You can divide your time resources among the three in whatever way best serves your marketing strategy. Of course, you first have to have the time to spend. In that sense, time really is money, and faster prototyping is money in the bank.

Three Ways to spend Your Time

Subtractive Rapid Prototyping

Machined plastic parts in quantities from 1-10

Prototype in a real material ... FAST

www.firstcut.com (763) 479-8600

3

> SPeedwinS

General Nathan Bedford Forrest is supposed to have described the secret of his military success as “getting there firstest with the mostest.” He could have been speaking for generals throughout history, from the legions of Imperial Rome and the equestrian armies of scythia and Parthia to the Panzer divisions that overran France and the Normandy invaders who drove them out. He could also have been speaking for history’s business leaders, who raced caravans across deserts and clipper ships across oceans to be first to market with their goods.

The tactics of business and war may differ, but the strategies are similar. (Perhaps this explains the popularity, among business leaders, of sun Tzu’s 2500 year-old treatise, The Art of War.) To a military strategist, speed means the ability to choose one’s battles. It lets a force do reconnaissance and stake out favorable positions. It delivers the advantages of surprise and the ability to respond when taken off guard.

To the business strategist, speed means exactly the same thing. If anything, the ability to move quickly is more critical to a business than to an army. Where an army typically faces one opponent at a time, a company can face many

competitors. Military conflict typically takes place in a defined zone of combat; business competes in markets that can span the globe.

As the Internet grows, so do the challenges and opportunities for businesses. Competitors no longer need to establish a physical presence in a market in order to compete. With factories and offices half a world away, all they need are Web sites and reliable shippers. And with today’s outsourcing options, they don’t even need factories.

The best response, of course, is to maximize ones own speed. size is no protection against a smaller, quicker competitor, as many an industry leader has learned. And while money may buy market share, displacing an established player is never cheap. Of course, speed is no replacement for clear thinking and good judgment, but if you do make a misstep in the market, quick recognition and response can often help you regain your footing before suffering permanent damage.

The real problem is that, since many business processes are sequential, a single bottleneck can slow an entire operation. speedy data gathering is useless if the analysis is slow. Record sales are wasted if manufacturing can’t keep up. And efficient manufacturing can’t boost the bottom line unless shipping can get the product out the door. success is a continuous process of collecting data from the market, turning that information into product, and then selling, manufacturing, and delivering the goods, all while working on the next generation and keeping an eye on the competition. In other words, “getting there firstest with the mostest” and doing it every day.

The ability to move quickly is more critical to a business than to an army.

theneedforSpeed

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AWe Tuning of Willow Grove, Pennsylvania is all about speed. The company was founded in 1991 to sell upgrades for air- and water-cooled Volkswagens, hence the name Air and Water enterprises or AWe. Today, AWe is a leading provider of speed tuning products and services for Audi and Porsche as well. Take, for example, the RsK04 performance package kit for the Audi s4. This combination of bolt-on components and G.I.A.C. performance software adds an incredible 200 horsepower to what is already a high-performance sports machine. Offerings like this one have earned the company frequent accolades from publications like eurotuner, european Car, Tuningwerks, Luxury exotics, and sport Compact Car.

Working with partners like Bilstein for shocks, Brembo for brakes, and H&R for suspension components, AWe provides its customers with a wide range of products, but the company also designs and, in many cases, manufactures their own products as well. Among the challenges AWe faces are keeping up with a steady stream of new car models and cost effectively producing specialty components that don’t always sell in mass-market quantities. A good example is AWe’s vent mounted turbo boost gauges.

“Our customers are very picky about fit and appearance,” says Director of engineering Chris Dollery referring to the boost gauges. each is custom designed for a specific car model, and manufacturing methods are chosen

to make the gauge look like a factory installation. For several injection-molded models, AWe works with Protomold for both prototyping and manufacturing.

After removing the factory-installed vent from a new car model, Dollery’s group uses a Microscribe CMM digitizing arm to reverse engineer the part and create a computerized 3D image. This, in turn, is imported into solidWorks CAD software, which is then used to modify the design to accommodate a boost gauge housing. The modified 3D CAD model is then uploaded to Protomold’s ProtoQuote online quoting engine, which, within a day, returns pricing and a moldability analysis.

“Our engineering knowledge is spread across everything from electronics to metal,” says Dollery. “We’re not really plastics experts, so the feedback we get from the ProtoQuote can be really helpful. The prototypes are quick and affordable and are perfect for detailed functional testing.” In some cases, testing has shown the need for design changes, but once a prototype has been approved, designs can go right into production using the same molds that produced the prototypes.

AWe has had parts made in a variety of custom-colored resins supplied by Clariant Masterbatches to maintain the factory look their customers expect. Working with Protomold lets the company get parts in small lots as orders come in, eliminating the cost and risks of maintaining large parts inventories. According to Dollery, AWe Tuning will continue expanding its product lines, using a variety of materials and processes. “But these days,” he says, “we always look at injection molding first.”

> caSeStudy:awetuning

FastdesignforFastcars

The Plastics Web®

Nowyoucandomorewith IDES!

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Buy - The Plastics StoreTM includesbooks, training, test standards, etc.

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SelectProtoQuotes®maynowincludeaProtoFlow®analysis.

If there is a concern that a part won’t fill completely, Protomold’s customer service engineers can run ProtoFlow to see if the part should fill, and to analyze revised designs until a model is achieved with a high likelihood of success. Ask for it!

> newtoProtoQuote!

Part can fill:

Part can’t fill:

5

> in-dePth

adayintheLife:

next-dayrapidinjectionMoldingAn approved 3D CAD model has been submitted, a ProtoQuote has been accepted by the customer with any required design changes made, a firm order has been placed, and a purchase order or credit card provided to Protomold. (Note: one-day turnaround can only be provided on parts that meet guidelines laid out atwww.protomold.com/fwd/restrictions.)

The order has been sent to milling and the A- and B-side mold halves milled from raw aluminum stock.

Mon

10:30aM

Cores and cavities have been polished and the ejector pins assembled to the mold.

The mold halves have been placed in the molding press and the requested number of parts have been molded.

The parts have been inspected and packaged and moved to Protomold’s shipping dock.

Parts are picked up by the shipper for delivery to the customer.

The order has been entered into Protomold’s system, the mold has been designed, and gate and ejector layouts added. (Note: the tight schedule on one-day turns does not include time for customer approval of gate/ejector layouts. If the customer wants such approval, it must be completed before 10:30 AM on day one.)

Mon

2:30PM

Mon

8:30PM

tue

9:30aM

tue

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> Bookreview

Intuition tells us that beating the competition to market with innovative products is good business, yet markets are full of “me-too” products. Obviously, intuition alone won’t change existing approaches, and for those who’ve made the commitment to speed and innovation, intuition alone may not be enough to consistently achieve their goals. In Fast Innovation, the reasons to innovate quickly are presented along with some techniques for doing so.

The authors point out the critical need for ongoing organic growth, without which companies must either grow by acquisition, a self-limiting process, or simply stagnate. The failure to innovate rapidly enough is the reason that a mere 10 percent of companies manage to maintain above-average returns for more than a decade.

Meaningful innovations, the authors suggest, must be clearly differentiated from the rest of the market. They must reach the market quickly enough to glean rich profits before commoditization sets in. And each should be “disruptive,” redefining the marketplace and marginalizing incumbent products, as transistors did to vacuum tubes and integrated circuits later did to transistors, to keep competitors at bay.

One of the keys to success is knowing where to innovate, and that answer comes from customers. unfortunately,

traditional market research methods often fail to truly know the customer’s mind. From simply telling vendors what they want to hear to not imagining what they could actually have, customers may inadvertently mislead vendors regarding the innovations that will drive their choices in the future. For a vendor, discovering that information is a challenge. Fast Innovation argues for an ethnographic approach, the in-depth study of customers and their environment to understand their

“lifestyles and cultures,” as opposed to mere surveys or interviews. They offer as an example the observed repetitiveness of consumer bill-paying that led to the development of Quicken® bookkeeping software.

The meat of the book is a discussion of how to build a fast, innovation-oriented organization. The authors see three distinct dimensions of innovation—product/service, market definition, and process/business model—offering real-world examples of their application at companies like WalMart, Apple, and southwest Airlines. They address time and money wasters like the tendency to reinvent the wheel when existing resources, either internal or external, could do the job at least as well.

While its overall thesis concerns a company-wide approach to innovation, the book also addresses very specific issues, such as “the sources of project delay.” For example, having too many projects underway at one time can keep all of them running behind schedule; the authors recommend ruthless culling at an early stage. Variation in task time within the development process can cause bottlenecks as one person waits for another to complete a required task; the solution may be cross-training. In short, whether your goal is to reinvent your organization’s approach to innovation or simply speed up existing processes, Fast Innovation presents usable techniques, clear rationale, and case studies to help you do it.

turningSpeedintoProfittitle: Fast Innovation: Achieving Superior Differentiation, Speed to Market, and Increased Profitabilityauthors: Michael L. George, James Works, Kimberly Watson-Hemphill, and Clayton M. ChristensenPublisher: McGraw-Hill, 2005iSBn: 0071457895

7

A Parent is BornProtomold and First Cut Prototype are now divisions of the newly named “Proto Labs, Inc.” “The Protomold Company, Inc.” was renamed so that we could bring rapid injection molding at Protomold and rapid CNC milling at First Cut Prototype under a common corporate identity.

Bigger DigsTo accommodate all of our growth, we’ve purchased a new headquarters building. The new facility, just a block from our current Maple Plain plants, will bring the company’s total domestic space to about 160,000 square feet. We should be in the new headquarters sometime later this summer and will keep you posted.

News of the WorldOur uK subsidiary, The Protomold Company Ltd., has once again been nominated for the prestigious MX2007 award in the e-business category. Presented by the 150 year-old Institution of Mechanical engineers, these awards recognize excellence and best practice in manufacturing in the uK. Protomold won the award last year after just nine months in the european marketplace.

Also in the uK, Protomold has been named a finalist for the technology and export awards for shropshire businesses.

High Tech, High TouchProtomold has been built on a foundation of automation, but that doesn’t mean we can skimp on customer service, so we’re busy training additional customer service representatives to help meet customers’ special needs. Of course, ProtoQuote design analysis is still a great place to start; besides, it’s available 24/7, is fun to play with, and never needs coffee breaks.

Technology update:Expanded Browser SupportFor all you early-adopters and non-conformists out there, we’re pleased to announce that, along with Internet explorer, you can now access 3D ProtoQuote using the Mozilla Firefox browser.

(Another) New Web Site It seems like just yesterday that we were talking about a facelift for the Protomold Web site. Well, now we’ve got a whole new site, this one for our FirstcutPrototype division at www.firstcut.com. No, that’s not summer snow; those are plastic flakes flying as our automated CNC mills make prototypes in a wide array of resins in as little as one business day from customers’ 3D CAD models.

While you’re at the Web site, check out FirstQuote™. It’s got the same kind of interactive capabilities of ProtoQuote® and works directly from solidworks, Proe, IGes, sTeP, Parasolid, and ACIs models.

what’snew

usaThe Protomold Company, Inc. 1757 Halgren Road Maple Plain, MN 55359

P: (763) 479-3680 F: (763) 479-2679 e: info@protomold.com

uK, italy, France, spainThe Protomold Company Ltd. unit A, Hortonpark Industrial estate Hortonwood 7, Telford shropshire TF1 7GX united Kingdom

P: +44 (0) 870 723 0000 F: +44 (0) 1952 677126 e: info@protomold.co.uk

germanyThe Protomold Company Pfalzgraf-Otto-strasse 50 74821 Mosbach Germany

T: 00800-Protomold (77686665) F: +49 6261 674790 e: www.protomold.de

© Protomold 2007

nobody’s FasteR in the shoRt Run®

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