Plastics Pipeline Blog

Team 1 Plastics Guest Blogger – Mike Altenhof

Team 1 Plastics is pleased to periodically feature Guest Bloggers to share their perspectives of the plastics industry on Plastics Pipeline.

We thank today’s Guest Blogger, Mike Altenhof, Operations Manager at J&J Tool & Mold Ltd. 

Contact Mike Altenhof at mike@jjtool.com or (519) 737-2614.
J&J Tool & Mold Ltd. is located at 2075 Blackacre Drive, Oldcastle, Ontario NOR 1LO.

J&J Tool & Mold was incorporated in 1951 and specializes is small, tight tolerance production injection molds.  Our primary customer base is both automotive and medical, with most customers residing in Michigan and Ontario.  I have been with the company almost 40 years, acting as operations manager the past 15 years.  Our primary location is in Windsor, Ontario with an LCC in Shenzhen, China.

We have been working for Team 1 just over 2 years now (Fall of 2020).  Our scope of service is basically design and manufacture of plastic injection molds, along with making engineering changes to current production molds.

The Covid 19 pandemic was a difficult time for us, as I imagine it was for most manufacturing entities.  We were very fortunate in Canada to have the opportunity to tap into some government assistance programs, which enabled us to keep our staff on payroll and mitigate any layoffs.  This challenge still lingers to some degree, and more so at our LCC facility in China.  We definitely see more customers focusing on complete domestic manufacturing builds since the pandemic.

J&J has always tried our best to adopt a proactive approach to business and customer relationships, rather than a reactive approach.  I think there is nothing worse than having customer inquiries sit idle for days on end.  If you cannot provide an answer or response immediately, then a response such as “I will get back to you as soon as I have that answer,” I think is appreciated.  Three things contribute to success in our industry: competitive pricing, quality work, and on-time delivery!

Although some degree of complete LCC builds are waning, we are still sourcing smaller internal mold components to our overseas LCC in China.  We still need to do this as pricing remains competitive across the industry.  The important issues with LCC are to maintain a very tight rein on your supplier, and to ensure quality work and materials are always being used.