From Plastic Injection Molding to Product-to-Market Mulitfacturing
When the predecessor company to Xten, Hauser Plas Tech, a sixty-year old Chicago-based injection molding company, started its business in 1940, Bakelite was still the industry standard.
Current Xten ownership purchased Hauser Plas Tech in 2000, and operated out of the company’s Chicago location until 2002. Then, along with Priority Tool and Manufacturing Company, a Kenosha, WI toolmaker and injection molder they also owned, they consolidated both companies’ facilities into a 78,000 square-foot, high-cube facility in Kenosha, built to specifications that anticipated their progression into Multifacturing.
The company quickly earned its ISO 9001 accrediation shortly after relocating to its Kenosha location.
Transition from Injection Molding to Product-to-Market Multifacturing
Having the assets of its new facility, Xten could increase its focus on developing a uniquely valuable capability that stretched well beyond injection molding, to be differentiated by the range of services provided and the magnitude of the economic gain delivered to customers.
Today, Xten’s Multifacturing is the most complete product-to-market service available for any company whose products incorporate injection molded plastic parts.
A Multifacturing project will draw on multiple areas of Xten expertise:
- Award-winning, top quality, tightly-toleranced injection molded plastic parts and components, are delivered through both long and short run production.
- Xten has special expertise with precise, complex components.
- The company pioneered and is now a leader in the field of in-mold graphics, particularly when it’s applied to durable products.
- Sourcing and purchasing components for, and then assembling a broad array of completed products and sub-assemblies: security cameras, electrical junction boxes, medical waste containers, hot & cold beverage dispensers, paper towels and cup-and-napkin dispensers, and many more.
- Serving as the bridge to our customers’ customers by maintaining JIT inventories of completed products, receiving and processing end user orders, preparing pick-pack shipments and managing the shipment of product, in all quantities, to domestic and global destinations. An in-house transportation function selects the most economical carriers, helping to further reduce customer costs.
A Dedication to Quality Drives Our Continuous Improvement Culture
Meeting customer requirements is a given at Xten. The more rewarding challenge is to exceed what our customers expect every time we produce something for them.
Xten’s Quality System uses ISO as a continuous improvement tool, requiring each phase of a project be audited multi-lingually, with results reviewed and critiqued for the purpose of identifying opportunities to do things faster, cleaner, safer, with less waste, less environmental impact and additional cost savings that can be passed on to our customer. Xten is now accelerating is LEAN activity. The company has applied Open Book Management (OBM) principles since 2000.
Building a Better Environment as well as Better Products
An important part of Xten’s business philosophy is contributing wherever possible to the sustainability of the world around us. Energy savings in both the factory and offices, resin waste reduction, recycling of shipping materials and use of company property for a community vegetable garden have help create a much smaller and lighter Xten footprint on the environment.
The company sponsors both individual employee and team athletics, – our soccer guys are perennial winners – and underwrites educational expenses that help all employees make the most of their skills, talents and ambition. The newest addition to Xten’s involvement is our association with the Kenosha-area Boys & Girls Clubs, providing real-work experiences that help expose at-risk teenagers to the challenges and rewards of succeeding at real-world jobs.
We feel strongly that by making Xten a rewarding place to work, we cultivate generous attitudes and positive outlooks among our employees, making working with Xten an invigorating and rewarding experience for our customers.
