Dennis Tully, President of MTD, has come a long way since his days working at Pilgrim Tool & Die as a machine cleaner, which was his first paying job, where he got out early from High School for a work release program.
In 2008, the founder of MTD, Richard Tully, retired and the organization was passed onto the second generation led by Dick’s son, Dennis Tully. Despite MTD’s growth in size, scope and capabilities, we remained committed to the original philosophy to respond quickly, precisely, and efficiently to our customer needs. We sat with Dennis as part of our Insider Q&A series and asked him a series of questions to get his perspective on common questions that we field from folks in the medical device industry. Check back soon for additional thoughts from Dennis in future Insider Q&A blog posts.
Q: MTD Micro Molding has successfully manufactured and delivered parts that were more difficult to build than most, but have you ever had to succeed where others have failed? In other words, has MTD Micro Molding ever successfully manufactured parts that were not able to be built by a competitor?
A: 25% of new projects come to us as “rescues” – failed attempts by other molders. One recent rescue project story involved a medical device company that came to MTD after working with a competitor of ours who was unable to produce acceptable post-molded IV, with loss averaging about 35%. The critical features (multiple micro through-holes) of the bioabsorbable component were also unable to be dimensionally controlled with the previous supplier. This caused many issues in the secondary manual assembly step. The first shots MTD produced for the customer revealed crisp features, capable critical dimensions, and IV loss of 3.4%.
Another customer spent 2 years working with another molder, who was having issues with degrading the unique material, Polydioxanone. They came to MTD to try to successfully mold with difficult material, which was a new material for us. It is a fast-resorbing material and has a reputation for being extremely difficult to mold. We are still in the early material characteristics stages of development but, so far, so good.
1 of out 4 new projects come to us as “rescues” failed attempts by others. Our success rate? 100%.
