It''s a fast, fast, fast, fast world out there. Everyone''s business is moving at express speeds, but Westhold Corp of La Jolla, CA, may have some of the fastest-moving users of any company in business today. Their product is a timing system for motorsports, and their users are the drivers of some of the country''s fastest cars, motorcycles, snowmobiles, and other speedy vehicles.
Like his users, Westhold CEO Julian Lin has to be quick in order to compete successfully. Orders for his product can arrive with little or no warning and have to be filled promptly, with no allowances for parts delivery glitches. For both product development and production of components, quick turnaround is a must -- and hasn''t been a problem since the company was introduced to Protomold and the concept of rapid injection molding.
The Race Management System (RMS), Westhold''s primary product, is a comprehensive timing and information management system that uses radio frequency identification tags attached to each vehicle. The tags transmit a unique number that is picked up by a stationary antenna located beside the track as the vehicle crosses its path. Information from the antenna is sent through a decoder to a specialized compiler and then to a computer for analysis and storage. The system tracks, manages, and stores lap times, qualification times, split times, pit row activity, and scores. It can also maintain a database of race participants and scores over a single heat, an event, or an entire season.
In business for about 10 years, Westhold is growing at about 50% a year. In most cases, the company''s customer is the track, which owns both the fixed equipment and the RFID tags that are affixed to vehicles during the race. Westhold tends to serve smaller tracks, including the venues for some regional NASCAR events.
"That''s where the bulk of the business is," says Lin. "Smaller courses are the largest segment of this market."
Housings Take a Beating
Sophisticated circuitry is the active component of Westhold''s product, but plastic housings are also critical. Tags and chargers have to handle whatever the sport dishes out, which means lots of handling, moving from vehicle to vehicle, and rough rides whenever they''re on the job.
"There''s no telling what they''re likely to face," says Lin. "The tags are subjected to lots of vibration and some hard knocks, not to mention water, oil, and other chemicals. And regardless of what they''re subjected to, they have to perform perfectly every time.
"We worked with a traditional injection molder for the first piece we designed. The parts were costly, and delivery took months. At first, we thought there was no alternative; then we found Protomold and were introduced to the concept of rapid injection molding. What they offered seemed ideal, not just for prototyping, but for production as well. It was easy to get a quote, our sample parts came surprisingly fast, and delivery of production parts has been timely as well."
Protomold offered real injection molded parts made from aluminum molds. The company''s automated process milled molds directly from Westhold''s 3D CAD models, delivering finished parts equally suited to prototyping or production. Moldmaking and part production took days instead of weeks, and the cost was a fraction of that for traditional injection molding. Best of all, the economics of Protomold''s process allowed for far shorter production runs.
Protomold''s short-run, fast-turnaround process has impacted the way Westhold does business. The company doesn''t need tens of thousands of any part; more typically, they use thousands of each part, and their requirements at any time may be for just dozens or a few hundred.
"When we were just starting to build the company and develop our markets, buying plastic parts from Protomold as we needed them was a way to free up cash," says Lin. "Then, as orders started coming faster, it became a way to have all the plastic parts we needed to fill orders without tying up a lot of storage space. We''re well established now and leaders in our field, but we like the flexibility of keeping our inventories small and having Protomold mold parts as the orders come in."
Expanding the Product Line
In addition to enabling the company to offer a broad product line without maintaining a large inventory of existing products, working with Protomold has helped Westhold to expand its product line.
"Working with Protomold, we can respond quickly to customer requests for new product designs," Lin says. He explains that the original vehicle tag designs, still in wide use, draw power from a rechargeable battery within the tag.
But as Westhold''s system became more widely accepted, users expressed interest in a tag design that could be permanently attached to the vehicle, rather than provided by and attached at the track. One of the required changes for such a device was connection to the car''s own power system in place of self-contained power within the tag itself, requiring extensive redesign of the tag''s packaging.
"As previously, Protomold came through with the prototypes we needed to make sure the circuit boards would fit," says Lin. "Because the prototypes were real injection molded parts, we could perform all the necessary functional tests to make sure the parts could handle the real-world demands of the track. Protomold even helped us find the right resin.
"The problem in choosing a resin was that the finished assembly would be subjected to a lot of vibration and stress, so we needed something that was both strong and flexible. Polycarbonate would have been an obvious choice, but we needed to solvent weld some of the parts together, and polycarbonate can''t be welded. At Protomold''s suggestion, we tried Bayblend, a combination of polycarbonate and ABS. By itself, ABS would have been too brittle for our application, but the mix of ABS and polycarbonate gave us the strength and flexibility we needed along with the weldability of ABS."
Recently the company had to develop a new design on a very tight schedule. Recognizing the importance of testing all components together in their final form to make sure that there have been no design mistakes, Lin was concerned that new plastic parts would take longer than other components of the new design. He requested 15-day delivery of parts from Protomold and was taken by surprise when the parts showed up in just a week. "We verified fit and went right into production," he says.
"Protomold helps us respond quickly to our customers," says Lin, "and that''s important to our business. We may be a leader in this field, but we''re not the only vendor out there. If we don''t respond in time, we could easily lose a sale. That''s true of both new and existing products. Most of our sales are through distributors, and one of the ways we keep those relationships strong is by being there when they need product. That goes for replacements as well. In the market we serve, items can be destroyed in use, and we have to be able to replace them quickly."
He recalls a customer -- a track owner -- who noticed during a race that a car was on fire.
"His first thought was whether he could save the RFID tag on the car," says Lin. "It''s nice to know that customers value our product. And knowing that, it''s nice to know that Protomold will quickly get us what we need to keep our customers happy."