Molex is a one-stop, integrated electronics manufacturing shop
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By RODD CAYTON/Lincoln Journal Star
Lincoln is home to several significant injection molding operations. There are some notable plating operations in the city as well. Stamping of metal parts is also part of Lincoln’s industrial landscape.
But it’s rare to find all of those operations under one roof.
Electrical connector manufacturer Molex Inc. does all those at a plant in the Upland business park, and has another plant a short distance away manufacturing electronic components for automotive applications.
Molex’s connectors end up in products as varied as wireless phones, vehicle air bags and icemakers found in many home refrigerators. The company has more than 50 plants worldwide, including two in Lincoln. Molex has more than 600,000 square feet between the two buildings.
Machines at Molex help people achieve the company’s goals, namely supplying customers with defect free components. The lowest possible per-unit cost and the quickest possible response to customers are also important to Molex.
The manufacturing floor is set up for maximum efficiency; for example, in the molding area, raw material is conveyed from above the main level to the machines that form plastic into parts.
The plastic left over from the parts being cut out is dropped back into the system, for re-grinding and later use.
The company makes many of its own tools, using a sophisticated computer design program that allows engineers to simulate the behavior of a tool before it’s actually built.
The first piece lab at the Upland plant is where engineers examine initial pieces and test them against customer-supplied tolerances. If the piece doesn’t fit, it’s back to the lab.
Molex parts are molded from more than 100 different resin mixes.
Some machines can mold up to 16 parts at once. That’s 16 different parts, not 16 units of the same part at once.
Suspect pieces are automatically removed, and machine operators study them. The machine is then adjusted so that it may go back to putting out parts properly.
The mold is inspected after each cycle.
The stamping operation takes long strips of raw material, spooling them through a punch press, and leaving them as strips of parts, ready to be separated and applied to components in the final assembly area.
Each part is checked, and if anything is incorrectly stamped, the press will stop running, and an investigation into why the improper part was produced is initiated.
When components are made, before assembly into the finished product, the machine operator checks an appropriate number of parts to ensure quality.
If parts are found to have been incorrectly made, the operator is responsible for tracking down any defective parts, even if the skid containing the parts has already left the molding area.
The plating operation begins with tire-sized coils of copper terminals, for example. It looks like an old reel-to-reel tape system, although the “tape” sometimes takes a serpentine route through numerous pulleys, reminding the observer of a loom.
The terminals are pulled through an electrically charged bath, which causes gold, nickel or tin to bond to the copper, then another reel picks up the plated product.
The other Molex plant on West Bond Circle is dedicated to final assembly of automotive power control modules.
That automated process starts with capacitors built at the Upland plant. They are placed in carriers on an assembly machine. Components are added one at a time to the capacitors. They move to a robot that places an adhesive film onto them, then an aluminum casting is placed atop. The whole thing gets bonded in an oven, which heats the adhesive film and seals the bond.
The automotive power control modules have numerous important duties, such as keeping feedback from interrupting radio sound, and telling the airbag when it should deploy.
Molex is making room at its Lincoln operations for growth. The company closed a plant in Auburn Hills, Mich. and will have automotive related manufacturing from that plant completely moved to Lincoln this spring.
After the addition of automotive work, the Upland plant will have more than 170 molding presses and about 80 stamping presses, said plant manager Mike Bell said.
As that process moves, there is an extensive automotive industry recertification process Molex must go through before the Lincoln plant can produce automotive items. To comply, the company has to rebuild and retest each piece of equipment until it’s found to work the same way it did when it was built in Michigan.
That’s going to take a while, Bell said, so the plant will begin making inventory before the customers give their approval. Once that happens, he said, Molex will have some product on hand that it can ship immediately.
As part of the company’s efforts to keep a happy and fit work force, a gym is open to employees around the clock. But the company’s fitness points system, which offers gifts throughout the year for employees who participate in fitness goals, isn’t confined to the gym. Such activities as jogging through the neighborhood and golfing at the local links also earn an employee points.
Molex also offers its employees a tuition reimbursement program that kicks back 100 percent of tuition, books and other fees to employees attending continuing education.
Molex is big on keeping its employees informed, said Bell. That explains the daily management boards posted in each work area that illustrate how a particular department is doing.
Seven original employees from when the company opened in Lincoln in 1977 are still on the job.
Bud Ersch, now lead man in the tool and die room, is one of them.
Looking back, Ersch said he had no reservations about joining a company that was new to town.
“I wanted to settle down with a good company and remain there,” Ersch said. “That’s exactly how it turned out. It was a much better opportunity that I’d originally thought.”
The work force, Bell said, is what makes Molex Lincoln special.
“We came because of the Midwest work ethic, which remains the same,” Bell said. “Other companies can match our technologies, but they can’t match our people.”
Reach Rodd Cayton at 473-7107 or rcayton@journalstar.com.
Molex Inc.
Address: 700 Kingbird Road and 1400 West Bond Circle, Lincoln. A third building, at 4309 Progressive Ave., is used for equipment storage.
Telephone number: (402) 475-1000
Web address: www.Molex.com
Headquarters: Lisle, Ill.
Ownership: publicly traded on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol MOLX.
Number of local employees: 800 (24,400 worldwide)
Financial tidbit: Fourth quarter net income was $58.5 million for 2005, up 12 percent from the prior year, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
Products, services: Design, manufacture and distribution of more than 100,000 products, including electrical connectors, cable assemblies, fiber optic connectors and mechanical and electronic switches.
Company history: Molex gets its name from a plastic developed by the late Frederick August Krehbiel, who started the Molex Products Co. in 1938. The company, then based in Brookfield, Ill., made clock cases, flower pots, valve wheels and other products from that material.
In 1940, son John H. Krehbiel joined Molex and soon recognized the importance of the material’s excellent electrical insulating properties.
Later in the decade, Molex added metal stamping to its molding processes.
The company launched its first plug and receptacle connector line in 1953. Through the rest of the 1950s, decade, Molex continued to expand the number of tasks for which its products could be adapted.
In 1960, the company introduced its first nylon plug and receptacle line, marking its evolution from a manufacturer of a material called Molex to an electronics corporation named Molex.
In 1970, Molex opened its first plant in Japan; an Irish plant followed a year later.
The Lincoln plant on West Bond opened in 1977, and the Kingbird Road plant in 1994. Molex now has more than 50 factories in 21 countries; other domestic plants are in Illinois, Arkansas, Minnesota, Indiana and Florida.
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