EPW, Inc.

Description

Elkhart Pattern Works, Inc., known as EPW, was incorporated in 1972. Located in Elkhart, Indiana, EPW began as a pattern shop and grew into an international tool manufacturer with customers in the US, Canada, Mexico and South America. While still capable of producing models and patterns, the focus of our business has become the designing, engineering and manufacturing of high-quality molds, primarily for the automotive industry. Our 65 employees use their skills and expertise to produce tooling for injection molding, reaction injection molding, window-encapsulation, and foam-in-place processes, along with splice molds and slush molds.When EPW became certified to ISO9001 in 1997, the company established key quality objectives including 1) standardizing our tool build processes to enhance reliability and repeatability; 2) providing each customer with exactly what they need; 3) delivering 100% on-time; and 4) achieving problem prevention rather than problem detection.Our workforce has proudly set a goal of zero customer complaints. In 1999, we saw a 50% reduction of reported customer complaints over the previous year. Though technology is rapidly changing, our design team continues to standardize key tool design elements to aid in the consistency of the tool making process. To improve our delivery performance, our management staff initiated a cross-functional weekly scheduling meeting. Key individuals review the status of each job and develop actions for projects at risk for late delivery. In 1999, our delivery performance improved from 81% in the first quarter to 90% in the fourth quarter. The external impact of these improvements in customer satisfaction can be shown by a 9% increase in our customer base and a 21% increase in sales.

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