To keep pace with growing demand for cost-effective systems assembly, Mack Molding Co.*Inc. has opened a Mack Tech-nologies plant in Marlboro, Mass. The plant, the second Mack Technologies site, is dedicated to the manufacture of printed circuit boards and system-level assembly.
So far under the $6 million Marlboro project, the building has been renovated and a surface-mount production line has been installed.
A second production line is to be completed in three to six months.
Though the 126,000-square-foot plant is operational, the production line is being tested and debugged. Official production will was to begin May 1, according to Jeff Somple, director of sales/engineering.
Most of the products made at Mack Technologies require the installation of a printed circuit board, said Ron Jellison, Mack Technologies' director of sales and marketing. In the past, the boards were outsourced to third-party suppliers.
``The new Marlboro facility affords us both the space and surface-mount technology we need to produce and test our own boards at much lower costs to our customers,'' Jellison said.
``We're targeting the higher-component-level boards for business equipment and telecommunications,'' Somple said.
The surface-mount technology will allow Mack to extend its reach into markets such as networking and medical diagnostics, he added.
Somple said the boards are not inexpensive and are for higher-complexity markets such as servers, high-end work stations and data storage, as well as networking.
The company hopes the boards end up in a plastic enclosure, he said.
The Marlboro plant has 130 employees, including 50-60 newly hired workers, Somple said.
Mack Technologies also operates a system-level assembly and order-filling plant in Westford, Mass.
Mack Molding, in Arlington, Vt., operates more than 100 presses and employs more than 1,350 people at its eight U.S. production facilities.
It was 10th in Plastics News' recent ranking of North American injection molders, with sales of $298 million for the fiscal year ended in June.
