Tully pushes MTD Micro Molding into jobs that others can't complete

Charlton, Mass. — In 1989, Richard Tully approached his son, Dennis, and asked him to work at Miniature Tool & Die. Dennis came on board as an employee without a title. He built molds and ran machinery. Dennis rose to engineering manager and, eventually, president as he learned more and as the organization grew.

In 1999, Boston Scientific approached Miniature Tool & Die to make a mold for what was, at the time, the world's smallest plastics part. Tully said the part would be so small that 500 pieces could be made from a single plastic pellet. There was little risk to Tully's team since Boston Scientific agreed to pay them whether or not they were successful.

"I don't know why they thought we could do this. We hadn't done anything close to that scale. Maybe we were the last resort for them," he said, describing the part that resembled a miniature rivet with an electrical winding that was surgically inserted to arrest an aneurysm.

"Previous to us making this part for them, they had a room full of people making these things by hand," he said. "They said sometimes a person would go an entire shift and not make one good piece."

Tully and his team did figure out the molding puzzle that no other team could before.

"We could make a year's worth in a couple of days," he said.

With that, MTD Micro Molding was born. The company hasn't looked back since. A name change soon followed as did its hyper focus on the medical market, including bioabsorbable parts. Mold making expanded to molding as well as the company stopped shipping its molds to nearby competitors to make the parts.

"I'm most proud of taking on impossibilities," Tully said, pointing out that his sales team is instructed to turn away work if they believe other molders can do it.

"It has to have some level of difficulty," said Tully, 57, who had stints at IBM, Nypro and LK Products before joining his father at what is now MTD.

Tully, who bought out his father at MTD in 2008, said he was first exposed to automation at Nypro. That experience helped form the foundation of how MTD handles its tiny parts, which must be managed through robots rather than human hands.

"We did that here more out of necessity and safety than anything else," he said. "That's a requirement. It's almost like having a car with no tires. You have to have the tires. You have to have this automation. It just won't work without it."

Currently, MTD generates $8 million in annual sales with its 13 molding machines and clean rooms. The 32-person operation will grow 20 percent this year, Tully said, following a similar path from the last three years. He credits the growth to being picky.

"We have become selective. This was a goal," he said, noting that medical projects take years to get in production. And some don't make it that far.

"If we don't get into production, we're in the red. We can only take on so many projects per year. It's difficult to pick the winning horse," he said.

Tully predicts growth in the future, but he finds the task of forecasting imprecise and difficult for his engineering-style mind. But he knows MTD has to physically make room for the expansion.

To that end, MTD plans to nearly double the size of the Charlton facility, adding 12,000 square feet off the back of the building in the next couple years.

"We planned for it when we built this building [in 1998], but I never thought we would need it," he said.

Another change at MTD is that Tully has handed off the day-to-day operations to Executive Vice President Gary Hulecki.

"[Gary] is running the entire organization and doing a great job," Tully said, calling the succession plan "a work in process with some of the pieces in place, but not all of them."

So, what keeps Tully up at night?

"Right now, I don't have a lot that keeps me up at night. But it is a question I always ask Gary. I ask John [Clark], who handles our project management. … The last time I asked Gary that question, his concern was, are we doing a good enough job with our project management and are our customers happy enough with the information we're providing them? I'm fairly certain the reason that's keeping him up at night is the answer is no. So, that's one of the most important things we need to work on.

"But right now, I'm sleeping like a baby," laughed Tully, who's in the office two to three times a week, adding that he's in regular contact with his team.