MKC's Full Service Offering

MKC designs, engineers and manufactures a broad array of highly engineered components and assemblies with diverse applications for customers in various end markets. MKC has earned a reputation as a leading provider of subassemblies and components as a result of its ability to offer comprehensive solutions by integrating its full range design, high pressure aluminum die casting, squeeze casting, machining, and assembly capabilities throughout the entire production cycle of a product, from early design stage through post-manufacturing service. This unique capability along with MKC’s commitment to quality and lean manufacturing culture throughout the entire organization are key factors that distinguish the Company from its competitors.

The Company’s full suite of services supports customers from concept design, through rapid prototyping, tooling and pre-production approvals to full-scale manufacturing, finishing and shipping. The Company’s customers increasingly rely on partnering with MKC early in the design phase of complex components and assemblies, and the Company’s breadth of services allows it to serve as a single point of contact throughout the design, manufacturing and delivery phases. 

As OEMs increasingly concentrate on their core capabilities and outsource component manufacturing, MKC’s breadth of services strategically positions the Company to undertake complete assembly projects, rather than merely supplying a single component. As a result, the Company is well positioned to capture market share as customers consolidate their supply networks and look for sole sources of components and assemblies.

Design & Engineering

The expertise of MKC’s engineers provides the Company with the ability to consistently produce components and assemblies to tight tolerances and to seamlessly launch complicated projects.  The Company utilizes a simultaneous design and engineering model, opposed to the traditional linear model, which allows engineers to quickly develop tool designs while many other pre-production processes are taking place. The first step is selecting the best processing equipment for the specific application by evaluating machine cost, repeatability, cycle times, operating efficiency and in-process monitoring. Once the process decision is made, the Company’s design engineers create the optimum tool design using advanced three-dimensional solids modeling and CAD capabilities while conducting processes such as finite element analysis, fluid flow analysis, heat transfer modeling and cavity design. Concurrently, production engineers focus on process design and implementation. This innovative approach allows MKC to build prototypes and production tooling in as short as 45 days while virtually eliminating costly mistakes and downtime caused by the traditional linear trial-and-error design approach and allows for seamless new program launches.

Tooling

MKC has extensive experience designing and building tooling on an in-house basis and has established relationships with offshore tooling providers. The Company’s dedicated in-house tooling staff includes toolmakers and tooling design engineers that are capable of building tooling to achieve incredibly tight tolerances. With both in-house and offshore capabilities, MKC can optimize the ideal tooling solution for its customers. For example, MKC may produce the first tool in-house and then outsource all repetition to offshore providers to ensure quality at the lowest possible cost.

Casting

MKC offers a full range of high strength aluminum casting for parts weighing between 0.25 and 15 pounds. The Company’s extensive knowledge of metallurgy and in-house alloying capabilities optimize the metal characteristics for the intended application. For example, by altering factors such as magnesium content and temper, MKC can create a highly ductile alloy allowing for 5-12% elongation without strength loss while conventional aluminum alloys typically only allow 2-3% elongation.  Along with its fully automated traditional high strength casting capabilities, MKC also offers semi-solid metal casting (“SSMC”) techniques to cast high volume parts with quality and strength characteristics of traditional forging and other casting processes at a cost comparable to these less advanced techniques.

Machining and Assembly

The Company performs machining and other subsequent operations on almost all of the products it manufactures. The machining capability is an important part of MKC’s ability to provide an integrated full-service product offering. MKC employs 15 automated production cells to manufacture products at very tight tolerances. The Company’s highest complexity components may be machined by multiple tooling sets as part of a fully automated process. The Company has also developed a variety of innovative assembly offerings, including an as-cast insertion capability to assemble various components into a cast component. By integrating machining and assembly into MKC’s fully automated manufacturing process, the Company eliminates the need for costly secondary operations.

Integration

MKC’s integration capabilities and systems know-how utilizing multiple machining centers, robotics, in-process quality monitoring and measurement are key elements to the Company’s single source strategy. Each of MKC’s products requires the integration of the Company’s core capabilities listed above. MKC utilizes 30 ABB robots and 6 advanced coordinates measuring machines to assist in system integration. The Company’s ability to integrate each step of the process from initial design to final assembly is a unique capability that management believes differentiates the Company from its competitors.