LOM Tooling offers Quality and Flexibility

LITEONMOBILE has intensively developed in-house tooling capabilities. The company has invested heavily in expanding production capacity, increasing technical competence and improving operational performance.

A year ago LITEONMOBILE started to develop Tooling operations as one of its strategic targets. The aim was to have the best-in-class tooling capabilities in-house. The in-house capacity has doubled in a year and at the same time quality and flexibility is clearly much better than when tools were manufactured by subcontractors.

The main manufacturing site for LOM Tooling is in Shenzhen, China.
– We have centralized our tools management and planning in Shenzhen. In addition to Shenzhen we also have tools manufacturing at other locations in China, namely Guangzhou and Beijing. In future it will be possible to increase our capabilities at other manufacturing sites too, says Tero Vanninen , Director, Global Tooling.

As a part of the expansion of common tooling capacity, LOM has focused its metal tooling know-how in Guangzhou, China.
– Based on growing demand for visual 3D metal parts and decorations, we have just finished the expansion of our metal tools manufacturing capacity by 50 per cent in Guangzhou. We have built up our metal tools capacity to meet the steadily growing market demand, and in future we will continue to put efforts into developing tools for visual metals, says Tero Vanninen.

Part of Product Creation
Another important change related to tools is the reorganisation of the Global Tooling unit.
– We have changed our internal way of working. Now Global Tooling is part of the Program Management and Engineering organisation. In practice, this means that Tooling is at the heart of LITEONMOBILE’s product creation process, Tooling also plays active role in concept creation, adds Tero Vanninen.

The participation in product creation is essential for the successful, efficient production. It also ensures that customers are supplied with the most suitable solutions.
– Our goal is to provide best-in-class tools to guarantee a smooth process and high quality in different kind of programs.

Recycling for the future
One way to increase flexibility and provide services for different kinds of customers is the recycling of tools. The standardisation of LOM tools began earlier this year. The aim is to recycle 80 per cent of LOM tools. This also takes cost efficiency one step further and makes the production process faster.

– The standards for recyclable tools will be ready during 2009; all recently manufactured LOM tools are recyclable. Tool recycling ensures improved cost efficiency for all kinds of end-products from low to high profile, and from smaller volumes to mass production, says Tero Vanninen.