Midlands-based Amco Group is to provide plastic injection mould tooling, tooling movement logistics and finished parts for the all-new Morgan Plus Six.
The company has been servicing the global logistics needs of international organisations, 1st and 2nd tier manufacturers and OEMs across Automotive, Aerospace and Defence for over 35 years. Part of their services to these customers has included tool movements, handling, and shipping, customs clearing and all the complex processes from worldwide locations to the end users manufacturing facilities.
Customers involved in these services asked Amco if they could find quality partners and establish processes to be managed by a specialist team to handle all the aspects of plastic injection tooling production and logistics. Paul Andrews, Amco Group CEO led the Amco team to develop these processes, partnerships and a competitive and value-adding end-to-end proposition from a single source supplier.
In 2018 Amco was appointed by the Morgan Motor Company to ship and distribute finished vehicles to its world-wide dealerships and to handle and manage the shipping of V8 engines to Morgan's plant in the UK from BMW Munich for the Plus 8 and Aero 8 models.
Having been invited by Morgan, Amco won an RFQ for a tooling requirement and was subsequently tasked with producing a mould tool for a three-piece plastic steering column shroud. This tool was to be made from CAD drawings supplied by Morgan's talented engineering team and was destined for a secret new model now known as the Plus Six. Amco was also asked to cost for producing the parts and to consolidate the tooling, production, transport and logistics into a single source agreement.
Paul Andrews, Amco Group CEO, who led the project said. “This project is a clear demonstration of how the Amco Group add value. We already work with the Morgan team, shipping cars to dealers world-wide and engines to their factory. This opportunity allowed us to build further on an already strong and growing relationship.
“We had the tool built by one of our partners in Shenzhen and we were then commissioned by Morgan to produce the parts as our pricing was very competitive. We managed our DFM (Design for Manufacturing) process to optimise each stage of the manufacturing functions. We completed the mould flow analysis, and in this case, we identified in T0 (Initial Trial Parts testing) that the original material specified was not suitable. From the UK we shipped into Amco's facility in China, high quality, European specification plastic resin granules, which together with some engineering changes required by Morgan, led to successful T1 parts production, which were run before graining, and were 1st fit 1st time.'
Andrews continues. “The tooling and the parts were required for Morgan for the all new Plus Six for the Geneva Motor show and therefore time and quality critical. Our transport and logistics skills came into play one more time as the parts were ready in China on the Thursday and we delivered them to Morgan on the following Monday morning, hand carried by our Project Engineer! We managed the transport, documentation and customs clearance - basically the total supply chain from RFQ to delivery of finished parts, logistics, tooling and parts supply.'
Steve Morris, CEO of the Morgan Motor Company, commented: “Amco have proved themselves to be a business that will reach out, consult and problem solve. We started working together on engine movements and latterly time sensitive logistics and shipping of new vehicles to dealerships around the world; and now they are building quality plastic injection mould tools and making, shipping and delivering parts for the longest running production car in the world, and its latest showcase model the Morgan Plus Six.”