Tech Molded Plastics, Inc. (Tech) recently hosted a team of MBA students from Penn State’s Smeal College of Business in order to gain fresh perspectives and analysis from a student team with a wide range of talents. The resulting relationship provided real-world business experience through the Smeal MBA Program’s Applied Professional Experience Program (APEX). Through the APEX program, teams of MBA students and their clients collaborate over fourteen weeks to tackle business challenges provided by client firms.
Students from the APEX program worked closely with the staff at Tech from December of 2012 through April 2013 to prepare a consulting report which served as a capstone project for their MBA experience. The project produced several concrete outcomes, including an analysis of potential market opportunities related to Tech’s precision manufacturing services. Markets were analyzed for growth based on profit potential, strategic fit, cost of market entry, and business/market risk. Then a go-to-market strategy was proposed for one key market segment that contained the highest weighted scorecard for return on investment coupled with a comprehensive implementation plan and supporting rationale. The project pitch was laid out for Tech’s senior management staff with visual metrics and documentation to reinforce their proposal. Immediately following the presentation, Tech Molded Plastics began to implement targeted recommendations.
“Success is rarely achieved through complacency,” stated Mark Hanaway, VP at Tech Molded Plastics. Mark served as Tech’s primary facilitator in the partnership with the MBA student team. “The objective was designed to challenge our strategic plans, business development goals and business management ideals by engaging well-educated minds that have not been seasoned by day-to-day workplace norms. I was impressed at the depth of understanding and level of commitment that the team members used to formulate proposals, recommendations and assertions in advancing a business model. The APEX team was not merely working on a class project; they owned the results to achieve success and performed well beyond expectations. ”
John Hanson, a Smeal MBA graduate and APEX team member, emphasized the importance of extending classroom knowledge to a business setting. “I think the APEX project with Tech Molded Plastics taught my team how to react to an uncertain business environment, which is so different than a controlled classroom setting or case study,” Hanson stated. “Learning how to combine the experience and knowledge of a client with our own academic toolkit turned out to be the most valuable insight of APEX. I believe it’s what resulted in a set of implementable recommendations that really pleased both parties.” Hanson has since applied his expertise to his new role in the Management Associate program at Sanofi Pasteur, a global leader in the vaccine industry.
Tech’s partnership with the Penn State Smeal MBA Program marked a continuing commitment to partner with educational institutions to provide exposure to precision manufacturing careers. In addition to recent involvement with the Smeal College of Business, Tech has offered internships to students at Allegheny College in Meadville, PA, and has hosted conferences with students in the Plastics Engineering Program at Penn State Erie, the Behrend College.
To read more about Tech Molded Plastics, please visit:
www.ttmp.com
To learn more about the APEX program, please visit:
www.smeal.psu.edu/apex
About Tech Molded Plastics
Tech Molded Plastics, Inc., located in Meadville, Pennsylvania, is an ISO 9001:2008 certified injection molded plastics company that supplies full-service injection mold design & development, precision mold tooling, custom injection molding, and integrated packaging & assembly to the medical, automotive, consumer, electronics, and aeronautics industries.
About Smeal College of Business
Penn State’s Smeal College of Business offers highly ranked undergraduate, MBA, executive MBA, Ph.D., and executive education opportunities to more than 5,500 students at all levels. Featuring academic departments of accounting, finance, management and organization, marketing, risk management, and supply chain and information systems, the college is also home to major research centers such as the Center for Supply Chain Research, the Institute for the Study of Business Markets, the Farrell Center for Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the Center for Global Business Studies, and the Center for the Management of Technological and Organizational Change.
