| Why does Plante
& Moran conduct this survey?
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The knowledge we gain from survey participants, as well as what we have learned
from working with our plastics industry-leading clients, affords us the
opportunity to:
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Understand the industry and define the attributes that contribute to a
successful company
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Identify future opportunities/problems by examining data trends
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Become a thought leader in the industry by exploring emerging trends with focus
group volunteers
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| What will my report look like? |
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The last benchmarking report was over 75 pages. The report had an executive
summary, demographics, findings, benchmarking data, and definitions. Data was
presented in both graphs and tables. The benchmarking data presented the
participating company's data versus compiled quartile data of the total
population. In the past, this was a paper-based report and sent to the survey
owner (due to the confidential data only one copy was produced per
participant). We prefer to send the report electronically via PDF, but can also
distribute paper copies upon request.
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| Is there an opportunity to explore
the data more deeply? |
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Most definitely. We are available to review your survey results with your
management team and explore the significance of any unusual relationships. We
can also prepare tailored reports that allow you to compare your data to
subsets within our database (sales size, industry focus, etc.). This requires
us to extract the data using our statistical software and database. We also
need to examine the number of participants to ensure we are not violating any
anti-trust rules, particularly if the extracted population has less than 10
participants (our minimum for reporting). Statistical inference will require
substantially more participants to be valid. If you are interested in
additional exploration of the data, please contact us.
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| How will my data remain
confidential? |
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We require each participant to identify themselves for validation purposes only
(we want only real companies to participate, and not fictitious companies to
either obtain a report under false pretenses or distort the results). Each
participant will have a unique password and the data will be shared only in a
secured site. The data is then downloaded to a database with a participant code
versus the name of the company as the unique identifier. All statistical
analysis is performed without company identification. When the final reports
are available, you again must access the data using the secured website and
password to view and download the report. We do not even publish the names of
the participants.
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| If I have questions on completing the
survey, what are my options to have them answered? |
Within each survey, there is a comment box to indicate
how you interpreted the questions and responded with an answer. You may also
connect to the "contact
us" menu as well as call Elaine Corriero at 312-602-3563,
elaine.corriero@plantemoran.com, or fax us at 248-233-7695.
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| I have both mold making and molding at my
facility. Should I complete both surveys? |
If each facility is an independent reporting unit,
meaning separate balance sheet and income statement, then yes. Otherwise, both
activities should be combined together under the predominant activity for
answering the questions.
Please note, the mold manufacturing survey is done bi-annually and it may not be
available today. Please
contact us if you would like to participate in the mold manufacturing
survey in an off year.
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| I am a multi-facility company. Should I
have all the facilities respond independently? |
If each facility is an independent reporting unit,
meaning separate balance sheet and income statement, then yes. Otherwise, the
various facilities should be combined together for answering the questions.
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| What if I have independent
reporting units but also have centralized certain functions with the corporate
parent, such as product development, sales, purchasing, and human resources? |
We are assuming that as independent reporting units,
the centralized services are somehow charged to the independent reporting unit.
The specific questions that apply to centralized services may have to be
repeated in each of the independent reporting units (such as number of patents
developed within the last three years). Perhaps, in your judgment the question
can be allocated to each of the units (such as E-bidding/quoting). Feel free to
leave supplemental comments on any answer you provide that may be interpreted
in different ways.
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| I am a multi-national company with
operations in China. Is there any way to compare my company as a consolidated
entity versus others? |
Our focus is how North America competes within its
boundaries. We do have a few questions about sourcing production to low cost
countries, but otherwise the survey is not designed to address global
benchmarking practices.
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| I am a larger company; this survey
appears to be geared to smaller companies. Will I receive any benefit? |
Clearly the plastics industry is very fragmented.
Truth be told, the average size for a molder is under $12 million and for a
moldmaker is under $3 million. The majority of participants will be near these
amounts. Still, we have focused our mailing list to obtain a generous number of
participants at all levels, including in excess of $100 million. The wide array
of participants is necessary to accurately analyze the health of the industry
and if there is any benefit of size.
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| I am a thin gage thermoformer; the
operating characteristics of this survey appear to be geared to sheet extruded
thermoforming. Will the benchmark data be meaningful to me?
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Several specific operating questions for are prepared
for different processes, including injection molding, structural foam molding,
compression molding, blow molding, thermoforming, pipe extrusion, profile
extrusion, and sheet extrusion. We did not address all possible processes.
However, we believe many of the remaining benchmarks on operational, human
resources, financial and strategy and marketing will still apply to other
processes and encourage your participation.
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