AMBA sets a four-pillared standard for its Mold Builder of the Year honorees. Membership in the AMBA is leg one of the criteria. Pillar two is being an outstanding industry player who promotes the craft through program participation or educational outreach. The third pillar for consideration as an honoree is business acumen, demonstrated through company growth, innovation and a culture of honesty, fairness and practical creativity. Finally, an honoree must be the epitome of an American mold builder who represents AMBA ideals.

Rick Finnie, founder of MR Mold & Engineering Corp, has been named as AMBA’s Mold Builder of the Year. Finnie’s philosophies, achievements and reputation, gained during his 40-plus years in the industry, have earned him this recognition.

Leading MR Mold since 1985

As a teenager, Rick Finnie worked in his father’s tool and cutter grinding business and following that experience, he was employed by a moldmaker for eight years. When he opened MR Mold in 1985 in Brea, California, the company covered a mere 1,500 square feet of space, with a couple of used machines and one employee. Fast forward to 2019, and Finnie’s operation now occupies 16,500 square feet , employs 30 and houses five state-of-the-art molding machines.

MR Mold has grown to be a leader in the design and manufacture of liquid silicone rubber, gum stock silicone and plastic injection molds. Finnie’s company specializes in silicone injection molds that involve complex geometries, and it also produces micro molds, overmolds and insert molds. While many of Finnie’s molds are used for medical applications, MR Mold also serves the dental, aerospace, automotive and consumer products industries.

Considered one of the top silicone moldmakers in the country, Finnie has developed his own key components and stays on the cutting edge with equipment purchases to give employees the latest software and machinery. In recent years, Finnie has added a WorkPal pallet system, a 5-axis Yasda, a Krauss Maffei and an overhead crane – just a few of the additions and upgrades complementing the company’s Engel and Arburg machines.

This commitment to investing in equipment and technological advances is geared toward creating a “best in class” operation that helps customers save time and money in getting their products to market.

Finnie has assembled an employee base that reflects his beliefs as well as the ideals the company was built on, and he promotes continuous improvement to fuel the continued growth of MR Mold. His four-man management team has a combined 170 years of experience in the industry. Overall, 30% of MR Mold’s staff has been with the company an average of 19 years, a testament to Finnie’s effective leadership.

Giving back to the industry

Finnie joined AMBA in 1999. He sat on the AMBA Board of Directors for several years, created the California Chapter and served as chapter president. For Finnie, the value in AMBA membership is derived from the relationships he has developed – and the business impacts those relationships have provided over the years. “The AMBA is an organization of moldmakers who come together – we don’t compete,” he said. “Everyone has their own niche, so we can get together and have conversations about cell phone policies, high-speed mills, EDM machines or hours worked. Being able to exchange that information has helped me create some really good friends.”

Those friendships and the trust that has developed have led to business solutions that might not otherwise have been available on more than one occasion over the years. “I’ll never forget being in Southern Wisconsin doing a mold tryout for a customer,” Finnie said. “We identified an area where the mold needed a vent and, instead of overnighting the mold back to California and losing a day, Wade Clark at Electroform in Rockford, Illinois, put a vent in the cavity insert in a couple of hours.”

He continued, “It’s a good camaraderie. Everyone is willing to help.”

Finnie has done his best to be a resource for other moldmakers and, in 2016, MR Mold opened its doors for an AMBA shop tour. “I’ve conducted dozens of tours of this facility, but the vast majority of people come through and don’t know what they’re looking at,” laughed Finnie. “But this would be a bunch of moldmakers coming through, and they knew exactly what they were looking at – I was scared to death! But the feedback was great, and it was a great experience.”

Beyond the AMBA realm, Rick Finnie is a member of the Los Angeles Rubber Group, the Twin City Rubber Group, PLASTICS Industry and SPE.  He has sat on the steering committee for the LSR Conference for the last three years. Finnie also sits on the Board for the STEAM program at Century High School in Santa Ana and is part of a team of industry experts that offer courses on silicone through various universities.

Celebrated at 2019 AMBA Conference

MR Mold’s Rick Finnie was celebrated as an exemplary AMBA member at this year’s conference on May 9 in Chicago, Illinois, when prior recipient Roger Klouda, MSI Mold Builders, presented him with the 2019 AMBA Mold Builder of the Year Award.

Finnie was visibly emotional during his acceptance speech. “I sat through those dinners many times, and you’re dreaming of the time that maybe someday it will be you,” he said. “But you know you can’t hold a candle to some of the people who have won in the past. It’s a very cool honor, and it’s still sinking in a little bit.”

In fact, Finnie said he wasn’t sure everyone in the office had heard about the honor yet. He plans to hold a steak barbecue to celebrate with his employees in the near future.

As for the $5,000 scholarship grant from Progressive Components that accompanies the award, Finnie has plans for it, too. “Two years ago when we did manufacturing day, we had roughly 300 kids through here from all over southern California, with only a small group from Brea,” he said. “Because we’ve been raising awareness, we had 300 students again in October – all from Brea – so I want to approach the Brea school district to see if they have something valid we can do with this.”

Finnie is passionate about the mold building industry – and it’s one of the many reasons he was honored by the AMBA. Congratulations to the 2019 AMBA Mold Builder of the Year – Rick Finnie!