Intec Group Scales Automotive Injection Molding in Mexico

Overview

Intec Group makes injection-molded and insert-molded plastic components for the automotive industry. Its Guaymas plant opened in 2002 on Tetakawi’s Roca Fuerte Campus with twenty workers, nine presses and about 32,000 square feet, and has grown into a roughly 75,000-square-foot operation with more than 175 people and more than sixty presses, from 30 to 450 tons, whose local team designs and builds its own molds and assembly equipment. Marco López, Vice President and General Manager, leads it.

What López describes is a plant that competes on the things he names first, quality, speed and material flow, in a city he calls unique for the commitment of its workforce and for how well it is positioned, close to the border and with a port. The technical capability in Sonora, he says, is at a high level, and manufacturing there has been growing fast and competing with any other state or country.

The Challenge

Over the years Intec has been awarded more complex programs for the automotive industry, and each has come with different requirements on importation and exportation. Material flow, López says, is key. Winning the program is one thing; being successful in it, with the material crossing on time and the compliance in order, is what the plant has to prove every day.

Around the line sit the things that are not the product. Fiscal compliance, vendor management, the administrative side of employing people in Mexico, onboarding, recruiting, transportation and the personnel processes behind them: each is a function a standalone plant would have to staff, and each pulls a leader away from the strategy, the people and the customer.

Reacting to What the Plant Does Not Control

In manufacturing, speed and quality are among the most important things, López says, and a plant answers to external factors it does not control. What matters is whether the response is already designed and already integrated, so the plant reacts quickly and resolves it.

The Solution

On the Roca Fuerte Campus that response is Tetakawi’s. López calls it the integrated systems: all the departments connected, so that infrastructure, utilities, compliance, logistics and workforce work together as one ecosystem, a level of coordination he says cannot be repeated easily. Administrative and fiscal compliance and vendor management sit there, and so does the import-export work behind each new program, from crossing to compliance.

The workforce is recruited and onboarded through the Campus, with transportation and the personnel processes that let people stay and grow at Intec. Over twenty years Intec has built a strong workforce and Tetakawi has been part of growing it, López says, and the commitment of that workforce shows up as low turnover, which he names as the big differentiator of the Guaymas workforce.

Where the General Manager’s Time Goes

Because Tetakawi handles the complexity, López says, he is able to focus on the transformation, the strategy, people’s development and the business growth, and to bring customers in. He calls that a great part of being in Tetakawi as a leader. If he has to show one thing about Tetakawi, it is the integrated systems: they take up the complexity so the plant can focus on the operation and its evolution.

• Import-export for complex programs: importation, crossing and compliance handled as each new automotive award arrives.
• Administrative and fiscal compliance, vendor management: carried at the Campus level so the plant focuses on execution and business growth.
• Workforce recruited, onboarded and transported: a strong process behind a workforce with low turnover.

Outcomes

Intec has run in Guaymas for more than twenty years and grown from nine presses to more than sixty, with a workforce López describes as committed and talented, and whose low turnover he calls the big differentiator. The plant has built a culture of ownership, continuous improvement and excellence, work done in coordination with Tetakawi, and anyone who walks the plant, he says, can see the energy of the people.

Intec keeps what is its own: the molds and assembly equipment its team builds on site, its customers and its people. The administrative work behind compliance, the import-export work and the workforce process sit with Tetakawi. On that split, Intec grew a plant that opened with twenty workers and nine presses into an operation with more than sixty presses that designs and builds its own molds, and that, López says, is why Intec has not done it alone.