Every press booked.
Every tool tracked.
Every hour billed.
Mold replaces the spreadsheet triage that costs you 4–6 press-hours daily. Tool-to-press rules, purge-time buffers, and cycle-time math — all locked in before the shift starts.
Your spreadsheet is costing you
4.2 press-hours a day.
Row by row, here's what generic tools miss and what Mold handles natively — because plastics isn't generic manufacturing.
| Capability | SpreadsheetExcel / Sheets | Generic SchedulerAPS / Smartsheet | MoldBuilt for Plastics |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scheduling Core | |||
Drag-and-drop press booking | |||
Five-day rolling horizon view | |||
Multi-shift scheduling | |||
| Plastics-Specific | |||
Tool-to-press tonnage matchingOnly Mold | |||
Purge-time buffers between color runsOnly Mold | |||
Cycle-time-based capacity mathOnly Mold | |||
Multi-cavity tool trackingOnly Mold | |||
Customer tool custody logOnly Mold | |||
| Integration | |||
MES / ERP data import | |||
Automated customer PO linkingOnly Mold | |||
Live OEE dashboard | |||
| Operations | |||
Idle-gap detection & alerts | |||
Changeover flag & time bufferOnly Mold | |||
Contract molder multi-customer viewOnly Mold | |||
Shift-handoff summary report | |||
Every green cell in the table.
Expanded.
Click any capability to see the exact interaction, the exact saved minutes, and the exact phone call it eliminates.
Tool-to-Press Compatibility Rules
No more "will it fit?" phone calls at 6am.
Mold stores every tool's shot weight, cavity count, and required tonnage. When a planner drags a job onto a press, incompatible machines are greyed out instantly. The booking error that used to surface at tool-load time now surfaces at schedule time — before the press is cold.
Purge-Time Buffers Between Color Runs
The 90-minute purge that nobody scheduled — scheduled.
Mold reads your material-change matrix and inserts the correct purge window automatically. Dark-to-light transitions get 90 minutes. Same-family changes get 20. The buffer appears on the Gantt and blocks any job from starting before the press is clean.
Cycle-Time-Based Capacity Math
Your capacity number is real, not a guess.
Mold calculates available press-hours from your actual cycle times and cavity counts — not a flat "8-hour shift" assumption. A 22-second cycle on a 4-cavity tool produces 65,454 parts per shift. That number drives the schedule, not a spreadsheet formula someone built in 2019.
Automated Customer PO Linking
Close the loop from press to invoice without the phone call.
When a job is booked, Mold links it to the open PO automatically — matching part number, quantity, and due date. Planners see which POs are at risk before the shift ends. Customer service sees shipment readiness without asking. Billing gets confirmed press time without chasing.
The math on switching
from spreadsheet hell.
These are medians from production plants in their first 90 days on Mold. No outliers. No best-case scenarios.
Planners who switched.
What they said on week six.
We were running three planners and a whiteboard to manage 12 presses. Mold replaced the whiteboard and one of the planners retired without being replaced. The press schedule just runs.
The purge-buffer feature alone saved us from two contaminated runs in the first month. Those were $8k write-offs waiting to happen. They didn't happen.
I manage tools for 34 customers across 8 presses. Before Mold, I had a spreadsheet with 14 tabs and a prayer. Now I have a grid that tells me where every tool is and what it's running.
Book your first
press free.
Five presses. One planner seat. Full feature access. Enough to prove the grid works before procurement gets involved.