Why it matters that your consultant has run a real factory.
Because the decisions that look simple on a drawing are the ones that cost the most on the floor. I have taken them as an engineer, as a technical director and as the person responsible for the company's results.
I joined Technika Plastika SA in 1991 as a production engineer, became its technical director, and led the company as CEO and CTO from 2000 to 2018, keeping direct responsibility for technical management and sales throughout. The company, later renamed DASYC SA, was a custom manufacturer of engineering parts: injection moulding in engineering thermoplastics and BMC, pressure die-casting, composites, mould design and construction, and final assembly, for electrical, electronics, automotive, defence and aerospace customers.
Along the way I introduced BMC and gas-assisted injection moulding to Greece, designed and patented a transportable composite hangar, and founded a 3D-printing service company with polymer and metal printers.
Since 2018 I work through efce for manufacturing companies, mostly SMEs. What I offer is what I needed when I was a CEO: a senior engineer who looks at the whole problem, says plainly what is worth doing, and stays until it works.
The study, the design and the supervision are done by Nikos Efentakis himself. For construction and implementation we work with a few steady partners we have known for years.
Where the experience comes from.
What I learned in industry that engineering software alone does not teach.
A design is judged on the night shift.
Not on the screen and not at the first sampling, but when an operator runs it for the thousandth time with a new batch of material.
The cheapest mould is rarely the cheapest.
A mould is paid for once and lived with for years. Its cost is in every cycle, every correction and every stoppage.
A customer buys a result, not a study.
A report is useful only if it leads to a decision that works in production. That is how I judge my own work.
The people on the floor know where the problem is.
Most of the time they have seen it long before the figures show it. You have to ask them, and listen.
An audit is not passed with paperwork.
Demanding customers look at how the factory really works. Procedures have to describe what people actually do.
Every technical decision is also a business decision.
An investment has to pay back with the people and the volumes the company actually has, not with those of a textbook.
Discuss your engineering problem.
Tell us what you are developing, changing or trying to fix. We first look at the engineering question, then say plainly what is worth doing: a calculation, a design review, a test, a simulation, or a combination.