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Questionnaires were mailed to a universe of 1,500 MoldMaking Technology plants with manufacturing SICs.

We mailed the surveys to upper echelon readers—presidents; executive vice presidents; general managers; vice presidents of manufacturing and/or operations; plant, works or factory managers and superintendents; directors of production engineering; and managers of manufacturing—people with lateral interests and access to the budgetary information and plans needed to complete our questionnaire. We mailed one questionnaire per plant using a computer program to select the highest title reached from a alphabetical search of each plan galley.

We conducted the survey from September 30, 2008 to October 30, 2008. As of the closing date, 215 surveys were returned for a 14.3% response rate. A total of 203 surveys were determined usable. Unless otherwise indicated, all figures are percentages.