| Guide to selecting injection molding |
Recently, We've seen a significant number of injection molding companies fall by the wayside due to a variety of reasons. It's more important than ever to correctly evaluate your potential suppliers to insure they are a good technical fit for your business and are long term financially sound organizations.
There are as many different types of injection molding companies as there are customers. Finding one who meets your over all objectives is not hard but it does take some work and investigation.
Generally the first item on anyone's list of criteria for evaluating potential suppliers is competitiveness. Of course that factor should play a major role in deciding who to select as your partner supplier but a successful long term relationship needs to be built on more than who sends in the lowest quote. Witness the long term result of all the Freemarket awards given in the last decade. Where are all these relationships now? |
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| 1) Define your Goals |
| Clearly define your goals and requirements. Are you building a better mousetrap with un defined potential? Are you replacing or updating an existing product with a clear production history? Are you launching a new disposable medical device? Do you have numerous parts in a complicated assembly that will require a significant amount of tooling? Is time to market a critical driver of success? Start with a list of key objectives and use that as the beginning of your search for your injection molding partner. |
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| 2) Define Your Ideal supplier |
| What are your expectations for you supplier? Will they build to print or work in tandem with your engineering team to design for manufacturing? Are there assembly and secondary operations necessary? Do you envision significant automation to support high volume requirements? Are there many components in the assembly? Should they focus on low volume manufacturing? Do you want your partner to have in house tooling to allow for quick and easy on the fly tool changes? These and many other elements should play a role in your assessment of potential suppliers before you send out the first RFQ. Sit down with your team and summarize what you see as your ideal supplier. |
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| 3) Define the project requirements. |
| Set realistic production targets. Smaller less complicated tooling offers many benefits. You will have better quality, a faster product launch and a lower cost investment at the outset. Seldom does a product come off exactly as you expect from the beginning. The selection of a supplier who doesn't match your ambitions can trigger unexpected and hefty cost increases, production delays and missed opportunities and most importantly poor product quality can lead to a loss of customers. |
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| 4) Define your quality requirements. |
This can be the trickiest question of all, because everyone will say I want absolutely the best quality possible. Ask yourself the following questions:
Do you need documented QC data to satisfy your target market's requirements?
Are you expecting capability studies and detailed results of inspection reports and testing?
Does your supplier need an ISO approved and registered manufacturing process?
Are you happy with a first article inspection report and a simple fit and function evaluation?
Different suppliers have different abilities to provide this type of information. Be sure your chosen supplier understands exactly what your expectations are for QC documentation, and don't assume that the costs are covered before you ask the simple question of what you need and who is going to pay for it. |
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| 5) Look for a company culture that fits you and yours. |
| It's important that you can work closely with your chosen supplier and each of you understand the mutual goals of the project including time lines, production schedules, personal involved and so on. Many times working with a small operation can seen useful at the beginning however often this type of organization is thinly staffed and that can become quite a burden on major new product launches. They just don't have the staff to support all customers and eventually something has to give. You should have at least a program manager as a point of contact. |
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| 6) Don't buy just on price! |
| As we said from the outset, don't let price be the only criteria in which you evaluate your potential supplier. Think about what your ideal supplier might look like and once you're identified that you can then work through potential supplier list based on how they stack up in price. |
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