5 Services the Best Plastic Injection Manufacturers Should Offer
During the selection process of a plastic injection molding company, there are a few factors that may help determine the success or failure of your product launch. Below are five criteria that we believe are critical in your selection of a quality plastic injection molding manufacturer.
1. Quality Certifications:
When selecting a plastic injection manufacturer, it’s a good idea to look into their overall quality system. Having certain quality-related certification such as ISO 9001 can demonstrate the manufacturer’s commitment to quality. ISO certifications are accrued by adopting multiple processes and procedures, over a long period of time that assures standardization in order to deliver quality products. Although having an ISO 9001 certification is considered as a good standard, companies such as CMI, with ISO 14001 and UL QMMY 2 elevates quality control and increases corporate ethical practices. These processes and procedures should be embedded into the company’s culture which further extends their commitment to transparency and quality during the manufacturing process. It’s a good idea to note how long they have had their certifications for it can reflect their experience in the manufacturing of quality products.
2. Protection of Intellectual Property:
The manufacturer should always take precautions when handling customer’s proprietary information. Due to high competition it's important to keep customer information strictly confidential to prevent employees from disclosing business sensitive ideas and to prevent cyber-attack. There are certain precautions a manufacturer can take such as adding security systems to their servers, ensuring that their firewalls and security keys are up to date. Factories should also take preventative measures to educate and train employees from disclosing intellectual property. Safety processes that are routinely practiced by factories will be the most effective by assuring that each employee knows what they are supposed to be doing in order to prevent mishandling of customer information.
3. Agile Response to Demand Change:
It is crucial whether a factory is able to accommodate your demand change. You know your demand forecast is never going to be perfect, so a manufacturer’s response to such changes can impact your financial bottom line. You want to work with a factory that is able to accommodate your frequent demand changes. They should have the ability to scale up their production capabilities at a moment’s notice by having a production crew on-call as well as having available inventory in order to meet your demand increase.
4. In-House Tooling Expertise:
It may also work to your advantage to find a plastic injection molding manufacturer that has in-house tooling capabilities. In-housing tooling capabilities is beneficial because the the factory can create the mold, maintain it and alter it. Additionally, you will have the ability to work with the design team at the outset of a new product introduction to review issues related to design-for-manufacturing (DFM) for best cost control.
5. Offering of Injection Molding Machines:
Since molds can be made into different shapes and sizes, there are different machines that handle the injection process. Injection molding machines are measured in terms of pressure or tonnage, and they can range from 5 to 9000 tons or more. It’s important to choose the manufacturer that has a variety of tonnage capacity in order to accommodate your specific requirements to complete different orders.
Finding the right plastic injection molding company can be a hard task to face, but we hope that this short list of criteria to look for can be beneficial in your search. For more tips and know hows, take a look at our blogs.
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