The time to market for new products has become further and further compressed. You need to keep a competitive edge that requires speed and agility. Early engagement with a full service plastics partner can steam-line your development process and accelerate your time to market.
To help you understand how to reduce your marketing time, here are six ways a full-service partner can help your business.
- Injection Molding. Picking an injection molding company that has multiple injection molding processes will improve your chances of getting the best process for your part. This includes straight injection molding, structural foam molding, gas assist molding, insert molding and over-molding. Each process has its own attributes that will satisfy particular products. A qualified plastics partner can help you identify the ideal method to provide a quality part.
- Design Assistance. By consulting with Design-Tek in the initial stages of your design you can save hours of effort. Our plastics experts can provide input on what design features are possible from a manufacturing standpoint. This will allow you to design with manufacturability in mind and save hours of effort by eliminating the number of design iterations required.
- Custom Mold Manufacturing. Designing an injection mold is both an art and a science. Working with experienced tool engineers is critical to creating an optimal mold design and optimizing the development process. Our experienced engineers will consider how best to accomplish all design aspects of a mold. We will consider options that include identifying actions to create part features, holes, recessed features, windows and inclusion of inserts. By having a well designed mold, you will be able to eliminate additional steps in the manufacturing process later.
- Finishing Operations. Most plastic parts will require some form of finishing such as pad printing, ultrasonic insertion, hot stamping, painting or EMI/RFI shielding. Selecting a plastics processor that includes these operations under the same roof will provide the most efficient manufacturing process. This can take weeks out of the lead time to produce a finished part.
- Contract Manufacturing. Utilizing a plastic partner that can also source components and provide assemblies can simplify OEM’s manufacturing process and drive cost savings. By providing supply line development and management, your plastics partner can economically source materials from qualified suppliers, reducing supply chain risk for the OEM. Assembly capability under one roof provides cost savings by eliminating additional shipping and assembly cost.
- Total Quality Management. Engaging with a plastics specialist can help achieve optimum efficiency and profit while producing quality parts. Whether you are taking a product from concept to completion or transferring an existing mold project, effective quality management practices are an important factor. Trained and experienced engineers will follow standard testing methodologies including FMEA methods and utilize the right testing equipment for part qualification.
Working with a company like Design-Tek can greatly improve your profitability and increase the time you will be able to market your product properly.