Many organizations talk about partnering with their supplier in the context of production supply. This is a very valid business model that I advocate as often as possible.
The reality of the situation is, the partnering should happen at a much earlier point!
Is your Product design team partnered with your molder as well? Collaboration (a synonym for partnering) between your part designers and your injection molder can reap large rewards.
- Faster time to market
- Optimized material selection
- Beneficial material pricing
- Best case component design = best case component pricing
- Optimized order fulfillment
- Faster delivery times
- Superior product life cycle experience
Every new product offering goes through a justification phase. Initial cost estimates that help gain approval from company management. How many programs never saw the light of day due to excessive NRE tooling costs, or worse yet, how many programs went into development, only to find out the NRE tooling was estimated low and the program costs escalate beyond estimates?
Working up from with your molder on part design optimization will go a long way to help prevent either of these scenarios from occurring. Part design optimization, resin material selection, old optimization due to input and part design familiarization will go a long way to making your development proposal make you look good as the project progresses.