Why you need a contract manufacturing service for plastic injection molding?
As we know, plastic part is the most essential components in any type of products, and plastic injection molding is the most common process to obtain plastic parts. This is why plastic injection molding is widely used in today’s industry. If you want to develop and manufacture a new product, you must make a mold tooling and prepare it for plastic injection molding. That’s also being said, no one can manufacture a product in large-volume without a plastic injection molding process.
Most of business runner can’t afford and manage a plastic injection molding factory, because it’s time-consuming and energy consuming. Working with a contract manufacturer can let you can concentrate your main competition.
What type of plastic injection molding contract manufacturer suits for your business?
You might wonder what type of contract manufacturer will suit for your business, and how to find them?
Yes, it’s a good question. Normally considering a suitable contract manufacturers based on cost, quality, and efficiency. Normally the bigger manufacturer comes with a higher running cost, but offers higher quality products.
Since the manufacturing cost might vary a little from different size or different level of plastic injection molding contract manufacturer. So you should find a proper contract manufacturing company for your business according to your requirements at manufacturing volume and quality. For instance, if you have a big manufacturing volume for some products, you should find a medium or large factory to produce it. on opposite, if your manufacturing quantity is small volume, you should always find a small size of contract manufacturing company. On the other hand, for product quality, if you are going to make some precision products, you should find a high quality plastic injection molding manufacturer with good facility and quality control system. For sure, this type of contract manufacturer must have higher running cost and will offer a higher manufacturing cost. This is something you should know it and afford it before you come to them. If you just need to manufacture some common products,(like chairs, desks, box…), you are suggested to find some small and medium size of contract manufacturing companies.
How to find a good plastic injection molding contract manufacturing company?
There are many different types of plastic injection molding contract manufacturers in the world. They could be small, medium, and large scale of factories. Nowadays, most plastic injection molding manufacturers are located in Asia countries, like China, India, Vietnam, Indonesia… but there is also some manufacturers located in US, Japan, or European countries. But it’s not easy to find a good plastic injection molding manufacturer. We would suggest some useful steps on how to find a good plastic injection molding contract manufacturers as below:
1. You can find some potential plastic injection molding contract manufacturers via internet,(Google, B2B platform) business fair, or word-mouth of your friends. And collect their contact information(email, phone, factory location)
2. If possible, you should always visit their plastic injection molding facility. And check out their capability, experience, and management system. And particularly evaluate their injection molding machines, technical people, and quality system.
3. Send a RFQ to them to evaluate their pricing.
4. Comprehensive evaluation for your ideal contract manufacturers and finalize your choice.
5. Try to cooperate with the contract manufacturer by one or two simply projects.
What you should prepare before you start a plastic injection molding project?
As we know, we need to make plastic molding for injection molding process, so we should prepare a DFM to checkout our material choosing, fitting, and part structure. This is to avoid engineering changes and mold modification in future. Because it’s costly to make and change plastic mold. If possible, it’s better work with your plastic mold makers to evaluate your full design and components, perhaps they will give your some useful comments because of their experience and expertise.
How to manage your plastic injection molding contract manufacturer?
Once you have choosed your plastic injection molding contract manufacturer, you are strongly recommended to have a business contract with them. Here below are some important elements that should be included in the manufacturing contract:
1. Intellectual Property protection(NDA)
2. Pricing and quality
3. Payment terms
4. Shipping and custom duty
5. Product acceptance & warranty policy
6. Return, refund, and replacement terms
However sometimes a contract can never cover everything about quality and cooperation. You should also monitor and manage your plastic injection molding contract manufacturer annually and quarterly. If possible, try to score your manufacturers and manage them by different level and risk index. For example, the top level manufacturer will be marked as “A”, if a less one, could be “B”. and give them score by 100 %, if any manufacturer evaluation score is out of 80%,you should highlighted it, if out of 60%, you should stop cooperating with them.