Understanding Your Needs: A Guide to Choosing the Right Plastic Manufacturing Partner
For more than 10 years, Central Plastics has been a trusted partner and provider of high-quality plastic parts, components and assemblies for various markets, including the Healthcare industry, Aerospace and other emerging markets. With our robust experience in manufacturing components for medical devices, we have a thorough understanding of how customers should determine the right injection molding partner for their applications.
As with everything in the world of healthcare, safety and quality are of utmost importance, along with cost and production capability. However, supply chains are riddled with risks that could derail your project. These risks can look like missed deadlines caused by unforeseen delays, defective parts or insufficient production capacity; overspending on project budgets due to issues that were not proactively recognized; or a disjointed understanding of the expected product performance because of poor communication between multiple parties. These risks may present themselves, yet your injection molding partner should overcome these hurdles and exhibit the highest standards of reliability and quality to ensure that your product lives up to its intended design and performance in a timely manner.
There is no shortage of plastic injection molders in today’s market, so how can you distinguish the best partner for you? In this blog, Central Plastics emphasizes the 6 key considerations for choosing the right plastics manufacturing supplier for a medical device application. This would also apply to other applications.
1. Experience & Expertise
Select an injection molding partner with the right skills and experience.
Due to the nature of medical products, strict regulations and compliances must be met to minimize risk of exposure to end users. Therefore, your supply chain partners should have the relevant technical capabilities and industry experience to manufacture your project to a high level of quality and yet meet the level of complexity.
The supplier’s experience should inform them on how to expertly handle the intricate designs and challenging materials often used in medical device manufacturing, as well as normal operational obstacles like demanding deadlines.
The supplier’s expertise should revolve around Design for Manufacturability (DFM) as a safeguard for early issue identification. With DFM capabilities, your supplier can analyze the various moving parts of the part design to identify which areas of the process need reworking.
Central Plastics emphasizes DFM to customers because we value production cohesion and efficiency; this way, we ensure that all critical components like design compatibility and logistics are taken into consideration from the get-go. Our engineering and design capabilities allow for more flexibility and improvement without disrupting your supply chain.
2. Capacity & Resources
Seek out a supplier that can realistically manage the level of production your product requires.
While a supplier’s expertise may be extensive, they may not have the capacity to operate in line with your needs. In your search for potential suppliers, evaluate their ability to reasonably accommodate your product requirements within your timeframe and budget.
- Do they have the capacity to plan your product strategically from the beginning?
- Do they have enough equipment to produce your requested volume?
- Do they have sufficient resources to perform adequate testing to ensure quality and functionality meet expectations?
If your product’s manufacturing places an intense strain on your supplier’s resources, you could be opening your business up to supply chain issues. Delayed deadlines, defective parts, and increased costs are all negative results of partnering with a supplier for a project that extends beyond its scope.
At Central Plastics, our injection molding capacities enable us to offer high-quality injection molding capabilities and other value-added services to meet customers’ specific needs. For competitive prices, we can fulfill high-volume production orders and offer press capacities ranging from 24 to 800 tons. We utilize state-of-the-art automated equipment to ensure part consistency. With our resources, customers can reliably scale up and meet their production needs with no hassles.
3. Contract Manufacturing (CM) vs. Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization (CDMO)
Choose a supplier with multifunctional expertise to advise on the various aspects of production.
The first two considerations highlighted in this blog will play into your decision between using traditional contract manufacturing (CM) or partnering with a contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO).
The distinction between the two lies in their varying levels of development capabilities. Straightforward in its scope and abilities, CM focuses solely on manufacturing. Meanwhile, CDMOs are one-stop shops that provide an enriched and more convenient approach to developing complex solutions.
As a CDMO, Central Plastics maintains cross-functional expertise in development and manufacturing, appealing to businesses looking for a concerted, detail-oriented project plan. Our team assists with material selections, assembly logistics, mass production efforts, and more to optimize production.
By opting for one supplier to manage both development and manufacturing, you can also reduce the need for transferring product information between multiple suppliers and minimize the chances of losing valuable documentation. Comparatively, CDMOs are better equipped to analyze the blueprint of your program, from product objectives to the initial design phase to assembly and testing; they can then establish a thoughtful and efficient plan that will get your product to market quicker.
4. Financial Standing
Partner with a financially secure injection molding manufacturer for optimized processes and opportunities for advancements.
Just as your products should be reliable for customers, your supplier should be reliable for you. If a manufacturing supplier is in poor financial standing, numerous negative outcomes could occur as a result: production delays, management changes causing confusion and miscommunication, and risks to quality standards. Now, not only is the supplier’s business in financial jeopardy but so is yours because of these issues.
Central Plastics’ steady growth over the past decade signifies our continued investment in our own and our customers’ success. Good partnerships forge paths forward with new innovations that may call for updated processes and equipment, requiring a certain level of financial security. Optimizing our location and facilities, improving management systems, and adding new technology manpower and equipment are all initiatives we have taken to better serve our customers.
5. Quality Standards
Pick an injection molder that values and guarantees quality assurance across all departments.
Each day, the medical industry greatly depends on the safety and performance of its products. Due to this high reliance, suppliers must excel in manufacturing each part, every time.
When investigating potential suppliers, pay attention to their culture of quality and look beyond just their quality department. Zone in on how the company in its entirety is structured around quality standards.
- How are products monitored to ensure quality before market release?
- How do design teams optimize manufacturing and inspection processes for high-quality products?
- How do manufacturing and engineering teams maximize the maintenance of production assets to verify part consistency?
- How do key personnel collaborate to identify quality issues for efficient resolutions?
Central Plastics recognizes that expert injection molding partners will act on quality initiatives driven by ownership and accountability. We have a robust QMS system in place, are cGMP compliant and dedicated personnel who are passionate about quality and best practices with industry standards. We have been accredited with many supplier audits. We periodically perform validations using PPAP and IQ, OQ, PQ framework as needed by the customers. The cumulative experience and expertise of our team is demonstrated through our acquired certifications and endorsements, particularly our ISO 13485:2016 certification and Class 8 (100,000) clean room. We are also on our path towards other industry standard registrations in 2024.
6. Communication & Innovation
Seek out a supplier that will proactively identify potential obstacles and use them as sources for innovative inspiration.
Navigating the medical device manufacturing field requires a competitive edge and a knack for identifying areas for advancement and exploring new paths for creative solutions. On top of that, speed to market is critical to successfully establishing a product in the field.
Therefore, your communication with your supplier should remain transparent, open, and consistent. Set the foundation for a strong partnership by prioritizing efficiency and honesty from the beginning. Your products would reach the market faster if all parties involved were on the same page, where project challenges can be openly discussed and resolved in a productive manner. At Central Plastics we offer a dedicated project management team to stay on top of these aspects.
While avoiding challenges altogether is ideal, it’s best to collaborate with a supplier that retains a creative, flexible mindset for problem-solving. Innovations are the world of tomorrow, and in an industry, that’s ever evolving, that’s exactly where you want to be. At Central Plastics we offer product design ideas, prototyping, and pilot lot capabilities that would help you to speed up the launch of your product to your market. You want to stay ahead of your competition and push your business even further. The right supplier for you will transform problems into accomplishments and fuel your competitive edge in the market.
Want to learn how Central Plastics can elevate your supply chain with medical device manufacturing?
