For mold sales, it’s a frequent case to get feedback “Your price is much higher than other suppliers”. In most cases, when only focusing on price, it’s an question without answer, value-added service is the only way to out. Today, we would like to discuss the concept of Mold Price, vs. Mold Cost. They looks like same, but totally different when checking it out.
Every mold has a Price and a Cost. Price is a figure that quoted based on your request when sending the inquiry. While, Cost is far more than that. The cost of the mold includes many more factors, such as most construction techniques, mold tryouts, engineering changes, Lost production(due to ECOs/Rework), mold maintenance etc.. For outsourcing projects, mold transportation, sample delivery fee, and tooling engineer’s possible travelling cost will be added. Now, Let’s take a closer look at the factors that comes from mold itself.
Mold Construction Techniques
Mold construction techniques can result in a mold that runs at optimum cycle time or runs at slower cycle. It’s also the most important index to identify whether a supplier is capable enough. Better cooling, good understanding of plastic material, right choose of mold steel are on this topic. While, for injection molding companies, they benefit most from an optimum cycle time. The less time for each part, the more profit for the company.
Molding Tryouts
When you get the offer from supplier, normally, it include molding tryout price for three times. While, if you still have further improvement needs after three times tryouts, you’ll be charged, this cost is not shown on the offer, it’s a kind of hidden cost. And because of more tryouts, additional shipping cost, and evaluation cost(Sample inspection check cost and time cost) will increase accordingly.
Engineering Changes
Engineering changes exist in lots of projects, this cost is resulted from the design change from end customer, it often occurs after the T1 shot submitted. Normally, this added cost won’t be beard by injection molding companies independently, it’s a reasonable cost for product development, R & D company will bear it. But, the subsequently of technical discussion, project arrangement, employer’s possible visiting cost etc. will be hidden cost for the whole project.
Maintenance and Uptime
Although these two targets are much harder to prove when seeing the price, they are vary valuable for molder. For example, a mold that must be sent back to the mold shop for repair can cause days for weeks of downtime for the molder, every seconds during maintenance process are lost production time for molder. This scenarios shows the value of a mold design that permits maintenance to be done more quickly in the molder’s plant. Another example is a more rigid mold design that will have less deflection of mold components during injection or clamping up process, allowing the mold run longer before maintenance is necessary.
Above are the hidden cost for the mold itself. While, to manage well the project, some affiliated hidden cost also should be considered, such as, time cost, Labor cost for technical communication, mold solution preparation.
Time cost deeply buried, but when you carefully analyzed, you’ll find that working with a reliable, experienced mold shop with SOP(Standard Of Operation)process, your team will benefit in a clean and easy cooperation, less time cost you need to invest.
Actually, communication cost is a more correct to labor cost. While, communication cost is a kind of abstract index to identify, labor cost caused by communication show us better where this cost come from. More labor efforts or possible travelling cost should be invested to make sure projects could go through as expected.
Conclusion: Mold Price and Mold Cost are two concept, it’s a good option to have comprehensive understanding for supplier’s communication, manufacturing capability and reliable in the bidding process.