Challenge:

A Fortune 200 company had a critical injection molded component sourced with an overseas supplier. The customer was struggling to get parts produced on time and to the exacting quality standards they must meet.

The issues became so severe that the company was delinquent in meeting their customer demands and their profitability was suffering as they were forced to expedite parts in from the molder with premium transportation charges and then perform a 100% sort to identify and separate rejects. The problems continued to escalate and the overseas firm did not satisfactorily correct the issues. The customer reached a point where they realized they must find a new supplier capable of meeting their challenging quality and production needs.

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Strategy:

The customer began the search for a high quality Custom Injection Molder that could meet their stringent needs. The customer was directed to Tramec Plastics & Composites (TPC) at the recommendation of their resin material supplier. The customer was invited to tour the TPC facility and provided the TPC team with the scope of the program and previous issues they had experienced. They requested a timeline for TPC to provide a proposal, perform an extensive tool evaluation, sample the mold and provide a PPAP. The TPC technical team understood the urgency and immediately began the APQP review process.

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Results

Tramec Plastics & Composites took receipt of the customer mold, performed an extensive tool evaluation and immediately ran sample shots for dimensional validation. While the tool was in a state of disrepair, Tramec was able to process out all the dimensional non-conformances with only a minimal amount of tool repairs. Samples, pricing and inspection report were delivered to the customer in just 36 hours from time of receipt of tool. The customer gave immediate approval to TPC to begin production and parts were flowing to meet customer demands the very same day.