Plastic Man was a crook named Patrick “Eel” O’Brian. Orphaned at age 10 and forced to live on the streets, he fell into a life of crime. During a late-night heist at the Crawford Chemical Works Eel was shot in the shoulder and doused with a large drum of unidentified chemical liquid that had entered his bloodstream and caused a radical physical change. His body now had all of the properties of rubber, allowing him to stretch, bounce and mold himself into any shape. He immediately determined to use his new abilities on the side of law and capturing criminals as Plastic Man.
The summary above as captured from Wikipedia describes the incredible transformation to good from evil that Plastic Man underwent. Just like plastic man, our plastic manufacturing customers undergo incredible transformations in their business when properly implementing Global Shop Solutions ERP software.
Stiff competition as well as ever more stringent environmental controls place burdens on company profits. Good controls over the use of regrind materials and maintaining machine up-time is important to insure good on-time delivery and margins due to good material utilization. Typically, we find plastic manufacturers face the following three issues when battling good controls (evil) in their industry as improper control will lead to poor margins or loss of business due to poor delivery or pricing:
How do plastic manufacturers compete and win? Running a profitable plastic manufacturing business is all about maintaining tight controls over cost and waste. When times are good, it is easy to do well. Those with good controls in place can weather a storm in their business and those that do not simply won’t survive. We typically see our plastic manufacturing customers finding success when mastering the following three points
As a plastic manufacturer, mastering those three points as well as looking at the ever expanding array of new material blends to improve the physical and mechanical properties of parts being made will provide you a competitive edge. But keep in mind, more options in materials requires more inventory part numbers to control. With Global Shop Solutions ERP keeping good control over more part numbers is an easy task. Just ask your competitor that is still using clipboards. Oh wait, they closed their doors when winter is coming.
Bob Geiss is a senior consultant with Global Shop Solutions. He has implemented and helped hundreds of manufacturers simplify their manufacturing with ERP software and is a recognized industry expert in scheduling.