Jean-Louis Coiquaud presented the company’s wish list in the world of molds at KTW Group’s 2011 symposium earlier this year, Procter & Gamble Co.’s . A senior purchasing manager for injection molding and direct mold sourcing at P&G, spoke of a “shifting world” Coiquaud, and said there are demands to be met in terms of innovation, sustainability and speed to market.
Without investing in a new set of user tools to be able to follow trends, and tools should be simple and small and non-dedicated injection molding machine should run anywhere.
As P&G requires fast time-to-market for its products, 8-10 weeks mold delivery time is a critical factor here, “as unfortunately, injection molds are often the constraining lead time item in a new project” said Coiquaud. This should provide the right balance between competitiveness and risk. And materials should be sustainable, he added.
Product innovation means moldings take on more functions and although two- and three-component molding allows for more functions, this also leads to challenges in handling increased product “beautification”.
And there should be cost innovation too, Coiquaud suggested, both in terms of reduced material use and as a “sweet spot” arising from performance, capital investment and maintenance of the molding process.
Coiquaud ended by saying that both bio based materials from renewable resources and recyclable plastics contribute to enhanced sustainability. In terms of sustainability, material savings can be achieved by “doing more with less” by using fillers and “engineered design”. Injection Molding Systems Ltd., waidhofen-based KTW is a subsidiary of Husky.
