Four Specific Action Areas for China's Injection Molding Industry

(1) Planning

In order to improve timeliness, project, and parts should be planned in detail. Planning at the level of the injection project and each individual part is the key to achieve timeliness. The planning system can plan all process steps in detail and provide a capacity overview so that the relevant personnel can grasp the demand for each technology and the corresponding available capacity. In order to improve the timeliness, there should be further algorithms in the planning system to find the optimal sequence of production operations. Based on tablet or smartphone applications, management can track the status of key projects at any time.

(2) Automation

The second key area of action is automation, where automation solutions help to improve equipment utilization. Observing the proportion of manufacturing cost in the whole process chain in Figure 9, it is easy to see the benefits of automation solutions adopted by German injection molding enterprises. In Germany, only 34% of the cost of injection molding is spent on manufacturing, while 52% of the cost of injection moulding company China is allocated to manufacturing. The main reason is that German injection molding enterprises are highly automated in milling and EDM. Automation is one of the key areas in which German injection molding enterprises have made great progress in the past 10 years.

(3) Digitalization and visualization

For many injection moulding companies China, quality remains a challenge. In order to reduce quality errors, it is important to identify errors early in the order completion process. Many errors are found in the late stage of the process chain, such as in the test, which will greatly increase the cost and time needed to correct the errors.

(4) Tool management

In order to further improve the processing efficiency, tool management with a clear structure is the key factor to achieve high-efficiency manufacturing. The unreasonable tool management results in more preparation time for injection moulding company China in the processing process. By centralized management of tool data and focusing on a certain number of standard tools, production efficiency can be effectively improved. Data matrix code (DMC) can be used to mark the tool, and the central tool management system can be used to register, manage and call the tool data. In this way, the central tool management system can record the tool wear condition, and invoke the actual data of the tool in the programming and processing process, so as to improve the machining accuracy. Meanwhile, structured tool management can save time and space, and tool standardization can reduce errors in workpiece preparation and facilitate clearer arrangement of tools and their accessories.