Every moldmaker should know accurate costing

Posted by AcmeDisys on September 29th, 2018

Mold manufacturers of any type of mold, say plastic injection mould, need to automate the process of costing. Such process automation helps moldmakers significantly improve product quote accuracy and fasten Request for Quote (RFQ) response as well. Clients (manufacturers) put pressure on their moldmakers to come up with fresh efficiencies and savings. The savings and efficiencies are easily given by mold manufacturers after maintaining accuracy in product cost quotes. To achieve accuracy in product cost quotes is difficult, but not impossible.

The challenge for offering savings and efficiencies requires moldmakers to include the need for:-

• Reduced overhead costs – Turning around a detailed, inaccurate quote can be time consuming and expensive as well.

• Increased precision – Many mold manufactures, by and large, fail to understand the costing process of molds. Understanding the costing process is not an easy task. You, as a moldmaker, have to focus on your moldmaking procedure. Also, you should be aware of every nook and cranny of the moldmaking process adopted at your workshop.

Your existing quote is liable to have discrepancies with actual costs, if you lack the knowhow of your moldmaking process. It is very important to have a clear knowledge of the actual costs of molds. Such understanding is necessary for winning fresh, profitable business.

• Faster response times – The capacity to shift quotes is a notable competitive edge for many moldmakers. However, for shifting quotes, a moldmaker has to have a lot of cutting-edge tools and technologies.

Why visibility of the overall moldmaking process is so important?

For decades, moldmakers put insignificant level of scrutiny upon their tooling budgets. An in-depth understanding of tooling budgets is very difficult to have. The difficulties are faced by many as understanding the tooling costs is often regarded as an arcane art. The clients, nowadays, demand accurate tooling estimates for increasing profitability of their businesses. Resultantly, at present, moldmakers have to understand the entire moldmaking process for giving accurate tooling estimates and turning quotes in no time.

Many moldmakers use traditional methods (manual, template-styled Microsoft Excel sheets) to determine the final costs of part and product tooling. A couple of moldmakers also use dedicated database applications in place of Excel sheets. Such tooling costs, however, have to be calculated and maintained with the help of experienced professionals.

In addition, for determining accurate tooling cost estimates, it is significant for a moldmaker to know the overall costs of material and labor.

Many contemporary mold manufacturers have automated the entire process of analyzing tooling costs. Such automation has helped many to offer clients detailed, highly accurate cost estimates. Quick, automated calculations of tooling costs can be done with the help of cutting-edge 3D CAD model

A point to note

Moldmakers that manufacture especially for plastic injection moulding machine should take special care while quoting an estimate. Estimating tooling costs of such prototypes (molds) that have a wide mold injection size (ranging 50-3,300 tons) is difficult. In such process, every moldmaker has to take the assistance of experienced costing professionals who have knowledge of mold’s design and production.

Thus, if moldmakers do have a tooling cost estimate, then they are liable to attract more and more business.