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Expertise in a Package: A Consulting Blog

What do you do when your business needs input from an expert, but you don't have the funds to hire a full-time employee with that specific expertise? You hire a consultant, of course! You can find consultants who specialize in everything from accounting to efficiency. Hire one for a week, or hire one for a year. They can perform the necessary duties and lend their expertise while they are there, and when they are done, they'll move on to another job. To learn more about consulting and the benefits of hiring a consultant, check out the articles on this website — they discuss a wide range of consulting-related topics.

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Expertise in a Package: A Consulting Blog

4 Signs You Need to Hire A Plastics Consultant

by Carmen Fisher

Even in industries and on projects where people have loads of experience, plastics can be fickle. If these picky materials are bedeviling you or your team members, you may want to hire a plastics consultant. Let's look at four scenarios where an organization can benefit from the support of a plastics expert.

Modeling Plastics Performance

Many companies use computer models to predict how materials will perform. However, plastics often have very specific performance characteristics. If you change the formula even a smidge, the results could be dramatically different. Consequently, modeling how those changes will affect outcomes is not an easy task.

A plastics consultant can help computer modelers understand the performance characteristics of these finicky materials. As the modelers move forward, a plastics expert can also assess how well or poorly the models conform to expectations.

Catastrophic Failures

Sometimes you end up working your way backward. There is a problem, and then you have to figure out what the heck happened. Fortunately, when this happens with a plastic material, a consultant can advise you.

Suppose a toy manufacturer is seeing too many under-warranty failures of a product. The failures are consistently happening at the same point on every toy that breaks. A plastics expert can study the broken pieces to deduce why they're performing outside of specifications. For example, customers might be using the product in unexpected ways.

Working from the guidance of a plastics consultant, the manufacturer can decide how to proceed. They might make modifications to the next generation. In extreme cases, they may order a recall.

Process Improvements

A company may not necessarily need a plastics consultant to prevent a product from failing. Instead, the firm might be interested in improving processes involving plastics. Perhaps a company wants to make a plastic shell lighter and cheaper without sacrificing durability. The firm may ask a plastics expert to explore different chemical solutions for the process. Ideally, they will arrive at something that meets or exceeds the client's goals.

Assessing Business Deals

If a business deal centers on plastic materials or products, you may have a hard time assessing its merits. Suppose you need to pay a company in China to produce a set of plastic components for a product. You have to establish standards for assessing the quality of the components. Likewise, you will need a way to incorporate these standards into the contract. A plastics consultant can help you to understand the product's requirements, establish standards, and implement quality controls.

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