P&G presents wish list at KTW symposium

At Husky's KTW mouldmaking subsidiary's 2011 symposium in Waidhofen an der Thaya, Austria, earlier this year, Procter & Gamble (P&G) spokesperson Jean-Louis Coiquaud presented the company's wish list in the world of moulds.

Coiquaud, a senior purchasing manager for injection moulding and direct mould sourcing at P&G, spoke of a 'shifting world' and said there are demands to be met in terms of innovation, sustainability and speed to market.

Moulds should be reliable, require low maintenance time and cost and be flexible, as well as having the capacity for fast scaling up and down in line with growth patterns, he said. Users should be able to follow trends without investing in a new set of tools, and tools should be simple and run anywhere on small and non-dedicated injection moulding machines.

This should provide the right balance between competitiveness and risk. As P&G requires fast time-to-market for its products, 8-10 weeks mould delivery time is a critical factor here, "as unfortunately, injection moulds are often the constraining lead time item in a new project" said Coiquaud. And materials should be sustainable, he added.

Product innovation means mouldings take on more functions and although two- and three-component moulding 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 moulding process.

In terms of sustainability, material savings can be achieved by "doing more with less" by using fillers and "engineered design". Coiquaud ended by saying that both bio based materials from renewable resources and recyclable plastics contribute to enhanced sustainability.