How can an injection molding workshop ensure efficiency and improve staff utilization?

The existing injection molding industry is facing the following problems:

-Rising cost of raw materials

-Rapidly rising labor costs

-Difficulty in recruiting employees

-High staff turnover

-Product price decline

-Increasingly fierce industry competition, etc.

The injection molding industry has entered an era of transformation, micro-profits, and reshuffles. The management of the injection molding workshop needs to establish a "scientific, complete, systematic and standardized" operation and management system, and create a department with a working atmosphere of "someone manages everything and everyone is in charge". The following measures and suggestions are made to improve work efficiency and reduce manpower in various positions in the injection molding workshop.

1. Measures for improving work efficiency and reducing manpower for loading and unloading the molds.

1) Make good production planning arrangements to reduce the number of machine changes due to improper machine scheduling.

2) Reasonably set the number of ejectors and ejection length to reduce the frequent occurrence of broken pins in production.

3) Strengthen the cleaning, lubrication, and maintenance of molds during production to reduce the failure rate of molds.

4) Strictly control the occurrence of mold compression during injection molding production and reduce mold repairs.

5) Use appropriate tools to remove the mold-adherent plastic parts to prevent damage to the mold due to careless operation and reduce the number of lower mold repairs.

6) Make a positioning and storage area for eye bolts and tool carts to load and unload the tool to reduce the time.

7) Promote the "fast loading method" to refine each action of loading the molds and convert internal time into external time.

8) Reduce the clamping force and end clamping speed to reduce mold deformation and collision.

9) Design the mold waterway inlet as a sinkhole and use quick connectors to reduce the time for disassembling and assembling the nozzle.

2. Measures to improve work efficiency and reduce manpower for mold tests

The purpose of reducing mold tests can be achieved by improving the level of mold designers, improving the work quality and efficiency of mold tests, and reducing the workload of mold tests.

1) Adopt mold flow analysis software to engage in mold design, optimize mold structure, and improve runners, gates, cooling, air vents, demolding, and other effects.

2) Reduce the times of mold changes, mold repairs, and mold tests caused by mold structure problems.

3) Provide injection molding technology training for mold designers, and fully consider material properties, injection molding process requirements, and injection molding quality requirements when designing molds.

4) Provide injection molding technology training for mold tests to improve their ability to find, analyze, and deal with problems, to improve the quality and efficiency of mold tests, and reduce the times of mold tests.

5) Specify the times of mold tests for new molds (no more than 3 times).

6) Do a good job of preparation before mold testing, select a suitable injection molding machine, and conduct scientific mold testing to shorten the mold testing time and reduce the times of mold tests.

7) Formulate the mold trial process, standardize the mold trial requirements, clarify the purpose of the mold trial, increase the sense of responsibility of each department, and reduce the times of invalid mold trials from the management perspective.

8) Select personnel with rich experience and professional knowledge, who are conscientious and responsible in their work, to test the mold and shorten the mold trial time.

3. Measures for machine operator to improve work efficiency and reduce manpower

1) Implement automated and unmanned injection molding methods to reduce machine adjustments caused by the instability of manual startup.

2) Control the ambient temperature of the workshop to achieve the purpose of stabilizing mold temperature, material temperature and injection molding process conditions.

3) Formulate standard process conditions, arrange production machines reasonably, and ensure the repetition of process conditions.

4) Strengthen the management of the injection molding process, prohibit unprofessional operators changing the machine, and prevent process fluctuations and changes in the quality of plastic parts.

5) Do a good job in the maintenance of the injection molding machine, ensuring the repetitive accuracy of the machine and the stability and reliability of the process conditions.

6) Filter cooling water to prevent quality abnormalities caused by mold temperature changes due to rust in the waterway system.

7) Strictly control the quality of raw materials, sprue materials, and pelletized materials. The sprue materials need to be screened for dust before recycling to prevent machine adjustments caused by raw material problems.

8) Do a good job in the use, maintenance and care of injection molds to reduce mold failures and the workload of mold rotation and machine adjustment after the mold is repaired. Use special mold wiping paper to clean the oil stains on the mold before trial to reduce the time and save materials.

9) Provide comprehensive and systematic injection molding technical knowledge training for injection molding technicians, master the knowledge of materials, machines, molds, processes and defect analysis, improve their ability to analyze and deal with problems, improve their injection molding technology level and control over the injection molding process, reduce blind machine adjustment.

10) For special molds (such as multi-cylinder molds), it is necessary to mark the precautions on the mold to make the problems visible and prevent personnel from making mistakes.

11) Before stopping the machine, the material pipe needs to be cleaned and then cooled down to prevent the material from burning and the screw cannot be cleaned. Use screw cleaning agent to save time for cleaning the material pipe.