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After months spent sourcing the perfect materials for your product, the last thing you want to do is more qualification. Yet, qualifying backup material is like buying homeowners insurance: while you may not see immediate returns, it will keep you and your business afloat during a sudden crisis.
Here’s how to protect your supply chain by qualifying additional materials.
Why Qualify Material Alternatives?
Qualifying material alternatives means testing and confirming replacements for your current materials. This will involve building prototypes and testing their durability and performance in the intended environment.
Throughout a product’s lifespan, every manufacturer will inevitably experience one or more of the following:
- Material discontinuations
- Supplier delays
- Raw material pricing increases
These issues could spell disaster for you and your business if you aren’t prepared to handle them, and one of the best ways to prepare is by establishing material alternatives or backups. So, although material qualification is an investment, you could be weighing a one-time cost against the cost of a stopped production line.
Not every material needs a backup, but here’s when you should definitely qualify an alternative:
- Single-source supply: a single supplier issue can stop your production.
- Long lead times: you have little room to recover from delays.
- High-volume orders: shortages and price increases hit your bottom line hardest.
- Critical-to-function materials: a last-minute substitution could affect product performance.
If two or more of these factors apply, make that material a priority.
Using Material Qualification to Get Ahead of Roadblocks
Although you might be tempted to wait until problems come knocking at your door, qualifying materials is often a lengthy process that can take anywhere from a few weeks to multiple months depending on your application requirements. If you wait until a shortage hits, the delays may compound.
Use the following strategies to get ahead.
i. Have a Backup Already Approved
Once you’ve confirmed a suitable backup, you can act immediately: document the approval for the purchasing and quality teams and keep it current for design changes.
Thereafter, you will possess the resources to take immediate action. These confirmed alternatives will allow you to pivot with ease in the face of supplier delays, discontinued materials, or infeasible prices.
ii. Broaden Your Connection to Other Vendors
Maintaining strong relationships with your suppliers is critical, but so is diversifying your business. Relying on a single product or vendor leaves you open to unnecessary risk that can be prevented through multi-sourcing; plus, these connections could play an important part in scaling or expanding future business.
iii. Search For Economic Benefits in Your Supply Chain
Although it’s not guaranteed, you can also look at validating an alternative material through a cost reduction standpoint. By taking a cursory glance at your materials, you can evaluate whether there’s a lower-cost option. This may also help shorten lead times and solidify your supply chain.
How to Find and Qualify Alternative Materials
To locate a worthy alternative, Strouse’s team will begin by examining the current material’s properties and searching for similar matches in our vendor database.
Since we partner with hundreds of different suppliers and distributors, multiple names come to mind for any given product. After narrowing down prospective materials further (to suit your application and requirements), Strouse’s team will then acquire sample rolls and build prototypes for qualification.
Qualify backup materials and save yourself the stress of repeating the scramble; like any insurance policy, it’s easiest to set up before you need it.
Reach out to discuss your product, and our team will help you get started on exploring alternatives. For more advice on suppliers and product development, see the resources located in our Learning Center.
