Rubber fabricators in North America slower to embrace new material and process technology. (Viewpoint).

"Rubber parts" molding is a mature business. It is characterized by significant price pressure especially in businesses supplying the automotive segment. With this pressure, of course, comes a tremendous focus on costs, capital spending and the like. We have witnessed over the years many business closures and continued consolidation, with limited expansions in this segment. While the traditional supplier base is contracting, another interesting trend is developing - European and Asian competitors are establishing new manufacturing capabilities in North America. While initial justification is certainly related to following their traditional customers in their emigration to North America, these new companies believe they can compete and grow profitably outside this preferred customer base, while many incumbent North American suppliers are struggling. In many cases, these new competitors are bringing with them the latest manufacturing and materials technology honed in their home countries.

For example, molding technology in North America for sealing products bound for automotive and aerospace applications has been dominated by traditional compression molding. Some companies have adopted more efficient technologies like injection molding. However, the penetration of these newer technologies in North America is no-where near the level of penetration in Europe. As many know, the state of the art is expanding beyond this to "hybrid" molding systems, again much of it pioneered in Europe.

As a raw material supplier, we find the European fabricators to be much more demanding than their counterparts in North America in terms of asking for fluoroelastomer technology to be optimized or integrated into a manufacturing system. The cooperation between fabricator, equipment supplier and raw material supplier is much closer and less adversarial than is sometimes the case in North America. The exploitation of these new technologies and the cooperative efforts in many cases affords these companies a competitive advantage over many of the old-line fabricators.

The reasons for North American businesses' less aggressive pursuit of new technologies are many. From this vantage point, in North America there has been a recent focus on raw material purchasing schemes, where an attempt is made to try to group all types of raw materials as commodities. This effort would appear directed at obtaining a quick fix for bottom line problems by lowering purchase prices. To date, this effort has been met with limited success for a variety of reasons. In the case of polymers, true drop-in replacements are rare and because of this, leverage gained has limited effect.

While a great deal of effort is put into these activities in an attempt to reduce costs, most fabricators are hesitant to examine the cost savings opportunities that exist via new materials and processes.

No company can afford to arbitrarily reduce prices, and polymer suppliers are no exception. To counter this pressure and still meet the demands of customers to provide better value, some polymer manufacturers have made major strides in recent years in improving the processing performance and in-service performance of their products. These developments, when coupled with significant improvements in equipment and fabrication techniques, can yield major savings and better quality. Yet the fabricator community has been slow to evaluate and implement these advancements in technology. The status quo is the rule. Recognizing that technical resources in many cases are scarce and expensive, re-establishing the critical role of the technologist is necessary to exploit the developing technologies.

Fabricators would do well to re-examine their cost structures in light of the opportunities new technologies offer. Empowering the plant management and the technologists to examine and exploit these technologies will lead to reduced costs, new product sales opportunities, and hence - bottom line improvement.

Bob Grinwis is currently business manager of Tecnoflon Fluoroelastomers in North America for Ausimont USA. He has over 25 years of experience in fluoroelastomer technology. Prior to joining Ausimont in 1993, he held both technical and business management positions at several elastomer fabricators. Grinwis is an active member of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) and the American Chemical Society (ACS).