The main advantage of having your tool designer involved earlier is the ability to influence the product and processes being developed. This approach results in added value to your services and creates strong ties with your customer as he becomes more reliant on you to oversee his design process.

You can integrate with your customer by catering strong manufacturing skills, value-added services and the ability to anticipate his manufacturing needs.

Another great advantage of this concurrency is cross training. As the tool designer learns and understands the use and function of the product developed, the part designer gains the knowledge of tooling concerns and how to correct them. This knowledge gain also is useful for future projects.

One last gain is that the mold designer can anticipate potential changes and possible future modifications to the part. When he designs the mold with this in mind, he can keep the tool compatible and avoid expensive repairs in the future. Staying clear from certain areas with components or cooling lines, anticipating future mold inserts, implementing steel safe conditions, or merely protecting certain parts of the mold that might get revised is a tremendous time and cost saving not only at tool build, but also for future modifications.

A disadvantage of no communication between designers is a good share of lost time. If the product designer doesn’t communicate the part changes quickly enough, the mold designer will waste valuable time designing a tool with an outdated part.

Another drawback is in the event of extreme part changes in shape and form with dramatic changes in the parting line. A large amount of mold design work can be trashed if the part undergoes extraordinary modifications. Closer communication and compromise between product designer and mold designer is the answer to time-to-market improvements.