The role of the consultant in the plastics industry.

Background

During the buoyant 1980's there were many people in the plastics industry who were offering their services as consultants. Their success, if at all, may have been due to the fact that expanding companies were having difficulty in finding staff to cope with the rapid expansion experienced by most plastics related organisations in the UK.

Unfortunately, some of the consultants who worked during this period were neither experienced, nor well equipped to carry out many of the commissions that they had accepted. As a result, consultants as a group were often regarded as being an expensive luxury, and sometimes of doubtful benefit. Furthermore, clients often disregarded the consultant's advice, since in a boom time it was still possible to remain in business in spite of the company's apparent inefficiency.

In 1988 the UK Plastics Consultancy Network (PCN) was formed to provide clients with a network of bona fide, qualified and professional plastics consultants. The PCN is a method for potential clients to choose an appropriate and experienced individual consultant or to quickly gather together a team of experienced people to undertake tasks that were too large or time-consuming for the individual consultant. The typical PCN consultant has many years of theoretical as well as practical experience, which is instantly available to potential clients.

The PCN celebrated its tenth anniversary in 1998, and has been affiliated to the British Plastics Federation for the past 6 years. The PCN also has links with the Plastics and Rubber Advisory Service (PRAS), where it offers extensive consultancy expertise services to inquirers. It also has overseas members in the USA and Europe and is endeavouring to expand its network of contacts throughout the world.

The changing workplace

The world-wide and UK recession that started in the late 1980's is now a thing of the past but the confidence of the 1980's is unlikely to ever return. The commercial and industrial landscape has changed forever. Most companies who traded successfully through the recession found that they were acutely short of experienced and senior staff as they began to expand into the 1990's. Their uncertainty meant that they were reluctant to take on additional full-time senior employees until they were totally convinced that the economic climate had strongly improved. In the late 1990's the trend is towards low numbers of "core" staff and increasing numbers of contracted and results oriented staff.

It is interesting to note that consultants and experienced freelance staff are already being used extensively in other industries. It has become far easier for consultants to work at a distance from their client's office with the rise of personal communications, the Internet. The trend towards "home-working" as an acceptable alternative to office based means that even large companies have effectively "contracted out" many of their core services.

This is one of the main reasons why the independent qualified plastics consultants find many companies contacting them. They can expect more demand for their services, because technology in the plastics industry is developing very quickly, and this is another sound reason for considering a part.

The skill areas

The current members of the PC can work in all of the following disciplines.

Materials and design - additives & property modification, analysis, materials selection, product design, product engineering, tool design and sourcing.

Processing - All the plastics processing methods, such as injection, blow moulding, extrusion, thermoforming, rotational moulding, welding etc are covered.

Secondary Operations - finishing and decorating, testing, welding and fastening.

Commercial - environmental and recycling, expert witness and legal, export & import, legislative and regulatory, marketing and market research, mergers and acquisitions, strategic planning and forecasting, technology transfer and licensing.

Markets - All major markets sectors.

Other skills - Authoring, benchmarking, degradation, literature and patent search, project management, training, translation, trouble shooting, web site design and manufacture.

The cost savings

Technical and development appointments, as well as most middle management positions within the plastics industry cost from £25,000 per annum upwards, and that is before other payments such as company cars, NI charges, pensions, and of course day-to-day expenses. A PCN consultant is a only paid when required, on a "day by day" fee basis, or alternatively on an overall job fee basis, which is agreed before the project commences. Therefore the client is aware at the beginning how much it will cost and overheads are reduced.

Consultant's charges are often much lower than generally believed, and quotations are available for consideration before each project commences. Consultants are particularly useful to small and medium sized companies, who do not regularly employ technical staff. A fresh mind applied to a problem often accelerates the solution.

The future

Qualified consultants are here to stay. This is mainly due to the fact that methods of trading have changed dramatically and these changes will oblige manufacturers to alter their methods of operation.

At the PCN, we see the role of the PCN consultant expanding with clients and consultants effectively working together for their mutual benefit.