A purchaser’s job in modern industry is not easy, and is often critically important to your company’s operations. Successfully managing inventory and maintaining the proper flow of raw materials can mean the difference between competitiveness and failure. A hiccup in raw materials inventory management can lead to lost orders, unhappy customers, and expensive stop-gap measures.

Below are three tips to help optimize your raw materials supply chain, allowing you to be more competitive, reduce prices and lead times, and win more business.

 Get clear on what you want—not just what’s “available”

This may be good life advice in addition to smart purchasing advice. Often we accept the best solution that’s readily available instead of insisting on exactly what we truly want or need. Any raw material that requires some additional handling before you can actually use it is a potential opportunity to streamline. We’re so used to buying “off-the-shelf” products because it seems easier than shopping around for the best fit—but this can be a costly mistake!

For example, if you’re buying 50” master rolls of adhesive tape—the “standard” size in the industry—but your process requires only 40” width, then you’re paying the supplier for the offcut. Although this is clearly wasteful, many customers are resigned to the idea that “that’s just the way things are,” accepting the waste as inevitable. In fact, there are competing suppliers that would be thrilled with the chance to provide a custom solution that fits your exact need. This has been described as a “pull” model (versus a “push” model), in which the customer dictates what they need and want to the supplier, instead of the supplier dictating the choices the customer is allowed to have. Nimble suppliers capable of competitive, custom solutions exist in many, many industries—it’s worth the extra effort to look for them in yours!

Put “sacred cows” out to pasture

Loyalty is a wonderful virtue, of course, but clinging to the same supplier should not stand in the way of your business competing and growing. Some long-standing vendor-supplier relationships are built on mutual benefit—a great partnership—while others persist mostly out of inertia, or resistance to change. Sometimes long-term suppliers, especially very large ones whose employees churn on a nearly constant basis—lose sight of their everyday customers’ needs and can become complacent. If you’ve purchased the same raw material from the same vendor for a long time and a new player enters the marketplace, you owe it to yourself to at least investigate how the newcomer could satisfy your needs as well or better than the incumbent.

Partner with the right supplier

A good supplier is one that always meets your expectations. A great supplier, then, is one that consistently exceeds your expectations. Ask yourself whether your supplier is merely a vendor who takes your orders or a true partner who works with you to find solutions to your problems and helps to ensure your success.

In business, as in life, it feels good to get exactly what you want without having to settle. Finding the right supplier partner can breathe new life into your business and keep the wheels turning smoothly.

Many industries rely on the flexibility and strength of pressure sensitive adhesives (PSAs), but not all adhesives are alike. In decades past, those in need of high-performance PSAs relied on various solvent-based adhesives that dominated the market. The health and environmental dangers of solvent-based adhesives, however, have been recognized since the 1970s, and these products have been under increasing regulatory pressure during the past 30 years or so. Solvent-based adhesives contain binders dissolved in a carrier fluid that contains volatile organic compounds (VOCs). These organic chemicals are emitted into the air during application, curing, and gradually (to a lesser extent) throughout the life of the product. Various compounds in this category have been suspected to cause illness to those exposed directly to them long-term, as well as causing damage to the ozone layer and contributing to the formation of ground-level smog.

Thus the marketplace has demanded other options, and today there are at least two main alternatives to solvent-based PSAs.

Alternative #1: Hot-melt Rubber Adhesives

One alternative to solvent adhesives is 100% solid (no VOC) rubber hot-melt adhesives. These adhesives are 100% solids at room temperature and are liquefied using heat, then applied to a substrate or onto a liner and/or carrier to make PSA tapes.

Hot-melt adhesives have several advantages. Their lack of VOCs eliminates the need for related air quality and environmental precautions during production, application, and disposal. In addition, hot-melt rubber adhesives tend to have a long shelf life, and the application thickness can be closely controlled (solvent- and water-based adhesives can lose 50% or more of their coating thickness during drying.)

They can, however, weather over time when exposed to moisture or chemicals, and they tend to lose bond strength at high temperatures (extremely high temperatures can even re-melt the adhesive).

Alternative #2: UV Cured Low-VOC Acrylic Adhesives

UV cured acrylic adhesives are synthetic, resin-based adhesives suspended in a catalyst of inert organic solvents and then cured via exposure to UV light. This process creates a very strong adhesive product without the concerns over VOC emissions.

UV cured acrylic adhesives tend to be resistant to environmental factors such as sunlight, water, and temperature fluctuation. They’re useful for bonding a wide variety of substrates, depending on the formulation, including plastics, rubber, ceramic, metals, wood, glass, and paper.

The combination of environmental resistance, low-VOC content, and excellent adhesion properties make UV cured acrylic adhesives a good blend of strength and safety for those looking to replace solvent acrylic adhesives in their application.