Polymer suppliers and medical plastics: problems and opportunities.

Strong supplier-customer relationships are essential to the development of polymer materials that are suitable for manufacture. This is especially true in the medical device field. Issues such as understanding the customer's material specification, simple medical compatibility assessments, communicating polymer developments and changes and a co-development business strategy are addressed in this article. The subject is dealt with from the viewpoint of a medium-to-large-volume injection moulder of plastic components for the medical device industry.