The 2019 Resin Blunder That Taught Me to Calculate Material TCO (Not Just Unit Price)

The Problem: “Is Silicone Better Than Plastic?”

If you’re searching for “is silicone better than plastic,” you’re probably staring at a spec sheet, hoping someone will give you a straight answer. I’ve been there. Usually, it means you’re weighing two material options for an order—and you’re trying to figure out which one won’t blow your budget.

Maybe you’re dealing with sealing gaskets. Maybe a flexible tube. Or maybe you’re looking for a coating that won’t crack under heat. The instinct is to Google a comparison and make a decision based on unit price.

I made that mistake in 2019. And it cost me $3,800.

The Surface Problem: Price Per Pound

At first glance, it’s an easy comparison. Silicone is expensive—$8 to $15 per pound depending on grade. Standard polypropylene or HDPE? Closer to $0.80 per pound. So if you ask “is silicone better than plastic” based on price alone, the answer is no. Plastic wins every time.

But that’s not the real question. The real question is: which material delivers the best value over the entire project lifecycle?

In my first year handling specialty resin orders (2017), I made the classic rookie mistake: I selected a material based purely on its initial cost. I was working on a 1,500-piece order for a client who needed high-temperature resistance. The specification called for a silicone-based coating. I ordered a standard acrylic alternative instead (acrylics are cheaper).

The result? Every single piece failed the heat test. 1,500 items, straight to scrap. That expensive lesson taught me to stop thinking about price and start thinking about total cost of ownership (TCO).

Why Unit Price Is a Trap

The problem with asking “is silicone better than plastic” is that it frames the decision as a binary, single-variable comparison. In reality, material selection involves at least four cost dimensions:

1. Raw material cost – the price per pound or per kilo (easy to find, but misleading)
2. Processing cost – tool wear, cycle time, yield rates (harder to measure)
3. Failure cost – rework, scrap, field failures (the invisible elephant)
4. Performance cost – does the material do what’s needed for the full product lifespan?

Most people stop at step one. That’s where “silicone vs plastic” comparisons live. It’s also where cheap mistakes happen.

The Deep Reason: We Don’t Calculate Hidden Costs

After the 2019 failure (note to self: never skip the qualification step again), I started digging into why I—and many of my colleagues—kept making the same error. The answer surprised me.

It wasn’t laziness. It was a lack of a framework.

Most procurement guidelines and spec sheets focus on unit price because that’s easy to quote. Vendors will happily give you $/kg, but ask for “expected scrap rate” or “tool wear impact” and you’ll get blank stares (ugh).

Here’s what I started tracking after that $3,800 failure:

Costs That Don’t Show Up on the Invoice

• Setup and calibration time: silicone and specialty PTFE compounds often require different tooling. That’s $50–$200 per setup change.
• Scrap rate differences: on my ill-fated 2019 order, the acrylic had a 68% yield. The certified silicone material? 94%.
• Testing re-runs: every time a batch fails (and we had to re-test three times), that’s $450 plus a two-week delay.
• Inventory write-offs: I’ve seen departments stock thousands of dollars of the wrong grade of PE (polyethylene) because someone mis-specified the density.

I wish I had tracked these numbers more carefully from the start. Based on our five years of production data, I can say anecdotally that projects that selected materials on TCO rather than unit price saw roughly 18% fewer rework cycles and 12% higher first-pass yields.

“The $0.80/lb polypropylene looked like a bargain—until we accounted for the extra machining time and rejected parts.” — me, after the third failed batch in Q1 2020

The Price We Pay for Ignoring TCO

Let’s put some concrete numbers on this, because hypotheticals won’t convince your finance department.

A real example from May 2022: I was evaluating two materials for a batch of 2,000 injection-molded components. One was standard polycarbonate (about $2.10/lb), the other was a specialty polyamide with additives ($4.80/lb). On unit price alone, the polycarbonate won easily.

But here’s what I learned from my 2020 mistake:

• Polycarbonate (PC): Cycle time 45 seconds, scrap rate 7%.
• Specialty polyamide (PA): Cycle time 32 seconds, scrap rate 1.5%.

The total cost per part (including labor, overhead, and scrap):

• PC: $3.82 per part
• PA: $5.10 per part

At face value, PC was still cheaper. But then we ran field tests. The PC parts fatigued after 30,000 cycles under constant load. The PA parts lasted 150,000 cycles. The client needed 1,000,000 cycle life. That meant replacing the PC parts three times over their lifespan—tripling the total cost.

The TCO for PC? $11.46 per unit (three replacements).
The TCO for PA? $5.10 per unit (one replacement).

That’s when “is silicone better than plastic” became the wrong question. The right question is: what does this material cost over the lifetime of the asset?

The Second Hidden Cost: Procurement Complexity

Another hidden cost I see all the time: chasing low unit prices creates a vendor-switching frenzy. Every new quote requires requalification—testing, approvals, and potential delays.

In Q3 2023, my team went with a cheaper polypropylene supplier to save $0.12/lb. We saved $600 on the raw material. But that decision caused a production delay of three days because the new material’s melt flow index was different, and we had to retool. The delay cost $1,200 in idle labor plus a one-day late delivery penalty of $450. Net loss: $1,050 (ugh).

The $600 saving became a $1,050 loss. That’s what happens when you’re not tracking total cost.

The Fix: A Simple TCO Framework (Minimal)

I don’t need to write a whole manual here—once you see the problem, the solution becomes obvious. Here’s the three-step framework I now use before every material selection:

1. List all lifecycle costs: raw material + processing + qualification + inventory + field failures. I use a simple spreadsheet (if you want one, template is available on our website).
2. Add a buffer for the unknown: based on my experience, unseen material-related costs average 18% of the quoted price (I don’t have hard data on industry-wide averages, but this matches our 5-year internal tracking).
3. Compare on TCO, not PO price: only then decide if silicone is better than plastic—or if PTFE beats polycarbonate.

One more thing (I really should have learned this earlier): establish a relationship with a supplier who has a breadth of materials. At arkema, we handle everything from polyamides and acrylics to specialty PTFE and EVA compounds. That means we can offer you a range of options at different price points—and help you calculate the real cost of each one.

So next time you ask “is silicone better than plastic,” pause. That’s the wrong question. Ask instead: “What’s the true, full-lifecycle cost of each option?”

The answer might surprise you—and save you $3,800.