The Power Cord Blueprint for 1-Week
Lead Times

Empowering Customers with Power Cords and Components in 1 Week or Less

The New Land

Under Iowa’s probusiness environment, Interpower^® opened its headquarters in Oskaloosa, Iowa, in 1992 which included manufacturing space to produce North American power cords, cord sets, and components—it had left California and its ever-increasing restrictions on businesses. In 1993, Interpower added a facility in the UK to increase its European presence. In 1996, Interpower built its first North American cord set, and in 2000, built a cable- and cord-making facility in Lamoni, Iowa. In 2002, a new building was constructed in Ames, Iowa, to house the company’s marketing department and its new cord and component testing facility, the latter similar to a UL testing laboratory. Years in the making, Interpower rolled out its 1-week lead times in 2008.

Interpower Webcast

Cord Sets with Plugs & Connectors:

Interpower Vice President of Manufacturing, Mike Boyle, discusses the reasons you should not have a plug to plug or connector to connector cord set.

The 1-week Unique

“Everyone in the company is committed to our 1-week lead times,” said Mike Boyle, Interpower’s Vice President of Manufacturing and Logistics. “It requires having dedicated people in place as well as the high-grade raw materials we use to keep the machines running. We also make sure we carry sufficient stock of our most popular cords. This creates a buffer, allowing us to keep those lead times on most of our country-specific cord sets.”

To those unfamiliar with worldwide plug patterns and cord sets, they must meet country-specific and/or international standards, which include raw materials and size specifications. “1-week lead times” may not sound like an impressive phrase until considering that countries and continents have their own plug designs for their mains power, and variances in amperages and voltages—there’s even differences in frequencies between North American (60Hz) while the rest of the world uses 50Hz. Japan is the sole outlier, using both 60Hz and 50Hz in two separate regions. Also, some plug bridges take blades and/or pins, which vary in dimensions. And what size of AWG or international cable will the plug be molded onto? And do you have approval for the cable? Are the cords to be hanked, coiled, bundled, tied, or individually bagged or boxed? Do the cords need to be labelled, such as “ER1” or “OR2” for medical? In other words, do you have all the manufacturing and labelling specifications, and shipping capabilities to fulfill orders in 1 week? Lastly, if you’re exporting power cord sets to Europe, you must be RoHS and REACH compliant.

Also, each component, say a plug, must bear a country-specific agency which certifies that appropriate testing has been conducted per the standards. Steel inserts bearing correct approval marks must be manufactured to fit inside the mold cavity as to intaglio the mark onto the component. Again, obtaining approvals means having your product tested by agencies representing the countries to which you wish to export. The financial investment comes from paying for approvals, and paying for the manufacture of the steel inserts that bear country specific marks.

Two examples of approval markings are UL and VDE, the first North American, the second European. Some testing labs such as UL do the testing along with creating North American standards. Other countries on other continents use their agencies of choice for testing while letting its own governing agency write the standards. Knowing how countries conduct their approval process is crucial to exporting products. Typically, you will need a testing agency’s mark as well as the country’s mark. If you are manufacturing British plugs for the UK, for example, you will need UK approval and the appropriate marks: ASTA and BSI. ASTA is the testing-certification agency and BSI is the entity creating the standards. As for a British cord set, you could also add VDE on the IEC connector, since VDE is an accepted safety agency worldwide. The process of getting approvals can be costly and time-consuming—yet, it’s a necessity to make country-specific products more universal for exporting. Interpower manufactures an extensive line IEC 60320 inlets, outlets, connectors and plug connectors as well as jumper cords.

“We have both large and small orders come in—it’s common for us to change out 40 molds per week,” Mike Boyle said, Interpower’s Vice President of Manufacturing and Logistics. “We can do this because of our quick-change molding process using spring-loaded washers and quick-disconnect waterlines. This not only allows for multiple country-specific orders each week, but also replenishes stock quickly when rebuilding inventory.”