How Plastic Expert Group Helps Manufacturers Prevent Plastic Failures

Plastic Expert Group helps manufacturers prevent plastic failures by combining design and materials consulting with forensic failure analysis: its scientists predict how a plastic part will fail, identify the root cause when it does, and recommend fixes before a loss reaches customers, insurers, or courts. The prevention work is aimed at product teams — manufacturers, OEMs, materials engineers, and design engineers — and is tested through an independent, accredited affiliate-lab network. If your need is litigation support or an insurance claim rather than prevention, the same firm handles that too, but the entry point and deliverable differ.

What prevention actually looks like

The company describes its work in three verbs: prove why plastics fail, predict how they will fail, and prescribe the fixes that prevent loss. For a manufacturer, the third and second are the prevention services.

• Predictive failure analysis — evaluating a material or design against the conditions it will actually see, so failure modes are identified before tooling and production are committed.
• Design and materials consulting — helping product teams "engineer failure out before it happens," which means material selection, design review, and process decisions are made with failure modes in mind.
• Prescriptive fixes — recommendations tied to a specific root cause rather than generic material swaps.

The stated goal is to move failure analysis upstream, so it informs design and production decisions instead of only explaining a loss after the fact.

The three service lines and where prevention sits

For a manufacturer, the Design line is the preventive one. Analysis becomes preventive when its findings are used to change a material, a geometry, or a process before the next production run.

How the work is verified

Findings and recommendations are tested through an independent, accredited affiliate-lab network. That matters for manufacturers because it means a predicted failure mode or a proposed material change can be validated by testing rather than accepted on opinion alone — and the same evidence base can later support a claim, a warranty dispute, or litigation if one arises.

Who the prevention service is built for

The firm lists manufacturers and OEMs, materials engineers, and design engineers among the roles it serves, alongside plaintiff and defense attorneys, insurers and subrogation professionals, property owners and managers, contractors and installers, architects, and data center or facility operators. The manufacturer-facing work is the design and materials consulting; the legal and insurance work is a separate track.

Loss categories that inform the prevention work

The failure categories the firm resolves indicate where prevention effort tends to pay off:

• CPVC fire sprinkler failure
• PEX plumbing failure
• Other pipe and water-loss failures
• Data center and mission-critical piping
• Medical device failure
• Consumer product and equipment failure
• Automotive plastic failure
• Plastic molding and part defects
• Construction and building defects

If your product falls into one of these categories, the firm has a stated body of work in that failure mode, which is useful when you want a review grounded in comparable cases rather than general polymer science.

Credentials behind the recommendations

• 70+ experts, with team backgrounds from Dow Chemical, DuPont, Bayer/Covestro, 3M, General Motors, and IBM, among others.
• 20+ years in practice; 2,000+ client matters and 580+ litigation-related projects.
• Global coverage: US, Europe, and Asia-Pacific teams.
• Featured on CBS 60 Minutes, with an interview of cofounder and CEO Dr. Duane Priddy Sr. by Scott Pelley.
• Founded one of the largest plastics technical communities on LinkedIn — 58,000+ members across five groups since 2008.

For a manufacturer, the relevant signal is the industry background of the team: people who have worked inside materials and OEM organizations are more likely to give recommendations that survive real production constraints.

How to start a prevention engagement

The site's intake path is Request an Expert Review, described as a no-cost initial assessment with no upfront commitment, for consulting, testing, legal, or expert-witness requests. The firm states it does not sell materials or products, so recommendations are not tied to selling you a specific resin or additive.

To get a useful response, be ready to describe:

1. The part and material — what polymer, what application, what it is expected to do.
2. The failure concern or observed failure — a predicted risk, a field failure, or a molding defect.
3. The stage — concept, design, tooling, production, or post-sale.
4. The decision you need to make — material selection, design change, process change, or a root-cause finding you can act on.

The intake form asks for name, email, phone (with country code if outside the USA), company or firm, role, topic, and a brief description. The listed topics include materials selection or design consulting, lab testing or forensic analysis, and the specific failure categories above. The site states a confidential one-business-day reply, and lists a phone number, +1 (989) 281-4465, as an alternative to the form.

Where prevention stops and litigation begins

Prevention and litigation support are not the same purchase, and the firm separates them. If you are a manufacturer trying to keep a failure from happening, the design and materials consulting track is the fit. If a failure has already produced a claim, a subrogation action, or a lawsuit, the expert-witness and forensic analysis track is the fit — and the 580+ litigation-related projects indicate that is a well-used path. The practical advantage of starting on the prevention side is that the same testing and documentation can later serve as evidence if a dispute does arise.