Application intake and material family mapping
Procurement teams often arrive with a keyword such as Dow silicone, Dow polyethylene, Dow HDPE, Dow foam board, or Dow packaging plastics, while engineering needs a much narrower answer. We translate the request into application conditions: temperature range, exposure media, contact surface, process method, expected life, assembly method, and regional compliance. For silicone elastomers, the discussion may include durometer, compression set, cure chemistry, electrical behavior, and bonding method. For polyethylene and HDPE, the review may include density, melt index, impact balance, environmental stress crack resistance, seal behavior, and the conversion process. This first step prevents an RFQ from becoming a broad catalog search.