Vehicle Labeling Timing is Everything
Start your vehicle labeling process early
When a consumer is in the market for a vehicle, it can be a relatively fast process. They do some research, contact a dealer, negotiate, sign the papers and drive off in their new car. Yes, that’s simplifying it, but the time it takes to purchase a car doesn’t compare to the time it took to get that car to the dealer’s lot.
Did you know:
- Designing and building a new vehicle model takes approximately 5 years
- Assembling a standard vehicle takes 17-18 hours
- A single vehicle can have up to 30,000 individual parts
- Vehicle labels, including the Monroney label (i.e., window sticker) are considered vehicle parts
The car buying process doesn’t seem so long now, does it?
As you can see, there are a lot of moving parts – actual parts, as well as companies and people – involved in making a vehicle. So, starting early and having things completed in a specific sequence are critical to success.
When it come to vehicle labels, there are even more reasons to get a process in place early: there are several government-required labels that must be on every new vehicle for sale and having the proper amount of time can help mitigate additional and unnecessary costs resulting from erroneous or missing information.
But one of the most important reasons is this: based on our observations, designing and implementing a label to meet an OEM’s manufacturing specifics requires a lead time of at least 4 months – if you are doing in-plant or in-port printing, the time significantly increases (at least 6 months). How can it take so long to print a label you ask? Well, there’s a lot more to it than that:
- Material specifications and testing: 2-4 weeks
- Purchase order approval: 4 weeks
- Tooling: 4-6 weeks
- Data provisioning: 2-3 weeks
- Development and sample approvals: 3-4 weeks
- Production part approval process: 1-2 weeks
