Powering up medtech OEMs

March 13, 2018 12:28 pm

EMS firms increasing medtech OEM engagement partnerships with full lifecycle product management and other innovative solutions, writes Brian Wyatt, Vice President, Cyient Medical Technology & Healthcare

Contract electronics manufacturing services (EMS) companies are broadening their service offerings to strengthen strategic partnerships with medtech original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) with solutions such as full product lifecycle management.

More than ever, OEMs desire to build strong relationships with EMS providers involving dedicated centers that mirror the client’s processes and team structure. Bringing product design more in line with the infrastructure of the EMS provider ultimately takes costs out of the process. In this environment, rapid scalability is provided to save time and money, along with services such as product variants, localisation, supply chain management, distribution, logistics, customer support, and warranty repair.

In today’s EMS environment, OEMs expect their suppliers to handle the full product life cycle, regardless of their size. This is particularly true in the medical industry with relatively low volumes, long product life cycles, and multiple product versions.

Suppliers must have the initial required capability but also the adaptability, scalability, and sustainability to provide the same high-quality output throughout the life of the product. As a result, the cost of quality will likely reveal itself along the way. Cyient, for example, offers OEMs several flexible engagement models tailored to their specific needs from centers of excellence (CoE) and build operate transfer (BOT) to joint ventures (JV).

Medtech OEMs assess and manage this relationship based on qualifications related to the provider’s quality management systems and regulatory standards management. All this allows the OEM to focus on other functions such as future product development, sales and marketing. For the OEM, this also facilitates the consolidation of the supplier base to better manage their vendor costs.

Whether an OEM offers one product line or many, EMS suppliers need to understand and be fully in tune with the product lifecycle. If not, engineering changes could take longer, cost more, and
product improvements may never be addressed or suggested.

Design for manufacturability (DFM) solutions from an EMS provider facilitate cost and time-to-market reductions in the manufacturing process. These DFM practices allow potential problems to be tackled during the design phase, the least costly area of production to address the issues. DFM can assure improved time to market, reliability, yields, and quality of new products and redesigns as well as next generations. With a DFM strategy, there also are considerations unique to moulding that other manufacturing methods do not encounter. Robust tooling is also important in early phases, and it is not always on an OEM’s mind. In addition, value-added services like remediation and regulatory solutions make the journey to a cost-efficient component much more feasible for a medical device OEM.

As an example, an EMS engineer can select components during the design phase for a wire harness using fully automated equipment components where only semi-automated equipment is available. Another example is a printed circuit board design that needs to adhere to the products’ housing specifications or dimensions for a box enclosure. Some products have parameters or restrictions on overall size, weight, and shape. The third benefit of a PLM focus is cost reduction for materials and labour—a constant theme for OEMs.

More than ever, OEMs are requiring EMS suppliers to have repeatability and sustainability factors concerning quality, delivery and service. When evaluating a new EMS supplier, these performance metrics do not fully reveal themselves until it is too late. Thus, decision makers should seek suppliers with knowledge and experience to operate within product lifecycle stages from concept, through growth and maturity, and into revisions—plus strong project management processes and reporting.

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Brian Wyatt, Vice President,
Cyient Medical Technology & Healthcare