Medical Device Link.

EDITOR'S PAGE

Sometimes a manufacturer’s core competencies do not include designing critical parts or subsystems. Tapping into the expertise of the supplier seems to make sense, but providing design and development advice is a bit beyond the scope of traditional customer service. In such cases, an outsourcing partner may be needed, but for how long and at what level? There is a concept that is somewhere between relying on supplier expertise and hiring an outsourcer. “Bringing an expert onboard for a short, focused endeavor is often the most expeditious approach to getting the work done and staying on schedule,” says Ray Derler, director of Single Iteration, a business unit of Watlow Electric (St. Louis).

With the trend in outsourcing moving full-steam ahead, many suppliers now have entire divisions dedicated to providing these services to their OEM clients. Program managers are commonly assigned to each project. They assemble a right-sized team whose skills match the task at hand. For example, at Single Iteration, such a team could be made up of people from either its dedicated staff or from technology experts within the various Watlow product centers, explains Derler.

“Even with skilled technical staff, companies may need to flex their workforce depending upon the work load,” says Derler. “They can either choose to hire and deal with the transitional issues of getting an employee acclimated, or they can off-load some of the work to an outside specialty service provider.”

Derler explains that off-loading such work is the ultimate mechanism for companies to accommodate changing work flows without adding permanent staff. “This is tantamount to, ‘Get an expert when you need one, send them home when you don’t,’” he says.

When medical device companies look at this type of outsourcing, they should consider exactly what they want to achieve. Derler says that in the case of Watlow’s Single Iteration division, device companies often use such services because they are seeking an unbiased third party to provide innovative approaches to thermal system challenges.

In addition, companies can establish the efficacy of an idea through the use of the consulting group’s computational engineering tools. The outsourcing arm of Watlow maintains an extensive infrastructure of mathematical tools such as finite-element analysis and computational fluid dynamics. Clients can access these tools—and people skilled in using them—to see whether an idea can be simulated on the computer before any expensive prototyping effort is done.

Such services definitely stretch beyond traditional customer service functions. For a component manufacturer, says Derler, traditional customer service is typically associated with minor modifications to an existing product configuration. When the supplier acts as consultant, the service helps a company assess a project, identify objectives, and achieve its goals.

Sherrie Conroy for the Editors