Medical device companies have incredible opportunities to grow, but many are not increasing their profitability – only the volume. Most companies are so tied up in compliance knots they don’t realize that better operations can not only allow profitable growth, but also ease that regulatory burden. Yet a quarter of companies are managing to do [...]
Allowing Manufacturing Employees to Gain Insights
For years, we’ve been talking about intelligence – business intelligence and manufacturing intelligence – and it is starting to take root in production companies across the globe. Now it’s time to take it to the next level and ensure that intelligence has all of the context, collaboration, and easy access people need for ready insights. [...]
Smarter Test and Supplier Quality – No Blind Spots
In electronics, every company outsources to one degree or another; the question is, how much visibility do companies have into this process? In 2005 I worked on a study with the Electronics Supply Chain Association, Regaining Control & Managing Risk: The Electronics Outsourced Model Evolves. We discovered that electronics manufacturing had been outsourced for a [...]
Gaining True Information Flow
Since I started in the manufacturing industry over 25 years ago, the vision of integrated information systems has been central – and finally some companies are striving to offer solutions that provide that flow. We have always known it could improve agility to have at core enterprise and plant floor functions integrated. In addition to [...]
Elvis Pointing to Me – Now That’s Quality!
I wrote a blog post recently that is on the new blog site “Manufacturing Geek” and I’m just delighted to be on there, since I am totally a manufacturing geek that they chose The King as the photo (thanks Eric!!!) The post pulls from the MESA Metrics research special report using the medical device industry [...]
Improving the Foundation for Business Success
It can be earth-shaking to change something that’s at the foundation of an entire business – and that can be positive. One of the elements that is central to most discrete manufacturing businesses is the product portfolio, and it seems in many companies have expanded that greatly. News of products, new variants and options, and [...]
Beyond Trade-offs – Compliance and Profits for Medical Device Makers
There is some hand-wringing in the medical device industry recently, now that it appears the US’s Affordable Care Act with the medical device tax is here to stay. Honestly, this tax is just one more issue to make medical device makers focus on how to be more efficient and more profitable. Elsewhere in the world, [...]
Leverage IT platforms and accurate modeling to unleash success
While semiconductor and other high tech industries are driving ever-faster change in the products we all use every day, the systems they use internally often have not changed in many years. As pioneers in using MES, semiconductor companies have a disproportionate number of systems over 10 years old running their plants, as we discussed in [...]
It’s time for Medical Device companies to Grow Up!
The purpose of a business is to make money – and in manufacturers’ case, they do that by making things. Seems pretty obvious, but when you wade into the heavily regulated world of medical device manufacturing, confusion reigns on that point. Because these companies spend so much time worried (with some cause) about regulators and [...]
Managing Project-based, regulated factories needs more than ERP
How do you expand ERP and serve the customers well? My simple answer: add-on applications. That is exactly what Deltek is doing with its Costpoint project-based ERP offering. (If you have never have heard of Deltek, you are probably not a government contractor or project-based type of company. Even those using other ERP often use [...]
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It’s time for Medical Device companies to Grow Up!
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Shamanic Journey #1
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Have the Life you Want with Manufacturing Disciplines: Introduction
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Elvis Pointing to Me – Now That’s Quality!
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Clock is Ticking for Semiconductor Companies’ Legacy MES
