A successful partnership between medtech companies and contract manufacturing organizations can help OEMs get products to market faster, meet quality requirements, support Design for Manufacturability, and reduce costs and inventories.
Outsourcing contract manufacturing can have many benefits for both original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and contract manufacturing organizations (CMO). Ideally, process and production decisions should be shared, but there are times when CMOs must take directives from the OEM partners. MICRO’s Carl Savage, vice president, business management, answered a few questions for MD+DI on how CMOs and OEMs can work together to ensure each project’s success.
As a full-service medical device contract manufacturer, what is your view on customer development programs that are not commercially successful long term?
MICRO’s Carl Savage, vice president, business management.
Savage: We operate in a fast-paced, customer-centric bottom-line medtech market, where a “win” is usually considered to be a development project that achieves long-term market presence and profitability as defined by the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and the industry as a whole. That is certainly a practical way to define success. For MICRO, our company looks at each project as an opportunity to gain experience and expertise to better serve future customers and grow as a business. We learn from every project and customer relationship, take those learnings, and apply them to the next project so each successive client relationship and our business overall is more successful and adaptable over time. In this view, medical device development programs do not have to necessarily realize lasting market presence to be viewed as successful. With each program we examine the pain points and often re-evaluate processes or techniques that allow us to grow in a new direction. That can be a huge positive.