As MICRO celebrates its 75th anniversary, Brian Semcer, president, discusses medtech trends and changes in manufacturing, regulation, and more.
Contract manufacturer MICRO Inc. is currently celebrating 75 years of manufacturing, with a primary focus on the medical device industry. The company has worked to solve a number of medtech industry challenges over the years, including addressing the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic.
MD+DI asked Semcer, a third-generation, 25-year veteran at MICRO, a few questions about changes the company has seen over the years and how the company has prepared for the future.
Can you explain how medical device technology has evolved over the last 75 years?
Semcer: Medical device technology has evolved substantially in the last 75 years; it is really a completely different landscape today versus when we first started out as a company. Technology has advanced the field so much that what is commonplace today did not even seem possible nearly eight decades ago. My grandfather was a toolmaker who founded the company in 1945 in Maplewood, NJ, with four partners, three of whom were also toolmakers. The company quickly gained a reputation for handling challenging precision metal stamping jobs, and my father built upon that tradition by constantly investing in the latest technology—he was an early adopter of Bruderer high-speed presses, computer-aided design, and even Mac computers! Today, the third generation of the family is running a company that my grandfather would barely recognize due to its size, breadth, and complexity.