High-precision mold maker IGS GeboJagema has officially launched a new subsidiary dedicated to the U.S.
IGS GeboJagema designs, manufactures, and validates high-precision molds for applications such as contact lenses, asthma inhalers, insulin pens, and blood-diagnostic devices. Over the past two decades, the Dutch company has become a strategic partner for large OEMs and top healthcare companies worldwide. The key, according to CEO Peter Mertens, is IGS GeboJagema’s unrivalled engineering expertise combined with their experience working closely with medical OEMs early in the product life cycle.
“Based in the heart of the most prominent technology hub of Europe, we have been able to assemble a team of world-class engineers,” Mertens explains. “Through their ambition and creativity, we develop cutting-edge and highly reliable molding solutions that give our clients an edge over their competitors.”
Thanks to the company’s focus on innovation, more and more leading industry players rely on the company’s engineering power in the development of new OEM products.
“To give an example, we are currently involved in all major strategic insulin pen projects,” Mertens says. “We like to partner with our clients as early as possible, so we can make the biggest impact. Whether it’s product design, or a smart mold solution that no one else can offer, we optimize every aspect of the manufacturing process to realize the lowest Total Cost of Ownership possible.”
One major player in the healthcare market states: “IGS GeboJagema has enabled our business to grow 10x over the past 25 years.” They specifically point to the Dutch company’s drive to innovate as having made the difference. “We would not have been successful if IGS had simply delivered the common, standard fare goods. The suite of mold hardware we developed together reduces costs, improves delivery time, and requires less maintenance and toolroom support. Our IGS molds are considered the gold standard within our company’s manufacturing arena.”
IGS GeboJagema’s US subsidiary will be based in Washington D.C. Initially, it will focus on providing faster and more convenient sales and service support to the company’s North-American client base. IGS GeboJagema USA will be launched at MD&M East on December 7, where the company will exhibit at booth 746.
Medical device equipment, farming and construction equipment, food processing equipment, and equipment needed for technological upgrades are all in short supply.
Manufacturing and Supply Chain Expert, Lisa Anderson, MBA, CSCP, CLTD, President of LMA Consulting Group Inc., predicts that supply chain disruption will continue well beyond 2024. LMA Consulting Group works with manufacturers and distributors on strategy and end-to-end supply chain transformation to maximize the customer experience and enable profitable, scalable, dramatic business growth.
“The supply chain disruption is real and will last for quite some time,” Anderson comments. Every supply chain is a complex set of connections that spans from the supplier’s suppliers to product or service accessibility for the end-user. “Let’s look at the ‘why’ of the disruption. If you remove industry nuances, there are three main causes of the disruption. The first cause is labor. The pandemic exacerbated the ongoing drain of skilled boomer workers, many of whom took early retirement. The pandemic also caused workers to reassess their priorities. That resulted in people deciding that they didn’t like their industry or job or their boss. This has manifested into what many are calling the Great Resignation,” Anderson says.
Labor shortages exist in almost every industry and position.
“Manufacturing, transportation, distribution, none of these industries are exempt. And, most of these industries affect the consumer, who has felt the supply chain pinch the worst,” she adds.
The second reason for supply chain disruption is misalignment.
“The pandemic caused a shift in demand. When people experienced an out-of-stock, they found new products that were either similar or better. This shift caused a supply chain misalignment: having the wrong products in the wrong places at the wrong time. So, even when the original products were in place, the demand was no longer there because it had shifted,” she says.
The most expensive reason for supply chain disruptions is equipment. “There is a shortage of equipment in all sectors. This includes chassis used to off-load trailers from ships. Trucks are in short supply, and laws are requiring equipment upgrades. Medical device equipment, farming and construction equipment, food processing equipment and equipment needed for technological upgrades are all in short supply,” Anderson notes.
“It all comes down to creating a never-ending supply chain circle, almost like the supply chain is chasing its proverbial tail. I don’t see that this is easily solvable by initiating new laws or enticing workers with more money. Sure, it can help, but it’s not an easy fix. It will take recognizing that there may be no new normal. Essentially, the supply chain will be in a constant state of evolution. The successful manufacturers will be adaptive, resilient and forward-thinking as they respond to changes in demand and recognize an ever-evolving supply chain,” she concludes.
Supply chain issues create opportunities for U.S. encoder manufacturer.
Extensive slowdowns all along the supply chain are keeping electronics manufacturers from buying the components they need, when they need them, suggesting broader problems across the economy. However, for SMAC, a little encoder manufacturing group in Derry, New Hampshire, the crisis has led to record sales numbers in 2021.
Rapid initial design contributed to SMAC’s success. Application engineers respond to most inquiries within hours and, depending on the customer’s specifications, they produce prototypes in weeks. Take out the supply chain issues overseas competitors face and the US-based company has become an agile solution for encoders.
“No one else on the planet can create prototypes as quickly as we can,” claims one SMAC Application Engineer. While this statement may be difficult to verify, but certainly only a very select few can deliver price competitive encoder prototypes to U.S.-based companies as quickly as SMAC can.
SMAC setup their own encoder manufacturing group SMAC-EMC, to design, build and test their own line of optical encoders. Their engineering and manufacturing staff have over 25 years’ experience designing and building optical encoders at SMAC and at other major optical encoder companies. This staff has designed large volume, optical encoder products for Markem, Brooks Automation, Varian Corp, HP, Universal Instruments, Delphi, and other manufacturers from coast to coast.
Because SMAC developed and designed their own reflective and diffractive optical encoder in-house, it has given them the knowledge and understanding of all the attributes that go into choosing superior encoder optical components for their designs.
Don’t miss the Dec. 7, 2021, webinar featuring representatives from Siemens Digital Industries Software, the U.S. FDA, and the Medical Device Innovation Consortium.
The road to advanced manufacturing starts with collaboration, and collaboration starts here. Let’s dive into how advanced manufacturing can improve the industry.
Advanced manufacturing is not a specific destination that all medical device companies need to reach. Instead, it’s a journey of incorporating tools and concepts that promote manufacturing maturity, which enables companies to successfully react to industry challenges while enabling process efficiency and flexibility. In this webinar, industry experts from the Medical Device Innovation Consortium (MDIC) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) discuss with Siemens Digital Industries Software how to successfully implement existing technologies that are critical to advanced manufacturing.
Registration for the Dec. 7, 2021 11AM ET webinar is open and free, sign up today!
The 3D-printed chambers were developed by the research team from the Fraunhofer Institutes for Applied Polymer Research IAP and for Laser Technology ILT as well as the BG Klinik Ludwigshafen.
In the case of serious soft tissue injuries, tissue transplantation is sometimes unavoidable. For the patient, however, this means a serious intervention. In the future, the missing tissue could grow directly in the patient's body – in isolation chambers that can be implanted under the skin and individually adapted to the wound geometry. The 3D-printed chambers developed by the research team from the Fraunhofer Institutes for Applied Polymer Research IAP and for Laser Technology ILT as well as the BG Klinik Ludwigshafen were presented at the MEDICA medical technology trade fair in Düsseldorf this week.
If structures such as bones, vessels or tendons are exposed in the patient, tissue transplantation with perfused tissue is often the only option. For the patient, this is associated with an operation lasting several hours and with injury to the body's own healthy tissue. Scientists are therefore developing tissue-conserving methods for generating perfused tissue grafts to replace skin and other tissue in a targeted manner. For example, collagen-lined isolation chambers made of Teflon could be sewn under the skin and an artery or vein could be looped into them. Through cell migration and ingrowth of vessels, the collagen is finally transformed into transplantable tissue within two to four weeks. This is a minor procedure for which local anesthesia is sufficient. In contrast to tissue grown in a petri dish, the tissue created in the chamber is fully vascularized - i.e., interspersed with capillaries - and thus supplied with blood. This means that a lively connective tissue is created that adopts the shape of the isolation chamber and is suitable for transplantation without having to sacrifice healthy donor tissue. Another advantage: since the tissue is produced by the patient's body, rejection reactions are avoided.
Customizable tissue engineering Researchers at the Fraunhofer IAP are currently evaluating and optimizing this technique in the BMBF-funded FlexLoop project (grant number 03VP05962) - together with the Fraunhofer ILT and the BG Klinik Ludwigshafen - Clinic for Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Heidelberg University. "Whereas previously only round isolation chambers were used for tissue engineering, for the first time we can adapt the shape of the isolation chambers to the shape of the patient's soft tissue defect, thus further advancing the personalization and individualization of medicine," says Dr. Wolfdietrich Meyer, project manager at Fraunhofer IAP. This is enabled by 3D printing, which is intended to replace the previous milling of the chambers. Since the conventional chamber material Teflon cannot be printed, the experts at Fraunhofer ILT are relying on photo resins for this purpose. "3D printing not only offers the advantage of being able to specify the shape of the tissue, we have also developed chamber designs that make tissue cultivation as comfortable as possible for patients and allow easy handling during surgery," explains Andreas Hoffmann, project manager at Fraunhofer ILT.
The researchers at the Fraunhofer IAP are testing both the material itself and the differently shaped isolation chambers. Finally, the isolation chamber must not release any degradation products into the patient's body or lead to rejection reactions, so it must be biocompatible. How durable is the material in the human organism? Does it change, for example, when it is brought to body temperature? The initial results look promising. As far as the entire isolation chambers are concerned, the mechanical properties are the main focus. This is because the chambers are sutured to the surrounding tissue or implanted under the skin at a site close to the defect: Here, for example, no cracks may form in the chamber for safe application.
The physicians at BG Klinik Ludwigshafen, in turn, are investigating whether the regrowing tissue can also completely fill complexly shaped isolation chambers. "Our main aim is to show that we can grow shapable tissue in the 3D-printed chambers, which in turn - like a kind of puzzle piece - can completely close a complex soft tissue defect. In addition, the biomechanical quality of the tissue grown is closely examined," explains Dr. med. Florian Falkner, assistant physician for plastic and reconstructive surgery at BG Klinik Ludwigshafen. However, it will take a few more years of development before this form of tissue cultivation is ready for clinical application as a routine procedure.