FOCUS

FOCUS

I know that for me, my day-to-day life is less stressful and more enjoyable when everything is in focus. I accomplish more, am less frustrated, and am generally happier when I can clearly see the day’s challenges.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines focus as a center of activity, attraction, or a point of concentration. How might the concept of focus be applied to medical cable assembly and connector manufacturing?

I am blogging today to remind you or introduce you to the advantages of partnering with a team that focuses solely on medical cables and connectors. That is what ClearPath Medical does.

During my career, I worked for two small but successful companies that were acquired by billion-dollar corporations. In both instances, I saw first-hand how the loss of focus after the acquisition was detrimental to customers.

Early in my career, I thought that “all business was good business.” I often encouraged our team to take on projects, even if they did not match our knowledge and experience. It took me quite a few years to learn that we did not do ourselves or our customers a service with this approach. When we tackled projects outside of our expertise, the result was a less than an optimal product that often did not meet our customer’s timeline. Experience has shown me that partnering with a team that focuses on a narrow technology sector delivers a better product and delivers it faster.

Isn’t bigger better? From my experience, no, it is not! I believe that most medical OEMs benefit by having a supply partner that is large enough to have the experience and expertise needed for their product development projects. But, I also believe that there is a benefit to partnering with a team that is lean, yet agile that allows them to devote their time and energy and focus on you and your projects’ unique needs.

In the cable and connector sector of medical device manufacturing, most engineers are MEs (mechanical engineers). My experience has been that having a single engineer assigned to a project from concept through part and tool design and into manufacturing is very efficient. This efficiency is enhanced further if the engineer has extensive background designing and manufacturing medical interconnect devices. Relative expertise and the ability to focus on the project, start to finish, leads to success.  This concept is the vision at ClearPath Medical and one of the reasons why customers see early success with this type of project engineering process.

A focus on quality is a requirement for medical device manufacturing. Experience has shown me the advantage of having a supply partner who bases their quality system on ISO 13485:2016, the medical standard.

ClearPath Medical manufactures in Orange County, California. While not typically known as a low-cost manufacturing area, knowing that the product will be manufactured domestically actually drives design decisions that make domestic manufacturing cost-effective. Designing to reduce labor and operator dependency not only reduces costs but typically yields a higher quality finished product. The lower the labor content, the fewer the opportunities are to make the product wrong.  That’s why having focus is so important in this industry.

Are you looking for a partner to design or manufacture medical cables or connectors? If so, I am confident that your project’s success will be more likely when you allow ClearPath Medical to focus on you and focus on your unique needs.

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Have more questions, or comments about the use of silicone in medical device and cable assembly applications? Be sure to contact us – we’d love to hear your thoughts!

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