The medical industry is a complex network of skilled professionals, facilities and equipment that provides ongoing, immediate — and, at times, emergency — services to preserve and protect human health. It carries a unique importance, and medical device and equipment manufacturers share in shouldering that responsibility by taking all necessary precautions to help ensure the critical-use products they provide are defect-free and consistently reliable.

An approved vendor list isn’t meant to be static, and if you’re treating yours like it’s written in stone, you may be doing yourself and your business a disservice.

Critically evaluating vendor performance on a regular basis not only helps you identify and weed out those that aren’t consistently meeting expectations, it also provides an opportunity for vendor consolidation.

The complexities of your critical use medical application require you to assemble and manage a supply chain that optimizes expertise and efficiencies from a number of sources. Focusing on singular areas, like injection molding, is important to the successful performance and reliability of your medical components, but a broader view of the project must also be taken to leverage the expertise of your suppliers in order to streamline processes and achieve a faster time to market.

There is no room for error when designing critical-use medical devices and equipment. Taking a holistic view of the part/component during the design phase—including assembly implications—allows for a thorough understanding of how all of the factors involved impact the end product. It also helps injection molders identify and correct injection molding defects in engineered plastic components during early project phases, which ultimately saves money and reduces time to market. 

For the first time in over a decade, the United States Army is winding down contingency operations. Army Material Command (AMC) executives are assessing supplier relationships and strategically choosing to continue those that can provide necessary components for ground and weapon systems, communications equipment and armed forces gear without disrupting the Army’s supply chain.

Central to new product development is the budget, and exploring economic efficiencies often leads to offshoring options. This is especially true when the new product development program (NPD) involves injection-molded plastic components for industrial/consumer applications, as overseas costs are particularly attractive compared to domestic production.

With nearly a quarter million manufacturing jobs reshored in the U.S. since 2010, it appears many automotive manufacturers are finding upfront offshore savings come with a heavy cost in parts shortages, production line shutdowns, product defects and transportation delays.

According to a survey by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in late February, more than one-third of U.S.-based manufacturing executives at companies with sales greater than $1 billion are planning to bring production back to the United States from China or, are considering it. That’s great news for American manufacturing.

Thirty-seven percent of respondents indicated they are planning to “reshore” operations or are “actively considering” it. That response rate rose to 48 percent among executives at companies with $10 billion or more in revenues—a third of the sample.