Scott Sizemore, who is now Plant Manager for B&J Medical, explained that the transition into a new marketplace was just a natural extension of the way the company had always done business.
"One of our sales guys made an effective presentation to a medical device manufacturer. So we started doing prototypes for bone screws and various broaches. Success with this work led to a couple of customers asking us to do some production work. Once word got out about what we could do, along with our consistent quality, medical work really began to ramp up. That was midyear in 2008."
Tool and die seems like a long way from medical parts manufacturing. However, Sizemore enumerated a number of attributes that made B&J a good fit for its chosen new market.
"First, there is our hard work and dedication to what we do and our excellent service. Then, we have many years of programming offline with Mastercam. We were already doing that 10 years ago when everybody else was trying to punch numbers at a machine. We program everything offline, post it down to the machine over our network, dump it into the machine's controller, and away we go."
"Then there is our high-speed surface machining capability and the fact that we have been cutting hardened steel for about a decade now. Of course, blemish-free surface finish is important for medical parts. We already know a lot about that from making multi-cavity production molds."
After working with medical product manufacturing customers for a year and a half, the management of B&J Specialty felt that this customer base would be better served by a company totally dedicated to the requirements of their industry. So a special group with its own staff and equipment was established to work exclusively on medical part manufacturing.
This year B&J Medical opened a new dedicated plant, located in Albion, Indiana. It is fully air conditioned and equipped with state-of-the-art computer systems and software, as well as a technologically advanced high speed 5-axis CNC mill with multi-position tool changers, 3-axis mill and five Swiss machines, all of them new.
The new division has a staff of 15 people, all with medical manufacturing experience. They are looking to add several more. In addition, the facility already has already awarded ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 13485 registration.
Customers kept their word. As soon as B&J Medical launched their new plant, they began sending more work, particularly for the 5-axis machine, which has been operating 24 hours a day. |