Optimizing capabilities
“I think our customers needed a year to know what Integer was,” said Andrew Senn, Integer’s VP of R&D for cardio and vascular, during a recent MDO visit to Integer’s facility in Chaska, Minn.Integer in June was still in the process of swapping out the Lake Region Medical signs at Chaska, a 163,000-square-foot campus with five facilities specializing in guidewires. The Hazeltine National Golf Club was just across the lake, and the company had plastic coyotes placed strategically on the lawn to ward off geese. One of Fleischhacker’s early wire coiling machines – the “Grandma” machine that serviced Medtronic’s 1960s pacemaker lead coil needs – was on display in one atrium.
Chaska is an Integer “Center of Excellence” when it comes to wire forming, coil-winding, machining and joining, as well as core development engineering and contract manufacturing. Nearly 50,000 sterilized products leave the site every week.
Lake Region Medical was already well-versed in vertical integration before the merger with Greatbatch. For example, wire comes to Chaska pre-coated and spooled from the company’s plant in New Ross, Ireland. Senn suspects the company has avoided many of the problems involving flaking PTFE coatings because of the Ireland plant’s focus on coating wires before winding them into coils, versus spray-coating or dip-coating them after the coiling process.
Company officials told us that the past two years have been about integrating and standardizing sales processes and systems, quality management and more – as managers and subject matter experts discover what’s available in their new corporate empire. Now officials in Chaska hope to capitalize on those new capabilities.
A former Greatbatch facility, for example, might be able to mold some of the plastic components that go with guidewires – parts that Integer presently outsources.
“Now we’re in a position to be vertically integrated, be a supplier to ourselves and control the supply chain, which has all the cost benefits,” explained director of operations Terry Ostgulen.
Opportunities abound, added Aimee Garza, a Plymouth, Minn.–based director of Integer’s strategic marketing for cardiac rhythm management and neuromodulation.
“We have the capabilities and the breadth to support any customer needs, from manufacturing miniaturized components all the way through to design, development and manufacturing of a full finished system if that’s what the customer desires,” Garza said.