contract manufacturing Archives - Medical Design Sourcing

Contract manufacturer selection tips, tricks and red flags

A few years ago, Vivasure Medical faced an emergency that “nearly shut our company down,” co-founder Gerard Brett said.

“We picked a supplier in good faith — it looked like they had what it took to do the job for us,” he said. “We were working away at developing a part of our product, and we got a phone call with 24 hours’ notice to say the sheriff is going to put a lock on the door of that company.”

The supplier was about 4,500 miles from Vivasure’s Galway, Ireland headquarters where Brett serves as chief operating officer.

“We literally put people on a plane, hired what looked like the CIA, we had black Suburbans, and we backed up to the back of that facility at 2 a.m. and took our stuff out: equipment and materials,” Brett said. “At 6 a.m., it was locked.”

Vivasure Medical co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Gerard B…

Tegra Medical expands manufacturing operations in Costa Rica

Tegra Medical is expanding in Costa Rica with the purchase of a building for metals manufacturing. [Photo courtesy of Tegra Medical]

Tegra Medical has purchased a building to expand its manufacturing operations in Costa Rica, the medical device contract manufacturer said today.

Franklin, Massachusetts-based Tegra said the 85,000-ft² building is near its two buildings in the CF Free Zone in La Aurora de Heredia. Tegra will consolidate its metals manufacturing footprint with the new facility, allowing it to expand its nearby clean room molding and assembly operations.

Tegra will have a total of 135,000 ft² of manufacturing space in Costa Rica when the project is complete, Tegra Costa Rica GM Sean Mikus said.

Mikus said the new building and its remodeling are part of a $13 million investment in the country. The size of that investment qualifies it as a “mega-project” in the Costa Rican Free Zone syst…

Tips for vetting contract manufacturers from Fictiv CEO Dave Evans

Fictiv co-founder and CEO Dave Evans [Photo courtesy of Fictiv]

Good help is hard to find.

Fictiv co-founder and CEO Dave Evans has built a business around solving that challenge. San Francisco-based Fictiv finds and vets contract manufacturers to connect them with companies like medical device developers.

After closing a $100 million Series E funding round this spring, Evans spoke with Medical Design & Outsourcing to share some tips and tricks around vetting potential manufacturing partners.

MDO: What are the biggest things you look for?

Evans: You want to look at that manufacturing partner and say, ‘What are they really, really good at? What is their core expertise?’ Because what happens — especially in the medical contract manufacturing (CM) world — let’s say they start off and they’re really good with a certain type of PCBA or a certain chip set. From there t…