Jabil Streamlines Design Capabilities in Europe

Creating a global footprint and understanding clients’ technology and clinical needs are part of the complex recipe for outsourcing success in today’s evolving manufacturing world, according to executives from the Healthcare and Life Science division of Jabil.

MedicalDeviceNow sat down with Jabil representatives during the Compamed 2011 medical technology meeting being held in Dusseldorf, Germany, from Nov. 16-18.

“You’ve got to be prepared for companies’ needs,” Donna Fedor, director of Strategy for Jabil Healthcare and Life Science, explaining that Jabil recently has had to initiate an internal plan of restructuring to better position it to respond to current customers’ and prospective clients’ design and manufacturing needs.

“Companies aren’t going to outsource unless you know their technology, understand their clinical goals and learn more about the disease states that fuel their product development,” she said. “We’ve taken steps to better respond to those needs. It’s a bit of a change for an EMS company.”

Some of the steps Fedor mentioned involved breaking the healthcare division’s business into different subsectors of medical technology.

The first sector is for products used at the patient bedside such as patient monitoring or ultrasound devices. Another sector is for smaller, portable on-body and in-body devices that can be used in the healthcare or home-health settings. The third subsector comprises devices for the surgical suite. The fourth is analytical lab equipment, and the fifth is large imaging technology such as CT and MRI scanners. Each subsector has a person in charge of exploring diseases states pertinent to each so that Jabil’s designers and engineers can prepare a product development and manufacturing solution to suit each client’s individual needs.

To further streamline efforts, the company recently consolidated operations at three European design centers into one central location in Vienna, Austria. The new design engineering organization brings together Jabil’s three European design centers under Peter Landbauer, senior director of Design Engineering Europe. The move brings engineering capabilities of the centers in Hasselt, Belgium; Jena, Germany; and Vienna under one roof. Capabilities include system engineering, electrical design, software development, precision mechanics and optics.

During Compamed, the company also announced the opening of a new class 1,000 clean room in Vienna, and inaugurated its medical new product introduction (NPI) assembly work cell.

“The opening of the new clean room in Vienna along with the strategic design engineering consolidation, demonstrates Jabil’s commitment to providing centralized access to a complete service offering for our European medical products customers,” said Ralph Hugeneck, director of medical technology, Jabil Healthcare and Life Sciences. “Now, customers can take advantage of our full design engineering portfolio through a single point of contact, instead of having to work with three different organizations. This move underscores how Jabil delivers business process simplicity combined with the broadest medical product design, engineering and prototyping capabilities in Europe.”

Other benefits of the unified organization include standardization on best practices and strategic development of new capabilities, Hugeneck said. Most large-scale, manufacturing, however is saved for facilities in the United States and Asia.

Hugeneck said the European design center isn’t just for European customers.

“The center in Vienna serves our U.S. and global customers, but it is helping us grow our European base of customers,” he said.

The NPI services in Austria include design for manufacturing, process and technology engineering, test engineering, supply chain management and prototyping. Jabil’s European medical product team is complemented by design engineering centers in Shanghai, China, specializing in patient bedside monitoring devices, and St. Petersburg, Fla., specializing in surgical and procedural tools.

Fedor noted that as more companies in the United States pursue CE Mark before FDA clearance or approval due to a more onerous and unpredictable regulatory environment in the United States, having a one-stop-shop for design in Europe “makes sense.”

It also aids U.S. companies that are designing products in Europe for the European market.

Jabil execs reported that outsourcing of medical devices continues to grow, and that using full design and manufacturing services allows OEMs to concentrate on the next technological innovation by offloading most, if not all, of a product’s development, production and aftermarket functions, such as packaging, sterilization and repairs. Medical device firms that partner with full-service firm can free up valuable resources to concentrate on intellectual property, Jabil execs noted. Similarly, a design and manufacturing firm can take over lower-priority projects and get them moving quickly and efficiently, leading to potentially new revenue streams for OEMs.

Photo above: Jabil’s facility in Vienna, Austria.