EMS Insights: Customization and Communication Capabilities

Chris Eldred, president and CEO of TeligentEMS, a Havana, Fla.-based EMS provider, discussed medical device electronics manufacturing with Medical Product Outsourcing in the January issue. His extended interview follows:
 
Michael Barbella: What trends are you seeing in the medtech EMS space? Have these trends changed much in recent years? If so, how?
Chris Eldred: We are seeing an increased use of RF technologies in medical products for data collection aggregation and sharing. Products can contain Wifi, Bluetooth, near-field communication (NFC) or other communications technologies and they all need to interconnect. We have strong expertise in RF communications manufacturing and test. We find that this serves us well as the medical industry continues to require increasing levels of intercommunication among diagnostic equipment.
 
Barbella: What specific areas are customers experiencing some challenges with? What internal systems and processes do you use to address these issues?
Eldred: Our medical customers are looking for a business as well as a manufacturing solution in a world where variable demand is the norm. They want to optimize their inventory turns by eliminating as much inventory as possible. That requires us to build to forecast and ship to their demand. We customize programs for each customer via a combination of supply chain agreements and finished goods kanban. From a business perspective it requires real-time systems visibility and strong supply chain management expertise.
 
Barbella: Does your contractor have the ability to give you access to production status, quality and/or traceability data? If so, do you find these types of shared systems helpful?
Eldred: We find that having robust systems for device history record-keeping is critical for both our customers and us. Defects occur in every manufacturing process. A contractor’s speed in identifying and correcting these issues impacts both cost and overall quality. We monitor quality data in real-time and have systems that enable us to immediately review critical process steps based on product serial number. Should a defect occur, this helps us quickly identify the root cause and correct it. It also supports a quick root cause analysis if the customer has a field failure and needs to determine whether the issue was a result of handling in the field, component failure or other causes.