When companies grow they tend to ignore cost controls and focus on getting the additional capacity required to fill customer demands before a competitor provides an alternative source of supply. Medical device manufacturers have not been motivated to focus on costs in the past because compliance and quality have been more important, and the industry has had the luxury of operating with a cost-plus pricing model.

The industry is now facing new levels of price pressure as its customers try to control their soaring health costs. This is compounded by the fact that medical devices are often manufactured in low volumes, which often leads to inefficient machining processes.

It is not surprising then that medical device manufacturers are looking to Lean Manufacturing and other continuous improvement methodologies to improve processes, reduce costs and maximize the capacity of existing assets. Lean incorporates the concepts of Total Productive Maintenance that utilizes the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) metric to drive continuous improvements in process availability, performance and quality.

Data collection is an essential step in process improvement, allowing engineers to determine root causes and to ensure processes remained fixed permanently. The CNC machine tool is capable of capturing and communicating the status of operations and can be incorporated into a comprehensive automated data collection and analysis infrastructure that allows assigned resources to focus on implementing the best process improvements.