The Challenge
Entrepreneur Tim Nelson, founder of WaterJet International, recently developed a revolutionary new water dental drill technology. The product is a significant breakthrough for the field of dentistry.
“My wife is a dental hygienist, and I own a dental staffing company, so this was a perfect fit,” Nelson said. “The drill uses water to do the cutting, significantly reducing the noise, pain, heat and vibration of conventional drills”.
Nelson developed an early prototype of his product that is being used by dentists with excellent results, even winning awards from several organizations in 2013. As the next step he was ready in January 2014 to develop a more sophisticated prototype in order to get the product ready to manufacture and sell.
He sent the parts to be made to an outsourcing shop in China that his company had used in the past. However, the Chinese organization, being busy with the Chinese New Year, sent his project randomly to another location. This made for delays, but even worse, the project came back with quality that was so poor the resulting parts were entirely unusable.
The Solution
Thankfully, someone had recommended Dr. Clark Turner and the team of Turner MedTech to WaterJet International. “In a nutshell, Turner MedTech bailed my company out,” Nelson said. “I was extremely impressed with the knowledge base, the equipment, and the know-how the Turner MedTech team has displayed. I immediately released the order from the China group to Turner MedTech, and I couldn’t be more relieved that I did.”
The team is now looking to Turner Medtech as an optimal source of outsourced manufacturing as well: “We look forward to continuing our outsourcing work with Turner MedTech from now on,” Nelson said.
An Increasingly Smart Solution for Medical Device Manufacturing
Like many emerging medical device companies, WaterJet had an idea, a product patent, and even a team of onsite engineers. However, the machining and manufacturing of a finished commercial device are tasks that a highly specialized outsource organization can do to help the company manage risk, to reduce raw costs, and to improve their service delivery. For organizations like WaterJet, many outsource alternatives are emerging, ranging from end-to-end business outsourcing to the outsourcing of specific and targeted functions such as product engineering, product manufacturing, or even the manufacture of specific components such as high-performance power supplies or battery packs.