Manufacturing technology


hese days, Becton, Dickinson and Company (BD) isn’t really in the same league as Medtronic or Stryker – but modern medical manufacturing would probably be impossible without it. In 1898 and at the cost of just $40, the American firm acquired a half interest in a patent to produce all-glass syringes – a striking new invention in the Victorian age. After honing their craft for half a century, BD would then push the technology even more dramatically. In the 1950s, supporting a new anti-polio vaccination campaign, it mass-produced around a million disposable syringes – one of the first times in history a single medical device was produced at such a scale.


Robotic automation T


Over the intervening decades, mass production has become a staple of medical manufacturing, hardly surprising given the scale of the industry. According to work by the WHO, there are some two million kinds of medical devices on the world market, divided into around 7,000 generic groups, which together represent a market worth over $530bn. It goes without saying, meanwhile, that this insatiable demand can only ever be achieved with mass production – and automated mass production at that. At any rate, this is reflected in factories themselves, with so-called ‘fixed’ automation, in the form of conveyor belts and other 20th century innovations, now common from Shanghai to Stuttgart.


When it comes to upgrading the suite of technology operating on the factory fl oors of medical device manufacturers, getting it right can be tricky. Between historically high investments costs and challenges around education and implementation, that’s especially true when it comes to robotics and automation. Yet if these diffi culties have traditionally limited the ability of smaller companies to embrace the power of robots, things are changing fast. Andrea Valentino investigates, along the way speaking to experts across the sector.


Medical Device Developments / www.nsmedicaldevices.com


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metamorworks/Shutterstock.com


metamorworks/Shutterstock.com


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