Originally Published MPMN November/December 2008

NEED TO KNOW

Consolidating Five Plants Gives Contract Manufacturer Room to Grow

Stephanie Steward

Heraeus Medical Components (St. Paul, MN; www.heraeus-mcd.com) is consolidating its five facilities in the Minneapolis area and relocating them to a new campus in St. Paul. The company is undertaking the large-scale, three-phase project to improve efficiency, increase manufacturing space, and provide extra room to accommodate future growth.

Having acquired the interventional business unit of Synovis Life Technologies (Lino Lakes, MN; www.synovismed.com) in February 2008, Heraeus’s simultaneous consolidation and expansion project will include integrating the Synovis operations. Synovis designs and manufactures the microwires and molded polymer and micromachined metal components used in interventional devices for such purposes as cardiac rhythm management. These products complement the custom components and assemblies that Heraeus manufactures for use in guidewires, leads, pacemakers, and aneurysm applications.

“We are well on our way into the integration process,” says Mark Kempf, company president. “We have one management team and are moving to combine all systems in 2009.”

With plans to try to wrap up the entire project in the next two years, Heraeus has been busy finishing the project’s first phase, which consisted of constructing a 60,000-sq-ft high-efficiency building. Completed in September 2008, the building includes a 22,000-sq-ft ISO Class 8 manufacturing area for performing wire coiling, plastic injection molding, and cleanroom assembly services.

“The new building will house about 50% of the Synovis activity, and we will construct another new building in 2010–2011 to house the remaining Synovis functions,” Kempf says.

For Phase II of the project, a 50,000-sq-ft manufacturing area will be constructed for providing stamped metal housings; precision machining; and wire forming, straightening, and grinding operations. The project’s third phase will consist of erecting an additional 50,000-sq-ft building reserved for future growth.

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