• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

MassDevice

The Medical Device Business Journal — Medical Device News & Articles | MassDevice

  • Latest News
    • Cardiovascular
    • Orthopedics
  • Wall Street Beat
    • Funding Roundup
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
  • Podcasts
    • MPR: Breakthrough Products Series
  • Resources
    • About MassDevice
    • Newsletter Signup
    • Job Board
    • Leadership in Medtech
    • Manufacturer Search
    • MedTech 100 Index
    • Videos
    • Whitepapers
  • DeviceTalks Tuesdays
    • DeviceTalks
  • Coronavirus: Live updates
Home » From 8 Weeks to a Few Days: How Vaupell helped K2M increase speed to market on their life-saving medical prototypes

From 8 Weeks to a Few Days: How Vaupell helped K2M increase speed to market on their life-saving medical prototypes

October 1, 2019 By Sponsored Content

The Company
K2M, now a part of Stryker, is a medical device innovator and manufacturer that works closely with surgeons to design spinal implants and surgical instrumentation.
Industry: Spinal medical devices
Location: Headquartered in Virginia, with offices in the UK and Germany
Company Size: 500 Employees

The Project
Critical Business Issues: K2M’s prototyping process was too long and costly. They faced pressure from customers to get designs to market faster.

The Solution: K2M partnered with Vaupell to create product prototypes from their spinal technology designs.

The Outcome: Together, they reduced the prototyping phase of time-to-market from eight weeks to just a few days. K2M is in the business of innovation. Surgeons and patients depend on their products to make spinal surgery safer, effective, and more efficient. “Speed to market is very important for products in the medical device space,” says Alex Artaki, senior development engineer at K2M. “The industry is changing so rapidly that five year-old products are obsolete.”

As a result, every additional week K2M spends on the development cycle can potentially hurt their bottom line and slow their customers’ ability to implement the latest technology

More Than Great Parts
Beyond industry expertise and quick turnaround time, there are several more key benefits to the collaboration between K2M and Vaupell, which include their responsiveness and overall quality of parts.

Responsiveness
Vaupell’s responsiveness and email support are contributing factors, as well. “Requests for quote are returned in less than 24 hours,” says Artaki. By comparison, some manufacturers use slower quoting processes that can dramatically delay production time.

Quality of the Parts
The quality of Vaupell’s parts is top-notch, as well — striking a perfect balance between speed and quality. With almost a decade of experience producing metal parts, Vaupell is both reliable and knowledgeable. “Vaupell’s parts serve our end goal of validating designs in our surgeons’ hands,” says Artaki.

Time Savings
While Vaupell’s technology does cost slightly more than conventional machining, the time savings provide the most staggering return on investment for K2M. “Fitting three rounds of design feedback into the space of one clearly allows us to reach the goal line faster.” In addition, this speed keeps K2M from falling behind their competitors in a fast-paced industry. “All the companies we compete with are using similar technologies, so this allows us to remain competitive.”

A COLLABORATIVE PROCESS
“We develop our products using design teams composed of hands-on surgeons,” Artaki explains. “To best utilize their feedback and maintain their interest in our projects, we invite them to cadaver labs to test prototypes about every three months.” Because K2M’s customers are eager to use the latest technology, projects often have very aggressive timelines. Fast, rough prototyping is essential — but conventional prototype shops tend to take eight weeks to create an initial design for testing.

A NEED FOR SPEED
K2M approached Vaupell to see if they could help supply prototypes for surgical tools and guides. As a company that likes to push the limits on complex, otherwise impossible parts, K2M needed a reliable manufacturer with extensive experience in DMLS, or direct metal laser sintering.

From the start, Vaupell was quick to deliver. K2M would submit a design, Vaupell would immediately generate a quote, and the prototype part would be delivered within days. Robert White, Business Development Engineer at Vaupell, explains, “We work with each customer to understand the critical details of their projects. Then, we recommend the best possible services, processes, and materials to ensure their success.”

And success was the result. K2M had gone from having to wait months to complete a design to being able to iterate a new design every week. “This speed is instrumental to the ‘fail early, fail often’ mentality that fuels our aggressive product design timelines,” says Artaki.

AN ONGOING PARTNER
Vaupell has continued to serve K2M and their customers on a variety of designs over the years. “We learned from a recent surgeon cadaver lab that one of the retraction blades on our instrument was improperly shaped,” says Artaki. These surgeons and other key opinion leaders would be visiting the K2M office intermittently over the following months for different meetings and projects, so it was essential that they solved the blade issue within that time frame.

“To react quickly to their input and get the feedback we needed, we had to iterate quickly.” Artaki describes the process: the K2M team took a day to design the new prototype, sent the 3D file to Vaupell, and had a quote from them within 24 hours.

“They would be able to deliver the part within three days. We continue to show this instrument iteration to surgeons who visit our facility and gain feedback that would have been impossible if we were stuck with an 8 week lead time.”

THREE YEARS STRONG
It’s now been three years since K2M and Vaupell started working together. Vaupell has since become an integral part of K2M’s design process, providing added value to K2M’s solutions by helping them deliver faster spinal prototypes for testing.

The relationship has been beneficial for both parties. White shares, “we have definitely helped them out, but they have also helped transform Vaupell into a highly experienced DMLS supplier.”

Learn More: https://www.vaupell.com/markets-products/medical-devices/

Sponsored content by Vaupell

Filed Under: Sponsored Content Tagged With: vaupell

In case you missed it

  • Varian posts mixed bag Q1 results, expects Siemens takeover to complete in early 2021
  • BD touts study of antigen test over molecular test for identifying infectious COVID-19 cases
  • Titan Medical closes on $11.5M offering
  • GE ticks up on mixed-bag Q4
  • BD CEO Polen to also serve as board chair
  • Moderna details ‘proactive’ strategy to fight emerging COVID-19 variants  
  • Surmodics’ DCB shown non-inferior to Medtronic’s In.Pact Admiral
  • Longeviti Neuro Solutions ClearFit implant wins FDA clearance for use in ultrasound
  • Medical Alley startups raise $1.4B
  • Johnson & Johnson pharma sales drive Street-beating Q4 results
  • Abbott Panbio rapid antigen test wins CE mark for asymptomatic COVID-19 screening
  • Orthospin wins FDA clearance for robotic external fixation system
  • 3M ticks up on Street-beating Q4, strong healthcare performance
  • Butterfly Network names new CEO before going public via merger
  • Authorities investigating death of California recipient of COVID-19 vaccine
  • FDA clears Aerobiotix system to clean air inside hospitals
  • Inogen names new CEO

RSS From Medical Design & Outsourcing

  • Freudenberg Medical expands U.S. molding operations
    Freudenberg Medical announced that it has expanded injection molding operations at its Baldwin Park, Calif., operation, which is focused on thermoplastics. Freudenberg Medical Baldwin Park has added six injection molding machines including three new Arburg molding machines, a work cell for two-shot molding and a Wittmann Battenfeld micro-molding machine with in-process visual inspection capability. The… […]
  • Cretex Companies names new CEO
    Cretex Companies has announced the retirement of CEO Lynn Schuler effective January 31, 2021. Schuler will be succeeded as CEO by company president and COO Jeff Wollerman. Schuler has been with Cretex Companies for 36 years and held numerous leadership positions, including six years as a business unit president and two years as CFO. Schuler… […]
  • How continuous glucose monitors have transformed the diabetes landscape
    Continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) are among the most potent diabetes management tools to emerge in recent decades. FDA approved the first professional CGM in 1999, and the technology has evolved swiftly since then. Current models beam data via Bluetooth to smartphones (plus the Apple Watch) and the cloud, enabling patients to explore their blood glucose… […]
  • FDA clears Theranica device for adolescent migraines
    Theranica announced today that the FDA has granted expanded clearance for the use of its Nerivio acute migraine treatment device by people 12 years and older. The use of the device in the treatment of adolescents is supported by a study recently published in Headache. According to the study, 28 of 39 (71%) of the… […]
  • Alleviant Medical wins FDA breakthrough device designation for transcath heart failure treatment
    Alleviant Medical (Austin, Texas) has received FDA breakthrough device designation for its no-implant, interatrial shunt technology for treating certain types of chronic heart failure. Founded in 2017, Alleviant’s minimally invasive transcatheter tech decompresses the left atrium without a permanent cardiac implant or open-heart surgery. Alleviant developed the teach to treat people who have heart failure […]
  • AdvaMed wants input on Biden pandemic DPA use
    AdvaMed reacted to President Joe Biden’s plan to use the Defense Production Act (DPA) to tackle the pandemic with some cautionary words. In a letter responding to Biden’s 200-page COVID-19 plan, the medtech trade group asked for collaboration and urged the president to consider the industry’s experience with DPA orders issued by former President Trump.… […]
  • January 2021 Issue: The Leadership in Medical Technology Issue
    9 lessons in crisis management from Stryker CEO Kevin Lobo These 10 stories mattered the most for medtech in 2020 How ResMed is advancing sleep and respiratory care How Dexcom CEO Kevin Sayer is leading the company forward Black engineers group works to promote diversity in medtech, equity in healthcare Taking the guesswork out of… […]
  • Olympus recalls thousands of endo devices due to packaging defect
    Olympus is recalling approximately 26,000 disposable EndoTherapy devices because of a packaging defect that could compromise their sterility. The announcement affects113 models distributed in the U.S.since early 2019, with different numbers of SKUs available in different regions worldwide. The company is asking customers to quarantine the devices until they can be shipped back to Olympus.… […]
  • FDA says to limit mask decontamination to 4 cycles
    Soon after healthcare workers began warning of personal protective equipment (PPE) shortages, companies and other organizations started claiming their decontamination systems could reprocess used filtering facepiece respirators (FFRs) such as N95s up to 20 times. The FDA began issuing emergency use authorizations (EUAs) for FFR decontamination systems with a range of allowable cycles and major… […]
  • 5 innovations to make duodenoscopes more single-use — and save lives
    Duodenoscopes are important medical devices that are used for endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) procedures. However, the devices have had serious problems in the past. Luckily, several medical device companies have stepped in to solve the problems. Duodenoscopes are flexible, lighted tubes threaded through the mouth, throat and stomach into the top of the small intestine.… […]
  • Plastic Molding Manufacturing adds 5 molding machines
    Plastic Molding Manufacturing (Hudson, Mass.) announced that it has added five new injection molding and two coordinate measuring machines in upgrades to its manufacturing and quality operations. The $1 million-plus investment will enable the custom molding company to distribute the pair of 214-ton machines, two 259-ton machines, and a 101-ton machine throughout its manufacturing network,… […]

Primary Sidebar

MEDTECH 100 INDEX

Medtech 100 logo
Market Summary > Current Price
The MedTech 100 is a financial index calculated using the BIG100 companies covered in Medical Design and Outsourcing.
Need Medtech news in a minute?
We Deliver!

MassDevice Enewsletters get you caught up on all the mission critical news you need in med tech. Sign up today.

Tweets by @MassDevice
MDO ad

Footer

MASSDEVICE MEDICAL NETWORK

DeviceTalks
Drug Delivery Business News
Medical Design & Outsourcing
Medical Tubing + Extrusion

MASSDEVICE

Subscribe to MassDevice
Advertise with us
About
Contact us

Add us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter Connect with us on LinkedIn Follow us on YouTube

Copyright © 2021 · WTWH Media LLC and its licensors. All rights reserved.
The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of WTWH Media.

Advertise | Privacy Policy | RSS