3 Mission Critical Questions
- How much value is in your speed to issue resolution, and is your manufacturer partnering with you to solve complex design challenges?
- Are ineffective designs contributing to a loss of client partnerships and potential revenue?
- How much more efficiently could you improve your designs with end-to-end custom solutions?
Our client, a leading independent healthcare solutions company, came to us because they needed help calibrating and tuning baluns. Our client knew the speed to issue resolution was critical for customer satisfaction, commercial success, and FDA approval. Additionally, they knew from the start that early engagement was the best option to solve their design challenges through a collaborative relationship.
Balun Tuning
Balun’s condition electromagnetic signals emanating from the patient to improve the imaging performance by blocking unwanted, common-mode shield currents, while passing the differential currents which deliver noise-free imaging information.
Often times companies tend to keep complex technological designs in-house rather than consulting and partnering with a contract manufacturer with specialized capabilities. This can result in slower speed to issue resolution, and potential client and revenue losses. Early engagement with a contract manufacturer can resolve all these issues while saving the company time on multiple iterations as well as their positive reputation.
Our client realized that an early relationship with a manufacturer would improve the safety of their commercial product, speed to issue resolution, and client relationships. Because of this, our engineers started collaborating with them early on using our technology and resources to work on the tuning issues within their baluns. Our team provided quick-turn prototyping, on-site testing that saved time and money, and manufacturing of this technology once it was developed. This client learned in short order the value of early partnership with our integrated team of engineers. They transitioned to our prototypes and manufacturing resulting in valuable speed to issue resolution.
Results
Our client achieved the speed to issue resolution they needed to resolve the patient issues being caused by improperly tuned baluns. This resulted in minimized shield currents through a perfectly tuned balun that delivered superior image reconstruction during scan sequences and an intrinsically safe patient environment. Collaborating with our client on this project, there were 6-10 iterations over a 6-12 week period. Now, all new balun projects only need 1-2 iterations. As a result of their success, the client expanded this test plan to Nortech’s global manufacturing sites. The results of this project were a positive change for our client. They now heavily rely on Nortech as a strategic partner, and in fact, Nortech maintains the FDA device history records for these baluns.
