Indianapolis-based Arcamed LLC was established as a contract manufacturer of medical cases and trays, and expanded in 2018 to include precision machined products to provide physicians and surgeons with what they need to improve a patient’s quality of life. Arcamed’s products enable a surgeon to access, in the sterile field, the exact tools needed for a particular procedure, such as a hip, knee, spine or trauma procedure. Arcamed’s customer base is primarily global upper-middle market OEMs, in addition to both start-ups and enterprise companies.
A great deal of complexity lies within every package or box that is manufactured for orthopedic OEMs. The products are custom designed and manufactured to be traceable and meet a specific customer’s needs, driving thousands of possible stock-keeping units (SKUs). The cases are designed to be capable of shipment to anywhere in the world, easily sterilized, reflect the OEM’s brand and be ergonomically accessible in the operating room. This rapidly growing Midwestern company is thriving because of its core focus on innovative product design, industry-leading lead times and superior customer service.
Arcamed implemented two cobots and a small part-bending cell, with a goal of increasing manufacturing capacity and efficiency.
“We started our company using the best pieces of equipment we could buy on the used market, as most start-up entrepreneurs do,” says the company’s President and CEO Jon Desalvo. “To build on our early success and acquire larger customers, we had to upgrade to smart technology. Our Indiana Manufacturing Readiness Grant from Conexus Indiana and the Indiana Economic Development Corporation helped provide us with the dollars we needed to accomplish that on an accelerated timeline.”
The answer was a Costa deburr machine—one of the world’s fastest single-pass deburring machines. “It took us from 24 man-hours of deburr work across three shifts down to two and half hours for the same number of parts,” Desalvo explains. “The parts we produce must be burr-free, smooth and without any hazard for our customer. They go into operating rooms, so we needed a technology that could accomplish that.”
The project also included the implementation of two cobots for part handling, loading and unloading of machined parts as they were finished. “We went with two cobots rather than a robot because it would have meant additional guarding that took up space and complicated programming,” Desalvo adds.
Desalvo revealed how cobots are incredibly user-friendly and hold an advantage over robots. But most importantly, the technology adoption project had to keep step with Arcamed’s relentless pursuit of product quality and employee safety.
Arcamed’s new smart technology will better serve customers and improve the manufacturing environment for its workforce.
Like many CEOs, Desalvo recognizes that growing a workforce can be difficult. “There currently isn’t an abundance of workers,” he notes. “Some of what we think about is ‘how do we better deploy the people we have?’” The most important question, he says, remains: “How do we take the people we have and provide them with new skills and greater wages?” Desalvo believed the new technology would springboard Arcamed’s efforts to empower and train the company’s existing workforce.
Arcamed’s leadership team also wanted to be certain that the workforce understood the technology was not implemented to eliminate existing jobs. “I don’t want our employees to think for a minute that we are buying this technology to create a smaller workforce,” Desalvo says. In fact, not a single position was eliminated as a result of adoption of the cobots; rather, existing workers were reallocated to higher and better uses. Desalvo was also able to grow enthusiasm among his employees by showing how the cobots would improve daily duties, and that the company was actively building training plans to involve the existing workforce in their operation.
The Manufacturing Readiness Grants program spurred the creation of a strategic roadmap for Arcamed’s smart manufacturing journey.
“We also saw it [the grant] as a way to build a roadmap for future technology adoption that will help us grow and better serve our customers,” Desalvo says. “The grant has transformed the way we look at our business and how we plan for the future. We are now on that path.” In fact, Arcamed has initiated a four-year strategic plan with a technology adoption budget to make it happen.
Desalvo also urges others to set time aside to make new projects successful. “The technology world is changing so quickly,” he says. “It was eye opening. As someone who’s been in manufacturing for a while, I wasn’t setting aside enough time to educate myself on new technology. I’ll tell you, the return on investment is not long. We went from equipment that needed a person to run it 24 hours a day, to a system that can run even when the lights are out. It can even run on the weekend, when everyone is at home enjoying time with their families. And that’s a game-changer.”
Manufacturing Readiness Grants (MRGs) provided by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation—and administered by Conexus Indiana—are available to Indiana manufacturers willing to make capital investments to integrate smart technologies and processes that improve capacity and productivity. Responding to an extraordinary growth period, Arcamed invested in smart manufacturing technologies to nearly double capacity, increase efficiency and augment a tight labor supply.
Connect With Us
