Oliver Medical

Source: Healthcare Digital

Date :08/05/2008 06:17:07

Almost a year after it was acquired, Exec looks at the changes Oliver Medical Packaging has made to ensure continued growth, quality and customer satisfaction

By Rebecca Waters and Produced by Alexander N. Hortaridis

A subsidiary of Oliver Products Company, established in 1890, Oliver Medical Packaging itself has been a leading supplier of inventive products – lids, roll stock, and pouches for the medical packaging industry for more than 30 years. In that time, the Grand Rapids, Michigan company has built a reputation in the industry as a progressive leader through its inventive products, which include Ovantex, Oliver Medical’s sterile-grade material, and through adhesive development and manufacturing.

As a result, the company’s 240 employees now serve more than 500 customers in 40 countries from its headquarters in Grand Rapids, Michigan and its manufacturing support facility in Venray, the Netherlands, both of which are ISO 9001:2000 registered.

Strategic decision

In order to achieve this growth, and more importantly to sustain this, in June 2007, the company made the strategic decision to sell to Milwaukee private-equity company Mason Wells.

“As a private equity company, Mason Wells has an interest in helping Oliver Medical continue to grow,” Jeff Murak, director of marketing and sales said at the time of the purchase. “Oliver shareholders made the strategic decision to sell the company in order to secure the investment necessary to continue the substantial growth the company has realized over the past few years.”

Simultaneously, the company has strengthened its management team and has gone out and hired key influencers, including Randy Troutman, director of engineering and Jerry Bennish as president and CEO, which will allow Oliver Medical to focus on identifying high performance.

With over 27 years of experience in the packaging industry, including roles in engineering, manufacturing, sales, marketing and general management, Oliver Medical’s new president brings with him a wealth of experience. Together with the sale to Mason Wells, this will reinforce the medical packaging firm’s continued growth.

Improving operations

As a company focused on quality and service, Oliver Medical is always seeking to invest in new equipment in order to support this continued growth. This has included a significant investment in new slitting equipment, purchased just after the company’s acquisition, and a new piece of coating equipment, in order to streamline operations.

Toni Richardson, director of operations, said that the continued growth and Oliver’s 2007 capital investment in a state-of the art coater highlighted the need for a secondary slitter with large roll handling abilities. “The many technological upgrades and improvement in speed and change over will ensure Oliver remains responsive, efficient and cost-effective in meeting the needs of an increasing and diverse customer base,” she said in a press release.

The company expects the new investment to double slitting capacity while achieving consistent levels of quality in conversion of materials including Ovantex, Oliver Medical’s revolutionary sterile grade material, Tyvek, papers, non-wovens and foils. This is achieved through constant and consistent programs on quality.

Product base

As the company asserts: “Our highest priority is to create happy customers through the supply of safe and effective products.” Being a supplier to a regulated industry, Oliver Medical has to maintain quality, and continuous improvement is a way of life.

The business of packaging medical devices is constantly changing. Not only are the materials used to pack the devices becoming stronger, thinner, more protective and more flexible but new instruments and therapies are being developed daily. This means that packaging the packaging chosen for them is appropriate for the intended end-use, to ensure this, medical device packagers are subject to tight regulatory standards that are aimed at ensuring the highest possible standard of care for the patient.

One key issue for the packaging industry is satisfying the FDA that its testing procedures for packaging are effective and robust. The FDA wants evidence that the packaging does what it is designed to do. While Oliver Medical is ISO 9001:2000 compliant at all of its sites and FDA registered, it is currently adding electronic documentation and quality systems as it moves toward ISO 13485 registration – the ISO standard for the design and manufacture of medical devices.

This will build on the existing strength of the company’s quality program, which include: a management driven, cGMP-compliant quality system, containment systems supported by electronic traceability via bar coding and a proven corrective and preventative action system, which has reduced complaints by more than 66 percent in the last four years.

Customer-thinking

With the medical packaging industry growing at three percent a year, Oliver Medical is in a position to capitalize on this with its continuous investment in quality and equipment. The company itself is growing at three times that statistic a year.

And Oliver Medical being recognized for just that, winning Converting Magazine’s 2007 Innovator Award for Customer Focus. On receiving the award in January 2008, Randall Troutman, technical director, explained the award-winning company’s philosophy: “Over the years, Oliver Medical has recognized that we need to have a better understanding of what the customer needs from us. We need to be able to look at their requirements from a systematic point of view, understanding their costs, processes, quality expectations, and barriers to change.”

As Oliver Medical asserts: “We don’t sell on volume and price we sell on quality and cleanliness.”

Click here to view the corporate brochure on Oliver Medical