Running a machining job shop can be a tough, dog-eat-dog kind of business. You get an RFQ, you take your best shot preparing a quote, then you hope another hungrier shop doesn’t come in with a lowball bid just to keep his cash flow going. On the other hand, if you get the job, no matter how complex the parts are, you now have to deliver them on time, to specification and hope to make enough profit to keep the shop doors open.

That kind of non-stop pressure is why the not-so-secret fantasy of a lot of job shop owners is to get out of the day-to-day rat race and switch over to contract manufacturing with three to five year agreements offering a steady cash flow. Or better yet, cease being a service job shop altogether by designing and manufacturing their own products.

Which is exactly what Valencia, CA’s Classic Wire Cut, Inc. did about fifteen years ago. The company has grown from a typical job shop into a successful manufacturer occupying its own 83,000 sq ft building and employing more than 100 people working two 10-hour shifts per day.

“The transition was a gradual process for us, though,” says Brad Topper, vp sales and marketing at Classic Wire Cut. “The company was founded just over twenty-five years ago by Brett Bannerman, and for the next ten years we were an EDM job shop producing parts for the medical device and other industries. Then about fifteen years ago, we added new capabilities and began evolving into a medical device manufacturing company.”

How does a company go about “evolving” from a job shop into a medical device manufacturer?

“We did it in steps,” says Ray Farrar, Classic Wire Cut senior sales engineer. “First, we started contract manufacturing for some of our medical device customers. Through that relationship we learned the market and developed our own products a bit later.”

“Once we got involved in contract manufacturing, we started looking closely at the market,” Topper adds. “We attended a lot of medical device conventions and seminars, and then we began to work closely with surgeons. We attended actual live neuro, cardiovascular, and arthroscopic surgeries, to name a few. We looked at the tools and methods used by the surgeons and saw where they were having difficulties with the procedures. Then we came back and asked our designers to find better ways, to create better tools for the surgeons to use. In a nutshell, that’s how we made the transition.”

“We attended a lot of tradeshows, too,” says Farrar. “That taught us how the market worked and got our team interested.”

Creativity The Key

So how does a machining job shop get up enough gumption to think it can teach surgeons better ways to do their job?

“We have some very creative engineers working for us,” Topper says. “Part of our success came from looking at the surgical problems in a fresh way. For example, our team would visit a tradeshow or attend a rotator cuff surgery and realize that to pass sutures and tie knots was a big challenge even for the best surgeons. It was very difficult to do physically and to keep track of the location of all the sutures passing through the patient’s shoulder. So we came back here and said, you know, we think we can do something to improve this process. We figured that if we could make a device that was small enough and delicate enough to go in using only two, instead of three portals into the shoulder and pass sutures through the rotator cuff tissue, this would really enhance rotator-cuff repairs and that is the genesis of how we innovate.”

“Think of it this way,” Farrar says. “Surgeons tend to learn to use the tools in their tool box, you might say. Those surgical tools are the tools of his trade. He’s usually not an inventor, and he’s certainly not a manufacturing engineer. He's a surgeon. So he uses the existing tools in the best way he can. Then we come along and watch the mechanics of what he is doing. Based on what we see, we design him a better tool to do the same job. When he sees how the new tool works, he loves it, and his patients love it, too.”

“Basically it’s about problem solving capability and creativity,” Topper says. “At Classic Wire Cut we have an abundance of both.”

New Product Evolution

A turning point for Classic Wire Cut came when the company noticed sales falling off greatly to one of their medical device customers.

“We went to the customer and asked them if they were looking for another supplier,” Topper recalls. “They said, ‘No. A new technology came out and is taking away our market.’ So, I said, ‘What if our company could design a product that would respect other’s intellectual property rights, and that could get you some of that market share back.’ And they said, ‘Well, that would be great, if you think you can do it.’ I said, I believe we can.”

Topper brought the problem back to the designers at Classic Wire Cut.

“We have some really extreme talent in our engineering group,” he says. “Within a couple of days we had a working prototype to present to the customer. That new product eventually grew to become about a third of our total revenues.”

Farrar: “What we learned from that was making a product was a lot better than waiting for job shop work to show up at the door.”

Since those early days 15 years ago, Classic Wire Cut’s line of proprietary products has grown to account for a majority of its total sales. The company’s products include the Serpent, a pistol-like tool used by surgeons to remove tissue previously inaccessible with existing instruments. Other products include a minimally invasive suture passing device that cuts the number of “portals” needed to handle a shoulder repair down from 3 to only 2, and a bending section used to allow surgeons to deploy tools and vision systems into their patients’ bodies.

“The rest of our sales comes from established medical device customers for whom we manufacture products,” Topper says. “We also still do a little bit of job shop work from time to time.

Equipping for Manufacturing

Having the right mix of advanced technology, high-precision equipment has played a major role in the company’s success over the long haul.

“We believe a successful manufacturer has to have the right equipment on hand when it is needed,” Farrar says. “As a result, over the years, with the exception of plating, we have acquired everything we need to produce our products in-house. We like to have total control over quality and production scheduling. When you’re dependent on outside contractors, you can’t do that.”

“We started out as a Wire EDM job shop,” Topper adds, “and EDM still plays a major role in our production. However, at one point we switched to using Charmilles EDMs because of the reliability of their autothreading and their super precision machining capabilities.”

“We operate 10 Charmilles Robofil 240 cc wire EDM machines, and one Charmilles sinker,” Farrar says. “We have two system 3R robots feeding three of the machines, which allows us to get a lot of productivity. The robots on the Charmilles are good for high-volume production, but we have developed quick changeover capabilities, so we can run a fairly high mix of products through those same work centers automatically.”

“We also have three Makino A61 horizontal machining centers, four Mori Seiki NV5000 VMCs and six Star Swiss-style turning centers,” Topper says. “We do assembly, laser and special processing in house, too.”

How do Topper and Farrar feel about the switch to manufacturing?

“We believe our tools not only make the surgeon’s job a lot easier,” Topper says, “we believe they make life a lot better for the patient as well. Knowing that, makes this job very fulfilling, very satisfying to do.”

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