Three manufacturing sites offer flexible contract manufacturing and agile capacity increasing adjusting to customer-specific needs.

Innokas Medical has specialized in medical technology manufacturing since 1994, when the company was founded in northern Finland, in Oulu city. Innokas’ manufacturing business has undergone a major facelift over the years alongside Innokas business growth; nowadays Innokas serves both Nordic and global MedTech players already in three locations to bring their medical and IVD devices to international markets. Company’s full-scale service approach offers flexible services throughout the product’s life cycle - from design transfer to electronics manufacturing and final assembly, and finally to product life cycle management activities that regulations require.

“When distributing our manufacturing operations across multiple locations, it has enabled our manufacturing business growth over the years”, says Ari Paalijärvi, working as COO at Innokas Medical.

Innokas Medical’s Helsinki factory was established already in 2006, when the strategy was renewed to better match the needs of future growth and business expanding. At the same time, Innokas expanded its operations to Rakvere, Estonia, to implement the company’s low-cost strategy. The main reason to open the sites in Helsinki and Estonia was the need to serve both Finnish and foreign customers in more flexible ways while enabling more agile internationalization in future. Nowadays, the Estonia operations have been transferred to Tallinn with much better connections to visits. Innokas Medical’s headquarters and the oldest manufacturing site are still located where the company’s roots are – in the Oulu area, in Kempele.

“Our highly skilled manufacturing operations team dedicated to medical technology combined with our multi-site strategy makes us professional but flexible operator in the field. I strongly believe in that this has also had an impact on the growth achieved over the years”, Paalijärvi continues.

There are altogether around 120 employees serving both Nordic and global MedTech players in Innokas’ three locations, including supervisors, production employees as well as sourcing and purchasing teams.

More agile market entries can be achieved through professional pre-production activities

Innokas has invested in different kinds of development projects around its manufacturing operations in past years. Utilization of data-driven management and Lean ERP system as well as development of the daily operation according to Lean principles have brought overall efficiency, more agile ways of operation and higher quality. In addition to the development actions made, Innokas has also refreshed the service offering of its manufacturing operations business. The new service offering is based on certain packages designed and targeted for each phase of product manufacturing.

“We’ve tailored our contract manufacturing services to flexibly meet our customers’ specific needs – which can be anything from full-scale manufacturing, where the product meets the development, manufacturing and delivery, to some selected parts in between”, Paalijärvi explains.

Innokas has especially wanted to pay more attention on its’ services offered in pre-production phase, as the actions implemented in pre-production might have major influence on the overall costs and the time-to-market of the product – while ensuring the high quality of it.

“We launched DfX Feasibility Study services as official part of our service offering last year. For example, in the feasibility study phase of Design for Assembly, we analyze the structure of the product and investigate the alternative production methods to enable an appropriate and cost-efficient system assembly. Smoother and more optimal assembly naturally speeds-up the assembly time and lowers the manufacturing costs of the product. It typically reduces errors, improves the quality and enhances KPI’s of first pass yield while lowering the quality costs”, tells Paalijärvi.

“We also utilize our qualified network of suppliers with material and component selection. All this combined with the required documentation reviews as quality control tool we’re able to prevent the errors to be transferred to manufacturing phase - thereby improving the quality and the total costs of the product while speeding up the time-to-market”, he continues.

In addition to DfX Feasibility Studies, Design and Product Transfers including NPI projects are offered during the pre-production phase as part of Innokas’ service offering. Fast prototyping and professional design transfer have both crucial role when delivering new innovations to the market. Thus, selection of professional partner is an important factor when keeping up with the global competition.

Wide competence pool as a competitive edge

In addition to the pre-production phase, Innokas Medical’s manufacturing operations service offering consist of electronics manufacturing and assembly, final assembly and testing as well as warehousing and logistics. Additionally, the company offers wide range of product life cycle management services, including post-production activities as well as design renewal projects. Supply chain management acts also an important role during the whole manufacturing operations life cycle. Paalijärvi believes in that Innokas is able to deliver added value for its customers through its wide expertise and the company’s long-term experience.

“During the different kinds of customer projects Innokas’ capabilities as well as knowledge has grown year after year, which will surely benefit our customers now and in the future”, he ponders and continues:

“We have the full-service knowhow in-house, so we’re able to offer very talented team of design, manufacturing, quality and sourcing experts to successfully implement customer projects – taking care of the manufacturability, cost-effectiveness, lifecycle management as well as the quality matters. The added value the professional partner can create to the client may in terms of time-to-market, but especially financially, be very significant.”

For more information about Innokas’ Manufacturing Services follow this link.