Our client had to find a way to quickly and significantly increase their needle production throughput to meet the needs of one of the world’s largest medical device manufacturers. The bottleneck in their current process was the inspection stage. A costly measurement tool was being utilised to assess crucial aspects of the lengthy biopsy needles. An expensive measurement tool was being employed to measure key features of these long biopsy needles. This process required a substantial 3 minutes for each individual needle. They needed a faster way to increase needle throughput.

The client’s project champion visited us to collaborate on developing a better process. We developed a solution using our Omni technology and our DXF app. A digital graticule was generated for each needle design and uploaded to the Omni to overlay the DXF graticule image on the image of the needle. This enabled the operator to directly, accurately and quickly compare the needle to the required parameters, enabling a near instant pass or fail decision on each. We helped commission the solution on-site, and continue to support their inspection needs.

The solution enabled our client to achieve their throughput needs, and with headroom to increase further if they needed. Inspection was no longer a bottleneck.