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6 MidJUNE 2014 The Business Journal TRENDINGTechBelt Sponsored by the Youngstown Business Incubator. Valtronic ‘Miniaturizes’ Its Growth Uses microscopes to turn out products for medical industry. G BY STACIA ERDOS lass partitions overlook the massive manufacturing floor at Valtronic in Solon. Its size might lead one to assume large industrial production work is taking place here. But it’s quite the opposite. Many of the components these employees are working on are the size of a grain of pepper. “Most of the work you see done by hand is done through a microscope, almost like a surgeon,” explains Jim Ohneck, chief global marketing officer. “You’ll see as we go around the floor it requires very good dexterity and hand-motor skills.” Valtronic is a 30-year-old company that manufactures products for diverse clients, most of them in the medical industry. In fact, Ohneck says Valtronic is one of the major manufacturers of cochlear implants sold under their clients’ brand names. “We really got our name by miniaturizing a long time ago,” Ohneck recalls. “Valtronic helped develop CONTINUES NEXT PAGE Jim Ohneck, chief global marketing officer, shows a contact lens with sensors to measure intraocular pressure. JOINT VENTURE OPPORTUNITY 9400 Sharrott Rd. Boardman, Ohio CEDARS PL Priced Below Improvement Cost CEDAR S RD R O F E L AB L I A V R A O E S A PURCH OPMENT VEL E D Brokers protected O C 21 VACANT LOTS / 17.66 ACRES COMPLETELY IMPROVED CLASS A STREET (Curbs, Storm, All City Utilities) BOARDMAN, OHIO 1/4 mile south of Western Reserve Rd. at Glenwood GROWTH SIDE OF TOWN. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Great Location Near... • St. Elizabeth • YMCA • Shepherd of the Valley • Southern Park Mall For more information please contact Carol Burns • 330-565-7860 [email protected] MidJUNE 2014 7 The Business Journal one of the first completely in-the-canal hearing aids and that’s how we got into the hearing market. We drove the manufacturing of a behind-the-ear device into something that could be put just inside the ear canal. And that required a lot of specialized miniaturization manufacturing techniques.” While 75% of Valtronic’s business is in the medical field, the company also makes industrial and aerospace components. It has produced tire pressure sensors to go on aircraft, sensors that can be measured from afar as well as industrial control systems, airline seating electronics and electronic boards for high-speed trains. Among its clients are Boston Scientific, Advanced Bionics, Crane Aerospace and Motorola. Ohneck gives an example of how the process works. A client might bring to Valtronic engineers an idea for a watch that measures blood pressure and perhaps that client has breadboarded it – that is, created a primitive prototype – but in a much larger size. “It’s our job to figure out, ‘How do we do that? How do we make the device so small? What technologies do we use? How do we package it? What can we add to it to enhance it?’ And we even think about the user experience for the device.” Ohneck continues, “So we help our clients have a marketable product at the end of the day which is good for us because then we get to make it.” In addition to the intricate work the employees perform here, another unusual aspect of the production floor is how remarkably clean it is. Because static electricity can damage microelectronics, the plant has an anti-static floor with special conductive chairs. Ohneck also explains why cell phones aren’t allowed on the floor: “Just the cell phone signal going out or coming in, or sending a text or email, can actually affect the test equipment and it can make a good product look bad or a bad product look good.” There are also two special “clean” rooms where wires one-third the thickness of a human hair are used to make the electronic circuit connections. “You can’t have dust or hair. So you’ll notice people have the bunny suits on,” Ohneck comments. “They cover their hair and face and their clothing to keep any debris off. So the most sensitive area for the electronics is in the clean room.” Another device under production goes from the clean room to an outside room to be sterilized before being sent to the operating room. “It’s a device called the knee balancer,” Ohneck says. “And that knee balancer is used to help align artificial knee joints when they’re put in so [patients] have fewer problems down the line. So that’s a really cool thing coming down the pike.” On this day several groups are touring the plant. In one room, visitors sit at a table and look through a magnifying glass at tiny electronics that will be put on a contact lens to measure intraocular pressure. Among the group is Nortech’s Tim Fahey. “Valtronic is one of the leading contract manufacturers in the electronics industry, Fahey begins. “So they work with OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] and they actually manufacture the electronics core of an OEM’s product. They make all these amazing tiny circuits that go into implantable devices that would go into the body or wearable electronics that go on the body.” Valtronic, headquartered in Switzerland, has a plant in Morocco similar to the one in Solon. Valtronic, a privately held company, enjoys annual revenues in excess of $50 million, Ohneck reports. This year, he adds, his company has set sales records every month. One hundred employees work at the plant in Solon, 80 of them split between the two shifts on the manufacturing floor. About a dozen engineers work on design and development of products along with sales, marketing, accounting and other administrative staff. Ohneck says many of the employees on the floor have technical degrees or years of experience in electronic assembly. The company is fortunate to have so many universities and hospitals in the region. “There’s a draw of really good, highly skilled, well-trained biomedical engineers, and technical people that service this area,” he says, “not to mention it’s a good electronic fabrication area as well.” While there are many contract manufacturers that make electronic products, Valtronic stands large among them because what they do is so small. “When you get down to making the stuff we do that are really small flex circuits, tiny components the size of a grain of pepper and actually place those reliably, the field goes from hundreds down to a few in the world,” Ohneck declares. “And that’s where we’ve made our reputation in miniaturized electronic fabrication. That’s what we do here.”