Intech Athens deploys ZOLLER tool management system to control tooling inventory

In the fiercely competitive field of orthopedic device manufacturing, Intech has earned a reputation for producing quality medical implants and highly sophisticated surgical instruments.

Throughout the last decade, the French-based global contract manufacturer has experienced rapid growth and expanded to nine facilities across North America, Europe, and Asia.

In 2015, Intech acquired Turner Medical, a medical device manufacturer in Athens, Alabama. Since then, annual revenue at the Athens site has more than doubled. A recent 40,000ft² expansion increased the facility’s total size to more than 100,000ft².

Intech Athens now employs 220 people and houses 80 CNC machines manufacturing everything from complex instruments for knee and hip replacements to state-of-the-art robotic implements to expandable devices used in spinal surgeries.

But amid this boom in business, Intech Athens began to experience challenges managing the thousands of tooling items in its massive inventory. Inconsistent processes around cataloging and tracking tooling created an unreliable system. Finding a component could prove problematic, and in some cases, it was more cost-effective to buy new tooling than hunt for it on the shop floor.

“We didn’t know what tools we had in-house. Do we actually have them? If we do, where are they? How many? What kind of condition are they in? Everything was a guess,” says Director of Advanced Manufacturing Joseph Forsyth, who has worked at the facility since 1999. “We kept doing things like we did when we were a 50-person, mom-and-pop machine shop. But as you scale up, everything’s multiplied, and gut shots and guesses get you in trouble. That’s what was happening.”

To regain control over its tooling inventory, Intech Athens turned to ZOLLER TMS Tool Management Solutions and has since made the software the backbone of its new modern system. The company also acquired three Kardex Shuttles to physically store the bulk of its tooling. A ZOLLER-developed interface allows the software to power the Kardex Shuttles, and ZOLLER’s team also retrofitted several previously obsolete cabinets to run the software. Intech Athens further invested in a ZOLLER »keeper« vertical storage solution for storing tool assemblies.

In 2022, the first year using the new system, Intech Athens shipped its highest volume of orders and reported a record $50 million in sales. The company also spent less on tooling, thanks to reining in redundant ordering and efficiently organizing its inventory.

“During the first year of implementation, we saw a tooling cost reduction of $100,000, which is roughly our initial investment,” Forsyth says. “It paid for itself just in helping us know what we had, how much of it we had, and where it was. And that’s just using it at a very basic level.”

Finding the right solution

Prior to implementing the ZOLLER tool management system, Intech Athens tracked tooling manually, relying on spreadsheets, clipboards, and sometimes, operator memory to locate tooling arranged on shelving, racks, carts, and cabinets. The system offered no digital transparency, and employees had lost confidence in its accuracy.

Forsyth saw a solution when he visited one of Intech’s production facilities in Toulon, France. The facility has long used ZOLLER presetting and tool management technology, and Forsyth quickly realized its potential for the Athens plant. Shortly after that trip, Intech Athens invested in a »venturion 450« presetting and measuring machine, and it took a few more years for Forsyth to persuade management that tool management software was essential.

“We’re growing like crazy, so why change anything? It’s really hard to convince people that we’re growing, we’re doing great, but we need a course correction here,” he says. “It took a while to make it apparent that just because we’re doing well now doesn’t mean it’s going to last forever. You must make adjustments if you want to keep growing. We made that adjustment, went full-fledged ZOLLER TMS, and are still rocking and rolling to this day.”

Forsyth says it was crucial to implement a system that would address the different types of machining Intech Athens provides, from the high-volume production of implants to the prototyping and machining of one-of-a-kind surgical instruments. Especially with the latter, speed to market is key, and manufacturers with efficient internal processes have an undeniable edge.

“The ZOLLER system covers both ends of the spectrum. On one hand, it gives me the level of control and accuracy within tooling and usage that we need to maintain processes for implants,” Forsyth says. “On the other hand, when you get into instrumentation, that’s a fast-paced environment. We might have six weeks to build something that’s a brand-new concept. With the ZOLLER system, we don’t have to hunt for tooling. We know what we have, and we can get to work.”

Laying the foundation for success

Forsyth tasked a three-person team with implementing the new tool management system. After training at the ZOLLER Inc. headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in February 2022, the team spent several months building a library of the existing tooling. Once they standardized the nomenclature, they cataloged items one at a time, and filled in details such as ordering information before assigning each component to its physical location.

Creating the tool library is often the most labor-intensive step of implementation, and depending on a shop’s resources, it can take three months to a year, according to Anthony Westfall, the ZOLLER Inc. service project manager for tool management who supported Intech Athens.

“It’s like you’re building a house,” he explains. “You have to build a solid foundation before you move on to the roof. And that foundation is tedious, nitty-gritty data that must be refined and input from a lot of different sources.”

During that critical period, Intech Athens took advantage of on-site and remote support from Westfall and the ZOLLER team to ensure they created a system that could sustain the operation long-term.

To date, the team has used the ZOLLER software to catalog and assign more than 10,000 cutting tools, toolholders, collets, fixtures, vises, clamps, and other components. Most of these items are stored in a pair of Kardex Shuttle Vertical Lift Modules (VLMs) in a pre-staging area. A third Kardex Shuttle for the assembly area arrived earlier this year.

“The VLMs hold such a huge volume of items,” Forsyth says. “Cutting tools don’t take up a lot of space, but fixturing and toolholders can take up a tremendous amount of your floor space. Having those items as bulk storage gave me a strategy to support our toolroom and our pre-staging activities. We use our other smart cabinets for small components to support the tooling user closer to their work.”

Altogether, ZOLLER software controls nine different storage solutions: three Kardex Shuttles, one ZOLLER »keeper« and five retrofitted smart cabinets. The result is a connected system that allows an operator to log into any workstation with ZOLLER tool management software and access comprehensive tooling data with a few clicks.

The software provides identifying information such as an item’s ID number, type, and dimensions, as well as vendor information, inventory level, and usage history. A graphical representation of the shop floor shows the physical location of the tooling, down to the exact drawer.

“The beauty with ZOLLER TMS is it’s essentially turnover proof, if it’s done right,” Westfall says. “No matter how many people come into your shop, if they’re following the processes we set out in the initial implementation, it’ll be done the same way every time. There’s no need to worry about losing tribal knowledge because it doesn’t depend on a single person. It’s dependent on a single-source database.”

Looking to the future

Several years into implementing its new inventory management system, Intech Athens is ready to embark on the second phase of its rollout. The team is currently working with ZOLLER to use the same single-source database to provide a real-time digital twin library for CAD/CAM design.

“Our short-term vision with this system was to gain clarity on exactly what we had in-house physically from our cutting tools,” Forsyth explains. “Long-term, we want it to be our single source of truth and create what I consider true digital twins. We want what our programmers see behind their computers to reflect the reality of our shop floor – in every machine, at every level, every workbench, it all has to align.”

There are also plans to replicate the success of Intech Athens at other Intech sites in the United States. Intech’s silicon-overmolding operation in Kenosha, Wisconsin also purchased ZOLLER tool management software and two Kardex Shuttles and is working toward implementing a similar system.

Solutions reducing redundancy and streamlining workflows are vital to sustaining Intech’s competitive edge in one of the fastest-growing manufacturing sectors in the United States, according to François Samson, head of global marketing at Intech.

An aging population and promising technology advancements are expected to propel the worldwide orthopedic market to more than $63 billion by 2029, according to reporting from Market Data Forecast. Companies prioritizing their own operational efficiency will be best positioned to meet that demand.

“We’re always trying to find solutions to optimize our processes internally, to keep that competitive edge, and not only position ourselves but be recognized as a strategic partner to our customers,” Samson adds. “We’re always chasing opportunities to optimize processes and workflows in the shop.”

Intech
https://intech-medical.com

ZOLLER Inc.
https://www.zoller.info/us/home
IMTS 2024 booth #432018