Todd Blair, national sales manager: “We’ll work with two-person startups and multinational companies, and our service doesn’t deviate.”

Premier Business Partners:

Lamb Knitting Machines Corp. Steeger USA

No matter what the size of a cli­ent’s business, Biomed­ical Struc­t­ures takes care of ev­ery customer in the exact same manner. Nat­ional Sales Man­ager Todd Blair says this attitude stems from his company’s roots in 2003 as a spinoff just hoping to make it.

“Our customer compatibility would be our core strength,” Blair explains. “We will work with two-person startups and multinational com­panies, and our service doesn’t deviate.

“We know what it means to be small,” Blair adds. “We also realize what it takes to man­euver though a PMA [pre-market ap­proval] or fast-track PMA/510k be­cause we’ve been through every point along the way.”

Biomedical Structures was founded to address the growing demand for medical textiles stemming from its founding partners’ involvement with aerospace applications. In 2003, a team from this division spun off Biomedical Structures to focus on non-woven tissues.

Today, the company operates out of a facility in Warwick, R.I., that houses three manufacturing clean rooms and 20 employees. Biomedical Structures’ core capabilities include knitting, braiding, weaving and non-woven materials.

Biomedical Structures’ design team can take a project from conceptualization to production in the areas of orthopedics, cardio­vascular, trauma, general sur­gery, biologics and tissue engineering.

“We will work to be the leaders in meeting the material requirements of the life sciences industry,” Blair says. “We will increase our toehold and continue to grow organically, which will quickly accelerate by adding capabilities to Biomedical Structures.”

One-Stop Shop
Biomedical Structures prides itself on being a one-stop shop for its customers. In an industry with strict quality standards like the biomedical field, Blair says not only is a turnkey approach required, but quality must be unwavering.

“People come to us with raw material questions and we’ll partner through the work, development and then long-term production,” Blair says. “A few years ago, we added the ISO 9001 platform to better service the community.”

After obtaining the ISO certification, Biomedical Structures put in significant time and resources to earn the ISO 13485 certification specific to medical device manufacturers.

The company also hired a quality control manager to imp­lement and monitor these standards. “This really helped us broaden who our customers are,” he says. “It allowed us to look at other suppliers who used the 13485 platform and other raw materials, including fiber.”

Clients have also come to rely on Biomedical Structures for bringing new capabilities into the fray when they are missing certain equipment or know-how. For instance, Blair says the company recently partnered with a fiber supplier, its engineering group and a braiding manufacturer to create a customized braiding machine for one of its clients.

“What we created is a very unique piece of equipment that solved a complex prob­lem,” he says. “It sounds straight­forward when making a braid, but it was customer-critical, so it was a big win for our customer.”

Value-Added
Having identified its key markets, Biomedical Structures is now focusing on its value-added capabilities. Blair says the company has expanded its offerings to include custom sewing and bonding services to bet­ter appeal to the plasma coatings, stem cell and regenerative medicine markets.

“We’re already into them, and we will be at a real running speed within two or three years,” he says. “We have the equipment and people identified, and we have extended our reach to partner with certain companies and service providers.” Along with additional manpower and machinery, Biomedical Structures will soon need a larger space. The company has occupied its current facility for four year but has long since outgrown it.

“We have to look into what that means for our current location,” Blair says. “We have to consider moving into yet another building or having another facility close to where we are. So, we are looking at our additional resource needs to serve the inquiries that are coming.”

These services are in addition to its existing core capabilities, which include:

• Cutting
• Fusing
• Sewing
• Shaping
• Texturing
• Twisting
• Plying
• Biomaterial printing

“Our engineering team can assist [customers] in identifying the best textile approach for [their] technical challenge,” the company says. “Our design and engineering group works with [customers] to meet [their] needs from prototyping to product optimization. Our clients have chosen Biomedical Structures for seamless integration into their processes.”

Future Leaders
Biomedical Structures may still be a relatively young firm, but Blair believes the company will be among the leaders in the biomedical device industry in the near future. He attributes this to a dedicated staff of employees that buys into the firm’s philosophy of innovation.

“We often state here that we provide innovation on demand,” he says. “It is truly our employees that lead this charge. From customer service, account managers and especially engineers, we have an eagerness to listen to customers with an eye on production to help solve engineering challenges.”