Keeping up with the latest advances in technology is one of Norman Noble’s greatest strengths, the company says.

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Because it caters to the world’s largest hea­lth­care companies, pre­cision and innovation are not seen as two separate functions at Norman Noble Inc. The company manufactures med­­­ical devices and im­plants to customer specifications and in compliance with global quality standards and FDA regulations.

The Highland Heights, Ohio-based contract manufacturer’s products in­clude a wide variety of medical devices and implants supporting the vascular, endoscopic, arthroscopic, orthopedic, dental and oncology markets. It is also proficient in manufacturing components for the aerospace in­dustry that typ­ically require some of the same tight tolerance requirements as medical de­vices.

“Our medical devices make up about 94 percent of the overall business,” Vice President of Manufacturing Dan Stef­ano says. “We are working with a loyal cus­tomer base that includes the top medical device companies in the United States. We partner with our customers and provide design for manufacturability input that allows the use of our new technologies from an equipment standpoint.

We are deeply integrated in our competency, which is creating the technology to make components and implants with the tighter tolerances.” “A piece of the business that is in­creasing is cardiovascular devices like stents, and heart valve components, but we also are growing in our business of man­­ufacturing for orthopedic applications, in­cluding implants for extremities and the spine,” Director of Sales and Mar­keting Brian Hrouda says.

Established more than 60 years ago, Norman Noble remains a family owned and operated company known for its abilities in ultra-precision micromach­ining. “Our core competitive advantage within the company is our technology and making the medical devices,” Stefano says. “We do a good job at making products that others can’t make, oftentimes with materials that are very difficult to machine. We have some outstanding employees who are very technically competent that help us to this end.

“The fact that we have been in business for over 61 years and are serving some of the biggest medical device OEMs really says something,” he continues. “We are big enough where we can produce those parts for the big projects.”

These are a few reasons why Norman Noble has been able to maintain 20 percent revenue growth annually. “I don’t think any market sector is recession-proof, but we are faring better than most,” Stefano admits. “We have a R&D department where we are working with our customers to come up with new products that will compensate for the sectors that are slowing, such as cosmetic dentistry. The other devices we produce are really life-sustaining devices, so that business is a mainstay.”

Not only is Norman Noble tech-savvy, it’s highly competent in consumer relations – something it must posses if it hopes to meet the needs of its clients. “We not only beat manufacturing companies from an innovation standpoint, we have a good solid technical team that does the job better at the end of the day,” Stefano says. “We also have a solid customer service/sales staff. The medical de­vice customer needs people who have the technical expertise.”

He also explains that the organization is relatively flat. Employees from the business managers down throughout the organization have the technical orientation to understand the lines of production and how products fit into the clients’ port­folio.

Truly Cutting-Edge
Aside from its technically savvy employees, Norman Noble’s greatest asset is its advanced machining equipment. With more than 130 proprietary laser systems, Norman Noble operates one of the largest laser micromachining facilities. Its state-of-the-art processes include laser machining and welding, Swiss turning and milling, conventional and wire EDM, high-speed seven-axis contour milling, nitinol shape setting and clean room assembly and packaging. Norman Noble’s range of capabilities also includes high-speed vertical milling, electrochemical grinding, electropolishing, automated microtube flushing, and various metal finishing processes.

Rather than purchase equipment from the open market to produce medical components, Norman Noble builds its own manufacturing technologies, integrating proprietary machine tooling and laser technologies to achieve the tightest tolerances known to the manufacturing industry. It also specializes in producing components from platinum, titanium, cobalt chrome, PEEK, nitinol, stainless steel and other exotic metals.

“If you go through our facility, you’ll see that the oldest equipment might be three years old and the newest might be three weeks old,” Stefano maintains. “We have some great relationships with the equipment manufacturers where they bring technology to us first, and, in return, we give feedback on what works.”

With such high investment in new technologies and advanced materials, one might wonder how the manufacturer is able to keep cost in check for its clients. “We spend a lot of capital, but we don’t try to be everything to everyone,” Stefano explains. “When making a medical component, a lot of our competitors use multiple operations to make that part; our goal is to make that part in one operation,” Stefano explains. “On thing that is important to our customer base is that we are fully integrated. When a customer places an order, 98 percent of it can be done with our operations. Very little, if anything, is contracted out.”

The firm operates an independent prototype departments for each of its manufacturing capabilities or business units, which enables its prototype machining technologies to be isolated from the production manufacturing areas. A team of engineers work within each of its prototype departments to develop the manufacturing processes required to machine the products to exact drawing specifications for either short runs or to develop a validated manufacturing process for full production.

Internal Investments
Norman Noble operates out of three micromachining facilities: two in High­land Heights and one in Cleveland. In November 2008, it completed a $1.9 million expansion of its metal finishing operations in Highland Heights. The expansion centered on increasing the level of automation in Norman Noble’s production finishing capabilities. Customer requests for increased production of custom nitinol-based products combined with a company strategy to diversify its capabilities for the development and production of micro-medical devices and implants drove the need for the expansion, the com­pany says the changes include auto­mating the company’s processes for chemical de-scaling of laser-cut materials as well as automating its finishing lines and various polishing processes. As part of the expansion Norman Noble also re­organized its top technical experts around specific re­search and development and production functions. Moving these key personnel from multi-functional roles allows them to gain more ex­pertise.

Additionally, the company en­hanced its R&D finishing department’s ex­isting environmental controls critical to the development and manufacturing pro­cesses, including humidity, temperature and filtering parameters.

The investment, which doubles the capacity of its research and development and production finishing operations, was the result of market growth and customer demand for metallic-based medical devices and implants used in various cardiovascular, orthopedic and sports medicine applications.

Each facility utilizes the latest equipment from Swiss turning and milling to laser machining and welding, as well as advanced metal finishing and cleanroom assembly. The company also utilizes lean cellular manufacturing on the production floor.

A Significant Advancement
Maintaining its relevancy in the healthcare field requires Norman Noble to stay ahead of emerging technologies and new materials. “One trend we have seen in the industry is equipment becoming more capable of providing even tighter toleran­ces and more efficiency,” Stefano notes.

In mid-September, the company lau­nched Noble UltraLight, an innovative ather­mal laser machining process developed to create highly precise features in any material, such as bioabsorbable polymers, shape memory nitinol metals and other exotic alloys without heat. The new process supports Norman Noble’s customers’ technically advancing manufacturing requirements in the medical and aerospace industries.