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

Over the last decade, the French-based global contract manufacturer has experienced an era of 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 40,000-square-foot expansion increased the facility's total size to more than 100,000 square feet.

Today, Intech Athens employs 220 people and houses 80 CNC machines used to manufacture 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," said 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 the first year of using the new system in 2022, Intech Athens shipped its highest volume of orders and reported a record $50 million in sales. That same year, the company also managed to spend $100,000 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 said. "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 a really hard situation to convince people that yes, we're growing, we're doing great, but we need a course correction here," he said. "And it took a while to make it apparent that just because we're doing well now does not mean it's going to last forever. You've got to 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 said 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 said. "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 anywhere from 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 explained. "You have to first build a solid foundation before you move on to the roof. And that foundation is tedious, nitty-gritty data that has to be refined and input from a lot of different sources." 

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

To date, the team has used the ZOLLER software to catalogue and assign more than 10,000 cutting tools, toolholders, collets, fixtures, vises, clamps and other components. The bulk 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 said. "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. Then we utilize our other smart cabinets for more small components on the shop floor to support the end user much closer to their work environment."

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 said. "No matter how many people you have coming into your shop, if they're following the processes that we set out in the initial philosophy of the implementation, it'll be done the same way every time. You don't have to worry about losing tribal knowledge because it's not dependent 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 said. "Long-term, we want it to really be our single source of truth and create what I consider true digital twins. We want what our programmers see behind their computers to really 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 Intech Athens has seen at other Intech sites in the U.S. Intech's silicon-overmolding operation in Kenosha, Wisconsin, has also purchased ZOLLER tool management software and two Kardex Shuttles and is working toward implementing a similar system. 

Solutions that reduce redundancy and streamline workflows are vital to sustaining Intech's competitive edge in one of the fastest-growing manufacturing sectors in the U.S., 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 $70 billion by 2027, according to reporting from ORTHOWORLD. Companies that prioritize 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 said. "As part of that, we're always chasing opportunities to optimize processes and workflows in the shop." 

Closer look: Intech  

Intech is a leading contract manufacturer of orthopedic devices with production facilities across three continents and more than 1,200 employees. 

The company was founded in France in 2000 with a mission to deliver innovative medical devices that enhance patient care and outcomes around the world. Today, it has nine facilities across Europe, Asia and North America, including four sites in the U.S. Through both organic growth and strategic acquisitions, the company has expanded its portfolio to include complex instrumentation, implants, cutting tools, handles, cases and trays.

"Our goal is not to become the largest contract manufacturer in the industry, but to become the partner of choice," added François Samson, global head of marketing at Intech. "We have expanded our solutions and know-how beyond just traditional CNC machining to offer a veritable one-stop shop platform, which means delivering implants as well as the whole surgical 'toolbox' that will enhance efficiency in and out of the operating room."

Intech Athens, formerly Turner Medical, was acquired by Intech in 2015. Its roots date back to 1975, when John Turner launched Turner Machining, a tool and die shop that served the appliance and automotive industries.  

In 1992, the company opened its facility in Athens, just outside Huntsville, Alabama. The company's foray into the orthopedic industry came in 2005 when it built its first surgical instruments, and in 2009, it pivoted entirely to medical device manufacturing. 

The acquisition by Intech jumpstarted a period of impressive growth that saw Intech Athens more than double its annual revenue since 2015 as it provided the world's leading medical device OEMs with increasingly in-demand solutions. 

Earlier this year, Intech Athens completed a 40,000-square-foot addition that brings its facility to more than 100,000 square feet. The facility houses about 80 multi-axis CNC machines, as well as machines for finishing, chemical processes, final inspections and assembly. 

Learn more at intech-medical.com.