Aircraft Medical opens ‘Aircraft NPI’ manufacturing facility in Fife (Press Release)
Posted on Sat 14th July 2007
Aircraft Medical, the UK medical devices company, specialists in hand held medical devices, is pleased to announce the opening of its manufacturing facility, Aircraft NPI (New Product Introduction) in Dalgety Bay, Fife.
The site will be responsible for final assembly the McGRATH® Series 5 with key components being sourced predominantly from UK suppliers.
Head of Operations at Aircraft Medical, Jeremy Wheeler, project managed the opening of the new site. Jeremy has 17 years experience implementing operational systems and General Management in medical device companies, including Creos Plc, Medstone International and more recently as Director of QAS Medical and General Manager at Applied Neurodiagnostics. Jeremy has managed the development, production, delivery and support of high-tech medical products to major OEMs such as General Electric, Philips and DeBeers, as well as Government organisations.
McGRATH® Series 5 was launched in the summer of 2006 and quickly attracted a series of deals. Since August 2006, distribution contracts with potential value of £32m over 5 years have been secured in North America and Italy. The company aims to significantly increase its European coverage in the next 18 months.
The McGRATH® Series 5 is a precision and hand built instrument combining cutting edge electronics and precision mechanisms. To control quality and to gather experience for future products Aircraft took the decision to manage this at our own facility.
Key to the team are Andrew Henderson, Senior Product Engineer, who has been instrumental in the realisation of the design and John Cramb, Production Manager, who was directly involved in the original, outsourced, manufacture of the product.
Jeremy Wheeler, Head of Operations at Aircraft Medical said:
“Aircraft NPI has been set up as a New Product Introduction facility to look at all aspects of the supply, assembly and test such that, as other Aircraft products are brought on-stream, the supply chain, work practices, cell design and inspection criteria will be defined by those who care most, Aircraft’s own team before going out to a third party.
“I am extremely proud of what the team has achieved in a remarkably short time and the self motivation that everyone has demonstrated. Our drive to continually improve aims to make Aircraft NPI a world-class facility.”
Matt McGrath, CEO of Aircraft Medical commented:
“We are delighted to retain final assembly here in Scotland. We have been able to draw on local, technical experience in the area. Jeremy Wheeler and his operations team have made remarkable progress in opening Aircraft NPI - within a matter of weeks they received ISO13485 accreditation, the international standard for medical device manufactures.