“We just put our hand up and talked to as many people as we could about what we could make, and what we could do to help. Because it looked like the world was in trouble,” says Marc Langlois, President of International Custom Products Inc. (ICP), a Toronto, Ontario sewing supplier that specializes in custom design, engineering and manufacture of mechanically stitched textile products.

Protection from the pandemic was essential to stop the spread and get those infection numbers down. But there was a shortage of masks and other personal protective equipment (PPE). Yet disposable masks and other single-use PPE gear were already choking landfills and floating like jellyfish in the oceans.

So when a manufacturing company decides to do its part by producing eco-friendly, reusable gowns and face masks to meet the demand, that’s a bright spot in a difficult time.

And ICP was just the company for the job. It already made an impressive range of products, from packaging designed to protect costly auto parts against damage to Royal Canadian Navy flotation jackets designed to protect valuable humans against hypothermia. A core part of the business is strategic defence and aerospace products like the giant parachutes that waft satellites safely back to Earth.

Customers bring in sketches and product samples and typically work in close communication with the design and production teams developing the design, sourcing materials and perfecting prototypes through to final approval.

Pressing pause
But this past March, regular business was put on pause to pivot operations to the supply of high-performance essential goods like medical gowns for hospitals and healthcare centres in the Greater Toronto Area and across Canada.

Alert to demands that the pandemic was about to place on the whole of global society, the company even partnered with a U.S. manufacturer to pool information on high pressure designing and fabricating of gowns in conditions that were novel to everyone.

ICP gowns are complex creations, rated for different levels of protection, from lower-level for regular hospital rounds to top-level for surgical procedures where even the seams of the garment have to be impermeable to particles borne on the air.

The global surgical-gowns market is expected to reach US $2.10 billion in 2024, driven not surprisingly by accelerating healthcare expenditure, as well as by a growing elderly population, by increasing awareness of safety and infection control, and by expanding urbanization.

Add to this the rising incidence of chronic diseases, the constant innovations in the design and function of surgical gowns, and the huge demand generated by the COVID-19 outbreak, and you can hear the knock of both need and opportunity.

ICP has doubled its business this year and is geared and ready to supply more gowns, masks and face shields if and when a COVID-19 second wave strikes. No more waiting for critical medical supplies shipped in by boat.

The reusable solution
“Reusable is the way to go,” says Jeff Killin, ICP Director of Defence Sales. “Not only in terms of our environment, but it’s also a much better return on investment as a customer. If people were paying five bucks for a disposable gown, now we have gowns where the average life-cycle cost is down to a dollar per use,” he shares.

“You can even wash them in a home washer and dryer, so you don’t need to put them through a sterilizer system. Our thinking was, let’s get something out that conforms with the standards now and is also usable in the future.”

Killin is also an infantry sergeant who has served in the Canadian military for 15 years as a training specialist for domestic and overseas operations. He knows from experience the importance of well-constructed, lightweight equipment in environments where there is no room for failure.

“Now I’m in a position to make sure that our customers and allies and people that I’ve served with get the best equipment and the best training possible,” he says. “It’s near and dear to my heart, and it makes all the difference.”

Going so many extra miles
At the outset of the pandemic, with the surge in demand for PPE, material was backlogged for two months. ICP sourced a Canadian company that made medical textiles, but up to that point these particular textiles had not been used for gowns, so ICP had the material tested and verified for production use and started making gowns for a local hospital.

In fact, the legwork and logistics required for engineering the gowns helped prevent a major hospital network from actually shutting down because it was almost completely out of PPE.

So it’s fitting that industry recognition has marked ICP’s 35th year in the business by naming it a finalist for Canadian Manufacturing’s COVID-19 Industry Leadership Honours in the Personal Protective Equipment – Medium-sized Manufacturer category.

This is a company that goes the extra mile for a good product.

“I’m really proud that we’ve been part of the solution,” Langlois says. He took the helm at ICP five years ago after consulting for the company on a succession plan. He was drawn to ICP by its entrepreneurial history that began with hockey equipment bags, and led to the admirable outfit with unique production capabilities of today.

Fast-tracking Canada
Now ICP is on track for further automation with robotic cutting and sewing, especially for its custom parachutes, turning two days of manual labour into a few hours by machine.

On that front, the company has also benefited as a member of Next Generation Manufacturing Canada (NGen), a not-for-profit organization that matches manufacturing companies with new technologies to drive advanced manufacturing in Canada. ICP is pursuing partnerships to bring more automation to its production line.

So there’s plenty of good news for domestic manufacturing in these uncertain times. The pandemic has exposed the limitations of the global supply chain and is expected to cause permanent market changes with more reshoring as growth prospects rise. Governments and industry are paying attention.

The hope is that governments continue to buy into local manufacturing and keep this momentum alive, Killin says.

“It’s not only PPE that’s important in terms of local production, but it’s also important that the guy who makes your jacket and the guy who makes your pants is able to do it domestically if required. That’s what we’re hearing. And it sounds like there’s a lot of support for that.”

As Langlois sees it, being flexible and quick to adapt to changing needs is critical in manufacturing – now more than ever.

“The world has been moving so fast,” he says. “We’ve had to take a step back and look at what’s going on. And we’re finding there’s lots of reshoring of Canadian manufacturing, especially in textiles. So we’ve put in some rather large bids on PPE automation projects that will change our company dramatically if we win them. It’s definitely been a year of change.”

The post One Company’s Timely Response to a Crisis<p class="company">International Custom Products Inc. (ICP)</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

Over half a century later, Elcon Precision has become the only ITAR-registered (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) refractory photochemical etching company west of the Rocky Mountains and is the premier etcher in the world with materials like tungsten, titanium, and hafnium.

After Anthony Barraco retired in 2012, the new private equity ownership invested in marketing and quality systems that opened new opportunities for Elcon. Since 2012, the company has added AS9100D quality compliance along with a full enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and a modern web presence. Elcon is an amalgam of many smaller, capable companies operating with full industry compliance in the aerospace sector (AS9100D) and in quality management systems (ISO9001-2015).

On the technical side, during the same period, it has doubled its building electrical power and increased its furnace capacity by 200 percent, added more automated manufacturing and digital x-ray capabilities, and installed the most advanced photolithography tool on the market for imaging metal etched parts.

There are only two types of these imaging machines in the world and they are primarily used to create small features such as vanes, grooves, and holes that are only twenty-five to thirty microns in size. It is a decidedly productive and accurate machine with a high throughput that can image up to forty sheets per hour. Parts are all produced in-house and as quickly as overnight for existing, repeat parts. These changes have vastly improved Elcon’s manufacturing cycle time and quality, and have further cemented its leadership within the chemical milling industry.

Today, the company chiefly involves itself with services like photo etching flat and 3D refractory components from high-temperature refractory metals such as tungsten, molybdenum, hafnium, and advanced stainless steels. It also makes precision metal-ceramic assemblies for defense and medical applications using high-temperature processes and is also only one of two companies in the world that make hemispherical photoetched products. The process was designed by Barraco’s team and is now used to make radar jamming and communications components in military aircraft and electron beam devices used to treat cancer.

Dyer stresses that the company identifies as a photochemical etcher and fabricator that also specializes in assemblies. “We can make [both] little parts and bigger complex hermetic assemblies.”

In the medical sector, the highest volume products that the company makes are components for knee surgery, like ablation cutters, staples and pins made from tungsten, for Smith & Nephew, an international medical equipment manufacturer.

The company works with companies like its first client Varian Medical Systems, making the source for Halcyon brand cancer treatment machines that help to eliminate tumors through radiation. The same type of machine technology is used to scan containers as part of border security.

Elcon also manufactures high power radio frequency devices for companies like Raytheon. These are used with over-the-horizon radar systems that detect air and sea threats as far as 1600 nautical miles offshore. This protective technology helps to “keep an eye on threats coming into the United States,” and stands as an important part of the company’s portfolio, according to Dyer.

The company founder, unfortunately, passed away in 2019 but Dyer remembers that Barraco wanted to keep this a family business. His daughter Debbie continues to work in the business after more than thirty years.

Barraco was a deeply passionate person, so Elcon has worked to maintain his friendly and compassionate attitude to this day. The workplace is more like a family because of the amount of time spent with one another and the level of respect that is shared throughout the company.

The internal culture is both “kind and conscientious,” Dyer says, noting that Elcon values integrity, meets commitments, and collaborates with customers on every project. The employees are very detail-oriented, calmly assessing all projects and caring deeply about customers and each other.

Elcon works with many suppliers in its daily operations, striving to work transparently with them at all times and provide six-sigma data analysis to mitigate any issues with quality and provide guidance during the course of a project. Their approach must be deeply collaborative due to the technological nature of the company’s components.

At every step, employees create and maintain a steady relationship with supply chains and a clear understanding of its quality systems. Normally, workers use face-to-face visits to foster these relationships, but with recent COVID-19 procedures, this has proven to be more difficult. As a result, the company is leaning more on its secure and strong IT capabilities and statistical, data-based methods to fix problems and to help its clients succeed.

The company has been experiencing great success of late, but it is finding some issues related to its location, both state-wide in California and locally within its home of Santa Clara County. Technology companies have high labor costs and need to pay employees well since labor is very competitive in the Silicon Valley area. The company is not aggressively financially driven, choosing instead to focus on the full package for employees, and this too can lead to challenges.

The environmental and labor regulations in the state often change, which is tough for a business based on chemicals; in fact, many businesses near Elcon have moved to other areas to avoid dealing with these restrictions. Santa Clara County and California are also currently the strictest county and state in America when it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic, insisting on hard rules around mask-wearing, workplace sanitization, and social distancing. Dyer is constantly on the lookout for these types of rule changes because they can come from different fronts, challenging the company to be profitable while keeping all of its employees safe.

Despite the recent COVID-19 regulations, photochemical etching and ceramic metal assemblies are considered essential products for customers, so the pandemic has had a minimal impact on Elcon’s top-line sales and overall business outlook; in fact, it is doing more business now in defense and space flight components than it has in prior years. For the remainder of 2020, Elcon will be focusing on optimizing and demonstrating its advanced, digital, direct-write photolithography machine.

Dyer also mentions the company’s involvement with NASA in its DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) project, which will see the launch of a deep spacecraft into the asteroid belt. It’s a demonstration project to show that an asteroid’s orbit can be changed and its potentially devastating trajectory toward Earth can be deflected enough to avoid a collision with Earth. The project will be launching in June 2021, and the company is excited to be part of mankind’s first planetary defense project.

More ventures lie on the horizon for Elcon Precision, and if the company’s history is any indication, it will continue to make the most of these opportunities by honoring its legacy and keeping its eyes fixed on the future of its industry.

The post Leading the Market in Technical Innovation and Customer Satisfaction<p class="company">Elcon Precision </p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.