Planet Innovation opens New Advanced Manufacturing Wing

PI has opened a new Northern Wing of its Advanced Manufacturing Center in Box Hill, to accommodate an increasing number of local and international manufacturing contracts.

The Hon Craig Laundy MP, Federal Assistant Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, officially attended the opening and congratulated co-founders Stuart Elliott, Sam Lanyon, Troy O’Callaghan and Eduardo Vom for their vision and success in developing a world-class manufacturing facility that is rapidly becoming the destination of choice for global medical companies.

New, tailor-made service agreements, with global leading companies in diagnostics and microbiology, have fueled the recent expansion with further expansion already slated for the near future.

Co-located alongside the PI Development Center, which now houses around 200 product development specialists, the Manufacturing Center boasts ISO 13485 & ISO 9001 certification and is registered with the FDA as a manufacturer of products with FDA approval.

PI manufactures a diverse range of biomedical products, ranging from low-cost, high-volume, point-of-care devices right through to large, complex, floor-standing lab-automation instruments. PI also supports the ongoing regulatory compliance with an on-site team of regulatory experts.

Colin Potter, PI’s GM for Manufacturing, explained that all the products under manufacture benefit from dedicated, university-qualified product managers and the center’s Lean Manufacturing Principles that include: single piece flow, visual management and Kanban materials supply.

“All of our clients have individual needs, and so we are flexible, and tailor our engagement to meet their specific objectives. They also benefit from our co-located engineering teams which, not only support the manufacturing of their instruments, but also provide ongoing support and sustaining engineering that drives down cost and drives up reliability. This is the benefit you get when you engage with our team, that can do everything from the design to the global commercialization of biomedical instruments,” Colin said.

“We also have a dedicated reliability test facility where all products are put through formal accelerated reliability testing programs prior to launch. Reliability testing then continues in parallel with commercialization so that any reliability issues are uncovered and rectified by us, not by our customers.”

Planet Innovation’s manufacturing clients now include several of the world’s largest diagnostic companies, along with exciting new start-ups.

Find out more about manufacturing at PI.