MEDICAL equipment may be its lifeblood now but when Singapore manufacturer Univac started here in 1980, making such products was "unheard of", says its president and chief executive Amos Leong.
Univac went in another direction - into precision tooling to make parts for computers and vehicles as well as industrial components such as circuit breakers. But the potential of medical technology proved too strong and the firm changed tack with spectacular results.
Univac now supplies medical components and devices to top firms in the United States and Europe, said Mr Leong, 53. Its revenue was just over US$100 million (S$133 million) last year.
It has about 1,200 employees around the world, including 350 here, who are mainly skilled workers such as engineers and technicians at its manufacturing plant in Woodlands.
Mr Leong said the company's products contain parts made through a process called plastic injection moulding, which involves injecting liquid plastic through a mould to form the product. It has recently begun using liquid silicone rubber in similar processes.
The products also include metal and electronic components.
Univac also produces the moulds used in injection moulding and assembles the parts after they are complete, said Mr Leong, who divides Univac's products into three categories.
One is medical consumables. These are cheap devices produced in very large quantities, such as intravenous drips, syringes and feeding tubes. A syringe, for example, could cost just a few cents to make.
The second category includes devices like surgical tools that are more complex and expensive, such as the one used to insert an artificial lens into the eye during lens replacement surgery for patients with cataract.
A third category is known as life science consumables - tools used in the laboratory such as diagnostic kits.
Mr Leong said Univac first found a foothold in the medical industry in the early 1990s, when it sold the sector moulds used in plastic injection moulding.
Univac's customers at first bought the tools but preferred to manufacture and assemble their components in-house.
"But they started thinking: 'Since Univac can manufacture the moulds, why don't we let them make the parts?' And when Univac became proficient in making the parts, they (said), 'Wow, why don't you assemble some of the parts?'" said Mr Leong.
This enabled Univac to expand the value chain upstream towards product design, and downstream towards product assembly and fulfilment.
The "breakthrough" came in 2002 when the firm was acquired by Venture Corporation, whose "strong financial stability" allowed Univac to pursue new business opportunities.
Mr Leong added that Univac focuses on "filling the gaps where the medical companies are not so strong".
For example, medical companies may not have manufacturing expertise, so Univac could help by simplifying the design of a complex device.
Medical companies find this useful as rigorous testing means that new medical devices could take about six years to reach the market, creating the risk that they would be outdated before they had even been launched.
This makes producing such devices a "high-cost and high- risk" process. But Univac's innovations could reduce this risk by shortening the time needed for changes to product design, said Mr Leong.
One of the greatest challenges Univac faced was the fact that it was "not able to imagine some of these medical devices in the hands of the surgeon".
In its role as a supplier, it focused on improving its processes and its customers' designs to make products easier to manufacture. But once those customers sold the products to hospitals, Univac had minimal insight from the "focus group conversations" about how the products were actually used by doctors and surgeons.
Mr Leong wants his company to help medical firms work on product design, using the research done by its customers.
There are plenty of growth areas ahead, he added, pointing out that many pharmaceutical firms had earned huge profits from "blockbuster drugs" but the patents for these will eventually expire.
When that happens, the companies will have to distinguish themselves by producing drugs that can be administered in a better way, making them enter the medical technology industry and creating a "convergence" between the two sectors.
He also sees opportunities in working with American and European companies with an interest in Asia.
Noting that these companies often found it difficult to "do it their way" in "the Asian culture", he pointed out that Univac was well-positioned to help them take their products faster to emerging markets.
This article was first published on Apr 29, 2015.
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