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6 MidJUNE 2014
The Business Journal
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Sponsored by the Youngstown Business Incubator.
Valtronic ‘Miniaturizes’ Its Growth
Uses microscopes to turn out
products for medical industry.
G
BY STACIA ERDOS
lass partitions overlook the massive
manufacturing floor at Valtronic in Solon.
Its size might lead one to assume large
industrial production work is taking place here.
But it’s quite the opposite. Many of the components
these employees are working on are the size of a
grain of pepper.
“Most of the work you see done by hand is done
through a microscope, almost like a surgeon,” explains Jim Ohneck, chief global marketing officer.
“You’ll see as we go around the floor it requires very
good dexterity and hand-motor skills.”
Valtronic is a 30-year-old company that manufactures products for diverse clients, most of them in
the medical industry. In fact, Ohneck says Valtronic
is one of the major manufacturers of cochlear implants sold under their clients’ brand names.
“We really got our name by miniaturizing a long
time ago,” Ohneck recalls. “Valtronic helped develop
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Jim Ohneck, chief global marketing officer, shows a contact lens with sensors to measure intraocular pressure.
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MidJUNE 2014 7
The Business Journal
one of the first completely in-the-canal hearing aids
and that’s how we got into the hearing market. We
drove the manufacturing of a behind-the-ear device
into something that could be put just inside the ear
canal. And that required a lot of specialized miniaturization manufacturing techniques.”
While 75% of Valtronic’s business is in the
medical field, the company also makes industrial
and aerospace components. It has produced tire
pressure sensors to go on aircraft, sensors that can
be measured from afar as well as industrial control
systems, airline seating electronics and electronic
boards for high-speed trains. Among its clients are
Boston Scientific, Advanced Bionics, Crane Aerospace and Motorola.
Ohneck gives an example of how the process
works. A client might bring to Valtronic engineers
an idea for a watch that measures blood pressure
and perhaps that client has breadboarded it – that
is, created a primitive prototype – but in a much
larger size.
“It’s our job to figure out, ‘How do we do that?
How do we make the device so small? What technologies do we use? How do we package it? What
can we add to it to enhance it?’ And we even think
about the user experience for the device.”
Ohneck continues, “So we help our clients have
a marketable product at the end of the day which is
good for us because then we get to make it.”
In addition to the intricate work the employees
perform here, another unusual aspect of the production floor is how remarkably clean it is. Because
static electricity can damage microelectronics, the
plant has an anti-static floor with special conductive chairs.
Ohneck also explains why cell phones aren’t allowed on the floor: “Just the cell phone signal going
out or coming in, or sending a text or email, can
actually affect the test equipment and it can make a
good product look bad or a bad product look good.”
There are also two special “clean” rooms where
wires one-third the thickness of a human hair are
used to make the electronic circuit connections.
“You can’t have dust or hair. So you’ll notice
people have the bunny suits on,” Ohneck comments.
“They cover their hair and face and their clothing
to keep any debris off. So the most sensitive area for
the electronics is in the clean room.”
Another device under production goes from the
clean room to an outside room to be sterilized before
being sent to the operating room.
“It’s a device called the knee balancer,” Ohneck
says. “And that knee balancer is used to help align
artificial knee joints when they’re put in so [patients]
have fewer problems down the line. So that’s a really
cool thing coming down the pike.”
On this day several groups are touring the plant.
In one room, visitors sit at a table and look through
a magnifying glass at tiny electronics that will be put
on a contact lens to measure intraocular pressure.
Among the group is Nortech’s Tim Fahey.
“Valtronic is one of the leading contract manufacturers in the electronics industry, Fahey begins.
“So they work with OEMs [original equipment
manufacturers] and they actually manufacture the
electronics core of an OEM’s product. They make all
these amazing tiny circuits that go into implantable
devices that would go into the body or wearable
electronics that go on the body.”
Valtronic, headquartered in Switzerland, has
a plant in Morocco similar to the one in Solon.
Valtronic, a privately held company, enjoys annual
revenues in excess of $50 million, Ohneck reports.
This year, he adds, his company has set sales records
every month.
One hundred employees work at the plant in
Solon, 80 of them split between the two shifts on the
manufacturing floor. About a dozen engineers work
on design and development of products along with
sales, marketing, accounting and other administrative staff. Ohneck says many of the employees on the
floor have technical degrees or years of experience
in electronic assembly.
The company is fortunate to have so many universities and hospitals in the region. “There’s a draw
of really good, highly skilled, well-trained biomedical engineers, and technical people that service this
area,” he says, “not to mention it’s a good electronic
fabrication area as well.”
While there are many contract manufacturers
that make electronic products, Valtronic stands
large among them because what they do is so small.
“When you get down to making the stuff we do
that are really small flex circuits, tiny components
the size of a grain of pepper and actually place those
reliably, the field goes from hundreds down to a few
in the world,” Ohneck declares. “And that’s where
we’ve made our reputation in miniaturized electronic fabrication. That’s what we do here.”