Multigate Medical Products Pty Ltd

Multigate is one of Australia’s leading manufacturers and suppliers of operating room and wound care products for use in hospitals.

Its high standards of quality control, and ability to deliver on-time and within budget, sees the company as the preferred supplier to most of Australia’s leading public and private hospitals. It is also a major contractor to national and state government purchasing authorities.

Headquartered in Sydney Australia, the company has enjoyed continual growth since its establishment in 1986. Today, Multigate Medical has domestic and joint-venture partnerships in the United Kingdom, China, Thailand, Singapore and Hong Kong.

The company specialises in producing tailor-made solutions for its clients’ requirements and provides contract manufacturing services for many other major healthcare industry suppliers.

It has a commitment to ‘continuous improvement’ which targets the ongoing development of its product range.

Problem / Customer Requirements

After many years supplying a standard disposable forcep to the medical industry, Multigate’s objective was to re-engineer and improve the product, specifically taking into account the market feedback it had received.

Specific goals were to:

Improve the forcep’s ergonomics for users.
Streamline the forcep’s aesthetics to give it a more modern look and feel.
Improve the product’s finger grip areas.
Maintain a light weight solution to ensure raw material, waste disposal and manufacturing cost efficiencies.

Action Taken / Solution Steps

In consultation with Multigate Medical, Techno Plas prepared an initial design review for the proposed new forcep.
This review was then examined by the Techno Plas technical team and assessed in consultation with both external product design engineers and the company that would be building the new tooling.
Design review options were presented to Multigate for consideration. In the first instance, these were tabled as technical drawings and 3D model images.
Prototype models of the preferred option were then produced to facilitate a more practical evaluation of how the improvements would look and perform.
Prototype inspection, review and evaluation identified several aspects of design that warranted fine tuning. These adjustments were made and further modelling carried out to prove the refinements. Once approved, build of the production tool was commissioned.

Results / Outcome for Customer

The commissioned tooling development produced a revitalised and more modern forcep.
Techno Plas continued to fine tune the tooling, over several months after the initial production run, to ensure product reliability and efficiency in manufacture.