BOWA - Ergo 310D
Client: Bowa Medical
Case: A single-use disposable ligator for standard minimally invasive laparoscopic procedures.
"Our target cost price was lowered successfully to one third of the initial estimation and the timeline was met 100%. Great work!"
Martin Heinrich
CEO of Medical Divison for Bowa
Brief
Bowa Medical is a German specialist that both develops and produces high-specification medical technology for energy-based surgical systems. Their products are not typically disposable, however they recognized an opportunity in the market and as a result they approached Eye-D to help assist them with their first venture into the single-use product market.
Capabilities
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Idea Generation
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CAD (Creo)
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Ergonimics
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DFM of molding and sheet metal
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Developing springs
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Optimizing tolerance chains
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DFA
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Kinematics analysis and optimization
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Analysing human biology
Our Involvement
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From ideation to production
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Product development
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Mechanical Engineering
Process
The development process of this device began with understanding the existing product. From a basic brief we studied the product, technology, production, user and market to create the right product positioning and specification. Eye-D studied the technology, the production methods and most importantly, the users and market. User studies enabled us to create ergonomic and easy-to-use features for the surgeons. By doing user tests from the earliest prototypes to the final product we have been able to tweak the product to be just right.
Concept
The idea was to enter a new market for Bowa through the ligation device by creatively applying manufacturing and assembly processes that are less costly. Based on a deep understanding of the target functionality and the product from a generic point of view, we were able to creatively define a new product architecture. By combining metal, ceramic and plastic parts in innovative ways, we have been able to obtain high performance at low cost.
Result
After deciding among three concepts for further development, the detailed design of the ligator was done including CAD and CAE, design for manufacturing and assembly, material selection and all parts were optimized for production. Prototypes were created of all parts - at first using rapid prototyping techniques for making working prototypes that could be used for clinical trials, and then final parts using production scale tooling. In order to make production run smoothly in Poznan, Poland, we supported the production planning and implementation of the final product.