COMPANY INSIGHT

Innovators of EXERA® medical wire awarded Wilhelm Haglund medal 2021

Innovative product development takes hard work and dedication, and this could not be truer than for the complex components required for medical devices. Advancements in medical device technology are saving the lives of many and changing the lives of many more, so companies such as Sandvik are recognizing the work of the expert teams that make it possible.

ntroduced in 1986, the ‘Wilhelm Haglund Medal for the Product Developer of the Year’ is awarded to an employee or group of employees that has made the most significant contribution in product development across Sandvik Group’s extensive reach of capabilities around the world.

The development of EXERA® medical wire program led to the award of the “Wilhelm Haglund Medal” in 2021 to Gary Davies, Tim Tacionis, and Gene Kleinschmit from business unit Medical at Sandvik Materials Technology. The medical wire and wire-based components are used for medical devices with demanding requirements, such as pacemakers, devices for glucose monitoring or deep brain stimulation. In 2016 the trademark EXERA® was created to put a light on the medical wire and wire-based solutions in the vast Sandvik product portfolio. Read more about EXERA® medical wire program.

Entrepreneurial way of working

The advanced and innovative technical solutions have been developed in an entrepreneurial way at the Palm Coast, Florida production unit, and in close collaboration with customers, thereby handing the wire and wire-based components a competitive edge.

This has enabled unique solutions used in new applications in the medical segment and has also made EXERA® branded products a major business success, showing soaring sales growth while maintaining high profitability.

“I always like to say with innovation, it’s one thing to have an idea, but another thing to really implement that idea, “ says Gary Davies, Head of BU Medical. “And in this case, we have been able to take some of these really neat innovations for that medical device base and grow the business”.

Sandvik is a truly innovative company. Today it has over 6000 active patents and are always forward thinking and are driven by a passion to innovate smarter solutions. Read more about Sandvik

Expanding the footprint

The team at the Palm Coast manufacturing facility, including operators working with coating of wire and wire drawing, continue to explore innovations in process development to ensure that all medical wire components are uniform and consistently of the best quality. Supported by expert Sandvik teams across the globe, including its research and development team in Hallstahammar, Sweden, the EXERA® brand and its capabilities are ever expanding. Since January 2021 BU Medical has a second location in Tucson, Arizona, USA which adds capacity but also mitigate the risk of having a single site in Florida, USA.