Paramit Acquires Lathrop Engineering

Paramit, the “zero-defect” medical device and life science contract manufacturer, has announced its acquisition of Lathrop Engineering, an instrumentation product development company specializing in medical devices and diagnostics. The move will enable Paramit to deliver unrivaled excellence in the design and manufacturing of complex medical and life sciences instruments.
 
“Our customers tell us that we provide a better than best-in-class experience across quality, service, delivery and cost, the four most important aspects of contract manufacturing,” said Paramit Chief Executive Officer Billoo Rataul. “With the acquisition of Lathrop Engineering, we will add product development to our offerings, seamlessly blending it with our manufacturing capability to improve customers’ time to market and their overall experience in new product introductions.”
 
In fact, the company estimates the current average industry timeline to take new products to market – from design through manufacturing – at 24 months. By integrating Paramit and Lathrop processes, the company expects to significantly decrease its average time-to-market to 18 to 20 months.
 
“We have collaborated successfully with Paramit on several projects in the past and have validated this enhanced speed to market,” said Bob Lathrop, chief executive officer of Lathrop Engineering, now a Paramit company. “Through this joint work, we have identified tremendous opportunities to combine our worry-free development and risk mitigation processes with Paramit’s exceptional manufacturing quality to provide unparalleled solutions to medical and life sciences companies with complex instrumentation needs.”
 
Lathrop’s unique approach to product development will allow Paramit customers to control their product vision throughout the development process and to own the design when completed. The multidisciplinary Lathrop team has vast experience in airflow analysis, fluidics control, multi-spectral flow cytometry, fluorescence imaging, and high and low power digital microscopy for both quantitative analysis and/or human interface, among others. The company’s proven, engineered development processes are designed to simplify complex development challenges for customers.
 
Paramit is known for exceptional quality as a result of its “zero defect” approach to manufacturing. Its focus on quality has resulted in achieving surface mounted technology assembly (SMT) at nine defects per million opportunities (DPMO) for the last five years, compared to best-in-class of 30 DPMO, and system assembly at <1 DPMO for the last four years, compared to best-in-class of 200 DPMO. This level of quality is the result of its proprietary vPoke system that takes complex assembly and simplifies it into hundreds or thousands of basic steps. With vPoke, the assembly operator cannot move forward until a step has been completed, validated and documented. This process enables 100 percent traceability for the product.
 
By harmonizing design, engineering and manufacturing through proprietary systems approaches, Paramit will create a “transferless” process from concept to manufacturing, accelerating time to market, lowering costs and ensuring consistent quality from the first product manufactured to the last.
 
Paramit will maintain Lathrop Engineering’s design center based nearby in San Jose.
 
The acquisition comes as Paramit’s new 162,000 square foot facility in Penang, Malaysia nears completion. This facility will focus on medical devices and life science instruments, while growing its Industrial Tools business. The new facility is expected to be completed by fourth quarter 2016 and will double the company’s current capacity in Penang.