The Problem: 

Medical Device start-ups in general, and small business executives in particular have many competing priorities for their time and resources and selecting the “best” vendor for the components and assembly of a Medical Device system can be very time consuming.  It is always a consequential effort in which few are experienced. Hiring a vendor who disappoints can be devastating to your company. Hiring the right one can accelerate your speed to market.

To complicate the effort, vendor selection is an activity most of us do only once in a while and very few of us are skilled at it. But it is so important that large companies have staff dedicated to managing vendors.

Some common questions for companies embarking on this effort include:

• Who is the best vendor choice for each specific component?  How do I find them?
• Who’s got the best price vs quality for the components we need?
• Do we want our vendors to be local, regional, national, international?
• Are the vendors I can choose from doing well?  Are they having issues?  How would I know that?

A solution:

A recently added service Waddell Group provides is vendor selection support. A project manager will help the company gather custom information as needed.  Project managers often are tasked with leading or supporting this effort, and therefore can have significant experience selecting vendors.  Because MDRG has many of the services that start-ups need, they are frequently recommended.

MDRG is a coalition of independent companies that collectively offer broad expertise in the medical device industry. For start-up companies they are an excellent set of vendors to consider as they begin their search for who will assist in the creation of their medical device.  To review the services that MDRG provides see https://www.mdrg.org/.

What are some of the activities when selecting vendors?

An organized vendor selection effort may include:

1. Create the list of components and services needed for your system.
2. Define the requirements of the components.
3. Create a vendor requirements checklist for each of the components.
4. Develop a series of questions for the vendor review.  You need to understand the system requirements and the components involved, regulatory class, quality levels, cost limitations, schedules, geographic area of the vendors you’ll choose from, etc.
5. Determine what vendors are available that fit the criteria established in 1-4 above and define how many you’ll interview.
6. Interview each potential vendor.
7. Select a “short list” of vendors for your component, and iterate your interviews (which can include proposals from those vendors) until you’ve determined your vendor of choice.

This effort can be very time consuming and should always be done well – your companies success will be impacted by your choices.

If support with vendor selection is of interest, please contact Waddell Group (www.waddellgrp.com; 952-221-3333) or any of the companies in MDRG that fit your selection criteria.