New Production Equipment Design and Development

Production equipment development is one of the main capabilities customers are seeking when they come to Foster-Miller. The reason is simple: each project can draw from Foster-Miller’s staff of more than 300 engineers and scientists in all major disciplines to form a unique project team for any project. We have more than 50 years of experience in this area, including successful, high profile projects ranging from the development of the original equipment to manufacture Velcro® through the creation of the equipment to produce General Mills’ Gushers®. Our overall capabilities for new equipment design and development encompass the areas of medical, food and commercial/industrial.

Medical

Foster-Miller has been involved in new equipment design and development, building custom medical production and process equipment, for more than 50 years. Our team, working in partnership with your personnel, creates the initial concept and develops it through prototyping, final design and build. We apply our in-depth knowledge of standard equipment availability and customize only the necessary processes. We select practical new or emerging technologies to assure a truly innovative production equipment development process. Integration of our resources with yours is an important component of our program plan to assure that our clients capture all project intelligence.

Our core competencies in this area include:

• Materials development (plastics, polymers, composites, ceramics, phase transition gels).
• Packaging (form-fill-seal, binary packaging).
• Dispensing systems.
• Continuous injection molding.
• Extrusion (conventional, single screw, twin screw, counter-rotating die for LCPs).
• Automation (high speed, continuous motion, continuous process).
• Automated handling of small, fragile and limp components.
• Automation (flexible, lean, non-synchronous transfer).
• Process development.
• Vision systems.
• Mechanisms
• Thermal engineering.
• Valves, seals.
• Fluid mechanics.
  

Foster-Miller has developed custom food equipment for more than 50 years. The equipment we develop, design and build is proprietary, and is dedicated to the introduction and manufacture of a unique food product. As a rule, the products for which we develop this equipment require new technologies or novel approaches. The resulting equipment thus becomes a barrier to market entry for others, and allows our client to command a premium price for a new and novel product. For projects of this nature, where the customer pays for the development work, Foster-Miller transfers IP and design/drawing ownership to the customer.

Core capabilities we offer in this area include:

• Intimate knowledge of the food industry and its practices.
• History of successfully developing innovative manufacturing concepts for the food industry.
• Experienced staff to design and build robust production equipment that meets FDA standards.
• Software engineers who cover the full spectrum from PLC programming to custom software development.
• Facilities to assemble and functionally test the equipment prior to shipment to the customer.
• Ability to develop all required documentation and manuals.
  

Foster-Miller has developed commercial and industrial production equipment for more than 50 years. Drawing from a staff of more than 300 engineers and scientists, we develop enabling technologies that make the production of new products possible. Industries that request our capabilities are historically quite diverse. This diversity, and our long history in this area, give us the unique ability to import knowledge and ideas gained in one industry to another, seemingly unrelated, industry. The resulting equipment we develop then becomes a barrier to entry to your competitors, and allows you to command a premium price for a novel product. We also protect a client’s competitive position by not developing additional equipment that competes with a process we’ve already developed for someone.

Core capabilities in this area include:

• Exposure to manufacturing practices in virtually every industry.
• In-house access to all major engineering and scientific disciplines.
• Experienced staff to design and build robust production equipment.
• Software engineers who cover the full spectrum from PLC programming to custom software development.
• Facilities to assemble and functionally test equipment prior to shipment.
• Development of all required documentation and manuals.
  

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