From the left. Jessica Carlsson (purchase), Dick Karlsson (Team leader), Jan Nilsson (Assembler), Anders Havén (Sourcing Specialist GEMS PET), Cecilia Carlswärd (Sales Manager), Therese Hällsten (Manufacturing Quality Engineer GEMS PET)
GEMS PET Systems AB is a company within the GE Healthcare Corporation, which develops, manufactures, installs and services cyclotrons and chemistry systems used at the first stage in cancer, alzheimer and cardiovascular diagnostics. A cyclotron is a particle accelerator that produce short-lived radioactive isotopes. Bound to a suger molecule they form a trace element that can be injected into a patient. When cancer cells eat the sugar solution the trace element becomes visible on an image by using a PET camera.
The cyclotrons are delivered to customers worldwide and Inission are responsible for the control electronics in these. At the moment GEMS manufactures two sizes of cyclotrons called MINItrace (10 Mega electron Volt) and PETtrace 800 (16.5 MeV) where the accelerator weighs about 20 tons. Soon the production of GENtrace will begin, a smaller version, which will provide better choice and lower costs for small and inaccessible hospitals.
A cyclotron is large and heavy. Shielded with water tanks around it weighs about 60 tons. The cyclotron consists of approx. 30 000 parts assembled step by step. Therefore GEMS have a separate department that works to facilitate and streamline the engineers’ work. Improvement work is handled by so-called Lifecycle Engineers and is called DFP – Design for Production. The DFP occurs primarily internally but six months ago Lifecycle Engineers started working together with Inission and today they are at Inission Munkfors to review some details of the production.
“With this production-enhancing activity, we are mainly looking to minimize the number of steps for our fitters and hence save time and reduce stress. The dream would be to assemble a whole cyclotron with a maximum of ten different tools and that nothing could be put in the wrong place.” Says Therese Hällsten, Manufacturing Quality Engineer at GEMS PET. “But another advantage is of course also that the manufacturing of our products become cheaper when we, along with Inissions staff, streamline the production.”
Therese Hällsten and Anders Havén are the ones from GEMS PET that are behind this idea of streamlining production externally and at Inission it´s Cecilia Carlswärd, Sales Manager, that has kept the wheels in motion.
“We value that the customers show commitment and responsibility for their own products and help us with the total cost. Right now the focus is on production-enhancing activities, but GE is constantly working to improve the entire chain. For example, we negotiate together on materials prices with our suppliers and look at how we will ensure delivery accuracy and specific warehouse solutions. It´s generally much improvement and it pays off in the long run, both for us and the customer, “says Cecilia Carlswärd.
For more information:
Cecilia Carlswärd, Sales Manager
Cecilia.carlsward@inission.com
+46 73 84 00 033