The FDA Inspection From SOP To 483

José led the launch of manufacturing at a start-up urology products company as Director of Manufacturing for UroSurge, Inc. at the University of Iowa’s business incubator park in Coralville, IA, creating a world-class medical device manufacturing operation, with JIT, kanban systems, visual workplace and lean manufacturing practices. José worked for 10 years at Cordis Corporation, now a Cardinal Health company, where he led the successful tooling, process development and qualification of Cordis’ first PTA (percutaneous transluminal angioplasty) catheter.

His medical device experience includes surgical instruments, PTA & PTCA dilatation and guiding catheters, plastic surgery implants and tissue expanders, urology implants and devices for the treatment of incontinence, delivery systems for brachytherapy, orthopaedic implants and instruments, and vascular surgery grafts and textiles. During his time at Cordis, José managed the Maintenance and Facilities Department, taking that operation to a level rated as “tops” by the UK Department of Health and Social Services (DHSS) during one of their intensive audits. Jose managed Manufacturing Engineering as part of the Guiding Catheter Core Team of managers, a team that took the Cordis Guiding Catheter business to lead the market, bringing it up from fourth place. By introducing world-class techniques, the Guiding Catheter design and manufacturing was completely re-engineered for robust design and tooling, under José’’s leadership.

He was also instrumental and played a leadership role in the complete re-engineering of the Tooling Control System, including design drafting, the tool shop and technical support. Wherever he has worked, he has a track record of introducing world-class methodologies such as Kepner-Tregoe, Taguchi techniques, Theory of Constraints, Lean Manufacturing, Five S (Visual Workplace), process validation to Global Harmonization Task Force standards, and similar approaches.