Using sophisticated production methods, MedSource Technologies is hoping to turn its factory in Houston, Washington County, into one of the largest manufacturers of orthopedic implants and related products.

	Tony Tye/Post-Gazette
	Donald Wagner, director of strategic initiatives at MedSource, holds two components of a hip joint. Wagner founded the Houston operation as Cycam some 16 years ago and sold the company, which had $10 million in 2002 sales, to MedSource last year for $18 million in cash and 660,000 of the Minneapolis company's common stock.

The company, a Minneapolis-based contract manufacturer of medical device components, recently broke ground for a 30,000-square-foot metal forging plant at the facility. Unlike forges from Pittsburgh's gritty industrial past, which largely made equipment parts for heavy manufacturers, this one will make high-tech metal components used for hip, knee and other joint replacement surgery. It also will fabricate other devices needed during orthopedic procedures.

The forging operation, which is scheduled to open in March, is expected to add as many as 70 jobs at the Houston facility, which now employs about 100 and currently provides engineering, machining, packaging, supply management and other services to such medical products companies as Johnson & Johnson and Boston Scientific.

The Houston facility is one of 11 MedSource operations around the country, including a second Pennsylvania plant in Corry, Erie County, where it employs 125 and manufactures products for surgical instrument makers and other customers.

At the moment, big suppliers of artificial hip and knee joints forge or cast many of the implants in-house and send the rough shapes to machining plants to be finished. Others are forged or cast by contract manufacturers, many of which do only a fraction of their business with medical equipment makers. Often, there's significant shaping needed after the contract manufacturers are done, said Dan Croteau, the company's senior vice president for corporate development.

MedSource hopes that by having a plant dedicated exclusively to orthopedic products and one that employs state-of-the-art technology, it can capture 10 percent of the $100 million annual market for components used in hip and knee replacement surgery, said Don Wagner, who serves as MedSource's director of strategic initiatives in Houston.

Those products include not only artificial hip and knee joints, but also the polymer-lined metal cups in which the joints rotate, and devices used while surgically implanting them.

Wagner said the Houston plant hoped to get an even larger share of the market for the metal-backed cups, or sockets for the joints, of which there are more than 600,000 made annually worldwide. "We feel we can get a majority of that business with the system we're putting in," he said.

Overall, an aging population has the number of orthopedic implant surgeries growing 10 percent to 12 percent annually, Croteau said.

The Houston plant already has made its mark in the industry, he added, citing the development of processing techniques that result in a stronger and more durable plastic liner for the metal cups and the facility's ability to perform assembly, packaging and other activities that reduce the work its customers do in-house before shipping their finished products.

Along with work for big orthopedic implant makers, the Houston plant does customized work for other medical device makers. As the region's biomedical products industry has grown, so has the opportunity for working with local clients, Wagner said.

Probably the best-known of its local clients is Respironics Inc., the Murrysville-based maker of devices to alleviate breathing and sleep disorders.

But MedSource's Houston operation also has worked with smaller local companies, including Bonecraft LLC, a developer of software and medical instruments for computer-assisted orthopedic surgery, and Biosafe Inc., with which MedSource has a joint venture. Biosafe developed and patented a process for treating various materials, including metals and polymers, with antimicrobial agents to keep them bacteria free.

Wagner founded the Houston operation as Cycam Inc. 16 years ago and sold the company, which had roughly $10 million in 2002 sales, to MedSource last year for $18 million in cash and 660,000 shares of the Minneapolis company's common stock.

When he founded Cycam, he wasn't banking on finding customers in the region, but he had no trouble finding skilled employees, he said. At the time, industries ranging from nuclear engineering to steelmaking were laying off people with skills similar to the ones Cycam needed.

"It made it fairly convenient to start up," Wagner said.