BDL.consulting, first named Bartek Design, was founded to service the Plastic Injection Moulding Industry by designing Injection Mould Tools and Ancillary automation for production manufacturing of precision plastic components.
The mould makers brought this work in-house and Bartek Design progressed into Product and Process Development, and on-site contract work. The firm later became very successful at taking Customer Product Designs, helping them to develop them for manufacturing, as well as implementing the manufacturing processes at the production facilities.
Later, the company moved into the medical device sector and got involved in Product Design Development and Quality Assurance / Validations of the production equipment and processes. Today, the firm is now the sales and referral agents for a Quality Management Software system in Ireland called Greenlight. guru. Being resellers for this software give us good exposure to the Documentation and Quality side of the Product Development, V&V and Manufacturing Process validation.
This is a good gateway for 510K and CE approvals for new products with the American FDA and European CE product certification and approval bodies. This knowledge broadens the firm’s scope of work and is another service that it gives to its valued customers. Barry discusses how the firm has evolved in more detail and outlines how he has driven change to ensure ongoing excellence for clients, including the company’s recent change of name.
“Over the years I have found that, as a service orientated consultancy, I have had to constantly re-invent myself and my firm to keep up with the changes. When I started consulting in 2001, consulting in the Product Development and Process field was unheard of in Ireland. Ireland was slow to recognise consultants in this field of expertise, and as a result, I spent most of my time abroad on contracts in Eastern Europe and Asia, working for US and Western European Corporations. It is only in the last 8 years since the Pharmaceutical and Health Care industries have become big employers in Ireland, that contracting services have been recognised. Even now, the competition is tough, and you must fight hard to win business.
“Evolution, re-invention and constantly upgrading the skillset is how we achieve this. For instance, we recently we renamed the company to “Bartek Design Ltd.consulting”, or BDL.consulting for short, using one of the new internet ‘dot’ domain names. Prior to this people thought that Bartek Design was interior or fashion designers. By changing the name to something that had a medical reference, it has helped us attract more targeted business clients to our website.
“Fundamentally, I believe that the reasons for our success are many, but mainly down to pure hard graft with a dogged determination to succeed at any cost. Having 30 years or more experience in the Plastics Design and Manufacturing Industry, coupled with the knowledge of working with Global corporations across three continents, has all contributed to getting us where we are today. Having good work ethics, manners, respect for your clients and most importantly the skillset that they require are all very important attributes.”
As part of this focus on innovation and evolution, Barry and his team are committed to using the latest technology to enhance the services they offer clients, as he is keen to highlight.
“As part of our commitment to evolution and reinvention, as a company, we embrace new technology and update our systems constantly. Apart from 3D modelling and free form surfacing software, we have recently invested in Mould Rheology software or fluid dynamics. We use this software to prove out our plastic part designs before they go to production tooling. This is a key advantage to have over other design houses, and it is my mould design and injection moulding background experience that has been key in implementing this in our company. This rolls onto the fact that I come from a manufacturing background, so I can design parts that can be manufactured, therefore cutting down on the Design for Manufacturing (DFM) process, and thus having faster product design lead times to market. I pass on this experience to my design team in regular product design reviews and training.
“Another technology that we have started to use intensively is 3D printing and Laser Sintering. I have used Laser Sintering for years to produce conformal cooling in injection mould tools. Nowadays, we use the technology to 3D print all our product designs to test and develop them for Mechanical and Fit and Function movements prior to proceeding to hard tooling. This technology has helped us immensely, and its use has drastically cut the cost of prototype tooling and development lead times to our customers, highlighting the benefits of staying at the very cutting edge of technological developments.”
Alongside technology, Barry firmly believes in supporting his staff, as they are central to ensuring excellence for his clients. As such, he is eager to explain the internal culture in his company and how this helps drive new ideas and innovations.
“Internally we are being primarily an ‘ideas’ firm. We like to promote ‘Imagineering’ and to make it ‘Enjoyneering’ for the staff. To stay ahead of your competitors, you need to think outside the box and be creative with your solutions. These are the ideas and culture that I nurture with the staff in the firm. They are always surprised, at how I so readily come up solutions for designs that they think can never be solved, but they are young, proactive and eager to learn, and I enjoy nurturing them. On the technical side, we try to keep up to date with all the relative software tools and hardware and business practise for our business requirements.”
Looking to the future, Barry is keen to drive continued innovation in BDL.consulting, helping to support an even wider range of clients, as he is proud to conclude.
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