AUGUST 13, 2009 ISSUE
Federal Grant Will Help Watauga Opportunities Grow Its Medical Manufacturing Operation
A production worker in the Watauga Opportunities clean room assembles cell scrapers by attaching the spatula-like end to a handle. A federal training grant through the Workforce Investment Act will help Watauga Opportunities earn a key quality assurance certification that will allow it to expand its product line.
In a modest facility on Greenway Road in Boone, 92 High Country residents have a place to work, a place to learn and a place to socialize.
Celebrating 35 years in the High Country in 2009, Watauga Opportunities, Inc. employs adults with a wide range of mental and physical disabilities to manufacture custom thermoformed plastic packaging, to assemble products, to package needlecraft notions and to manufacture disposable medical devices in a controlled clean room. In addition to hiring workers for its in-house operations, Watauga Opportunities has also trained and placed workers in businesses—from restaurants to grocery stores to lumber yards—throughout the seven High Country counties.
This year, Watauga Opportunities is taking its success to a new level by more than doubling the size of its clean room and earning a critical quality assurance certification that will allow the organization to expand its medical manufacturing operation.
And it’s getting some help from the federal government’s Workforce Investment Act.
The N.C. Division of Workforce Development recently approved Watauga Opportunities’ application for a $24,164 federal grant to pay for training in ISO 13485, an international quality management system standard.
For more than a decade, Watauga Opportunities has steadily grown its business operations through its participation in MARC, Inc., a social enterprise consortium of nonprofits that provides assembly, packaging, mailing, manufacturing and fulfillment services to businesses across the country. Watauga Opportunities is one of the founding members of MARC (Marketing Association for Rehabilitation Centers), and its membership in the consortium—one of the largest industrial concerns in western North Carolina—translates into significant economies of scale in terms of purchasing health insurance, offering training and employing a national sales manager who has helped MARC’s Custom Medical Products division grow into an important regional employer and economic development engine.
Assembled, packaged and labeled cell scrapers flow through the package sealing machine at Watauga Opportunities. Workers at the facility produce 30,000 of the devices each week. Medical personnel use the devices to scrape Petri dishes.
“[MARC] is an all-for-one arrangement and noncompetitive,” Watauga Opportunities President/CEO Michael Maybee explained. “In the last two years, 346 jobs [in the consortium] have been created and maintained, and we’ve seen an additional $7 million in sales despite the economy. We’ve developed a medical manufacturing niche in western North Carolina.”
Formal certification in ISO 13485 will not only help Watauga Opportunities maintain its current markets, but will also give the organization the ability to compete for business that is—without the certification—closed to its bids. “Many companies require ISO certification from their suppliers,” Maybee said.
The ISO 13485 certification requires a detailed quality manual, rigorous standard operating procedures, continual internal auditing, periodic external auditing and meticulous documentation.
Watauga Opportunities has made enormous strides since its founding in 1974. “We literally started out weaving baskets,” Maybee said. The organization moved forward from those beginnings into the much more lucrative packaging and manufacturing operations. Then the first foray into medical manufacturing came in the 1990s when MARC members that had been contracted to fold surgical drapes needed help keeping up with the demand and offered the extra work to Watauga Opportunities.
“Our first clean room was framed in metal studs and hung with plastic,” Maybee said. Today’s clean room—a glass-enclosed, dust- and contaminant-free work area—exceeds FDA requirements for such spaces.
In that clean space, capped, gowned and gloved workers construct, label and package 30,000 cell scrapers—small spatula-like tools used to scrape Petri dishes—each week. They also construct surgical trays, precisely cut and fold custom surgical drapes and manufacture plastic liners for stainless steel medical basins.
Thousands of cell scrapers await sample inspections by Watauga Opportunities’ quality assurance manager Melvin Fletcher. If Fletcher finds any defects, the entire tub of product returns to the clean room for reprocessing.
And they plan to do more. By the beginning of 2010, the clean space at the facility will be increased by 4,000 square feet, providing a total of 7,000 square feet of production area.
According to Maybee, the short-term goal for the ISO 13485 training and expansion is to add up to 20 jobs. The long-term goal is to generate 80 percent of Watauga Opportunities’ operational expenses. “Currently, we generate about 46 percent of our total operating costs,” Maybee said.
While Watauga Opportunities is still working toward the goal of becoming financially self-sufficient, the organization has been a significant economic player in the High Country for 15 years. Since 1994, individuals placed in community jobs by Watauga Opportunities have earned $5 million in wages and reduced their government subsidies by $2.1 million. “And that’s people,” Maybee said, “who were labeled unable to work.”
An economic impact study done by Western Carolina University’s Center for Regional Development showed that Watauga Opportunities had a $2.872 million impact in the region in 2008.
And in more than one million work hours, the employees at the facility have had no workplace accidents, thanks to the emphasis on safety and supervision.
Watauga Opportunities continues to build on its strengths and to look for new ways to provide local jobs and generate revenue that stays in the High Country.
“Excess revenue over our expenses pays for more staff members and more services,” Maybee said. “We really kind of view it as a social enterprise. We have to operate as a business, but the purpose is to fund Watauga Opportunities’ mission—to enable self-reliance through employment.”
Federal Dollars Available for Corporate Training
Grants such as the one Watauga Opportunities, Inc. has received are awarded in a competitive process in three funding cycles each year. Federal dollars fund these incumbent worker grants, and applications are submitted through the High Country Workforce Development Board. The board also administers the federal funds.
Watauga Opportunities received one of two incumbent worker grants approved in the High Country during the most recent funding cycle. The other approval is Wilkes County-based Key City Furniture.
The High Country Workforce Development Board is currently accepting applications for the next funding cycle, and the submission deadline is September 3, 2009. To find out more about the incumbent worker grant program and how to apply, contact Ruby Greene at the High Country Council of Governments, 828-265-5434, ext. 129 or rgreene@regiond.org.
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