Manufacturer poised to grow-Ballard Medical plans to continue adding jobs in Pocatello

POCATELLO — Ballard Medical Products has been one of the Gate City’s best kept secrets since the company located its production facility here in July 1996.

Now the secret’s out.

By Sean Ellis – Journal Writer

The company, which was bought by manufacturing giant Kimberly-Clark in fall 1999, now employs 420 people and plans to increase its employment here at a rate of about 5 percent (20 positions) a year.

The local plant generated $90 million in total sales during the past year and plans to top $100 million next year..

However, until recently, few local people knew much about Ballard, which is located on Alvin Ricken Drive, a few stone throws away from AMI Semiconductor.

“I didn’t know much about them,” admits Mayor Roger Chase, who recently received a tour of the 220,000-square-foot plant. “I was so impressed. They really have a good facility up there.”

“I think for the most part, we’re an unknown entity and we certainly don’t want to be an unknown entity,” said Dan Lachmann, who took ove
Crystal Leyba, a Ballard Medical employee, assembles an entereal feeding tube in one of Ballard’s clean rooms Monday morning.
r as plant manager last year. “We have some good things going on here and we want the community to know it.”

Simply put, Ballard manufactures medical devices. The 90 products it produces fall under four broad categories: entereal feeding tubes, defibrillator pads, airway management products, and endoscopy products.

Its flagship products are the feeding tubes and the most popular of those is the Mickey, a low-profile feeding tube that is almost flush with the skin and very discreet.

“It allows people to be active, especially kids,” Lachmann says. “Mothers love this product because it allows their kids to run around.”

Not including the feeding tubes, which improve the quality of life, the other products Ballard produces are either life-saving, like the defibrillator pads, or life-sustaining, like the airway management devices.

Most of the components used to make these products are made and molded in-house. Once a product is assembled, it is packaged, sent to a company in Utah to be sterilized and then sent to a Kimberly-Clark plant in Draper, Utah, to be distributed.

All of the manufacturing is done in a clean-room environment and employees must wear gowns, hair nets and beard covers. Having a sterile environment is critical, Lachmann says.

“Many of our applications require that the products go inside the body, so certainly those have to be sterile.”

Most of the plant’s employees work four 10-hour shifts. Employees rotate jobs “so they’re not doing the same thing all day,” says David Baker, a Ballard operations consultant.

About 377 employees are production workers who earn wages in the medium pay range, Lachmann says. The other 43 are salaried and are at the high end of the pay scale.

Ballard hires about 200 people a year, due largely to a high turnover rate of about 50 percent. Lachmann says the high attrition rate is caused mainly by new hires who find they don’t like the type of work done there.

Among employees who stay more than 90 days, however, the retention rate is very high, he says.

The local company hires through Pocatello Job Service. It is currently accepting applications, but plans to hire in-house next year in an effort to reduce the attrition rate, Lachmann says.

In an effort to reduce repetitive motion ailments, Ballard enlisted the help of Idaho State University’s physical therapy department, which set up an exercise program designed to eliminate those disorders and suggested ways to improve work stations.

In turn, Ballard donated $10,000 to ISU. Both entities say they would like to partner more closely in the future. Ballard is located in ISU’s research and business park.

“We would be very happy to form some kind of formal relationship with them,” said ISU President Richard Bowen. “They’re a very good firm and a very good resident (of the park).”

According to Lachmann, the local plant plans to increase its sales volume by 11 to 12 percent next year. While some of that added volume will be handled through increased productivity, about 5 percent will require hiring new employees — about 20.

And since the company foresees double-digit growth for the next several years, it plans to add an additional 20 or so positions a year.

Chase said the plant was designed to accommodate growth.

“Ballard is one of those companies that maintains a stable work force, which is unique in the high-tech sector today,” he says. “If there is a way we could help them, or any other existing business here expand, we would do anything to help facilitate that.”

Bannock Development Corp. Executive Director Ray Burstedt says his organization helped Ballard with site selection and setting up an extensive work force training program when it located here.

He says BDC would do anything it can to help the company expand.

Headquartered in Dallas, Kimberly-Clark is a Fortune 200 company with $14.5 billion in sales last year. Its products are sold in 150 countries and nearly one-fourth of the world’s population (1.3 billion people) uses its products each year.

Kimberly-Clark is well known for its product brand names: Kleenex, Scott, Viva, Kotex, Cottonelle, Huggies, Pull-Ups, and Depend.

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