Locations -- Siemens Hears Sounds Of Success

Dec. 21, 2004
High-tech hearing-aid facility in La Mirada, Calif., is on former movie theater site.
Plant: Located in La Mirada, Calif., about 10 miles southeast of Los Angeles, the plant was once the site of the Gateway 5 Edwards movie theater, a place where patrons heard soundtracks as well saw the pictures. Since Jan. 10 the location has been the site of a 28,000-square-foot Siemens Hearing Instruments Inc. facility making state-of-the-art devices that, among other things, allow hearing-impaired people to have a better movie experience anywhere. Designed specifically with workflow in mind and incorporating proprietary technology for the digital manufacture of hearing aids, Siemens Hearing Instruments Inc., a Piscataway, N.J., Siemens Medical Solutions subsidiary of Germany's Siemens AG, built the facility from the ground up rather than retrofit the old theater building. The theater was closed in 1999. The new building in La Mirada is 40% larger than the subsidiary's former California production and service facility in Cerritos and features 30% more hearing instrument production space. The new facility employs 120 people including an audiology team, customer service, sales, and repair workers -- as well as manufacturing personnel. The facility serves the western U.S. and uses Siemens' Laser Accurate Scan Replication (LasR) manufacturing process. The process is designed to bring together digital mechanical assembly technology, precision laser scanning and advanced computer software for the production of more accurate and comfortably fitting hearing instruments. Introduced in 2001, and currently accounting for about 50% of all orders produced by Siemens Hearing Instruments, LasR totally automates the manufacture of custom hearing instrument shells, including the use of a laser to build the shell from a bed of powdered polymer material by selectively sintering the material. Corporate Strategy: "We were very fortunate to find this location in La Mirada," says Christopher J. Marxen, director of manufacturing and operations for Siemens Hearing Instruments. "By designing the building in the way we did, we not only met our needs but assisted . . . La Mirada with rejuvenating some of their city space. The site is only three miles from our former facility in Cerritos, so we are not dramatically changing the environment for our employees but are enhancing the work environment with the most advanced manufacturing equipment available." Says William J. Lankenau, president and CEO of Siemens Hearing Instruments, "We are committed to building the most advanced facilities and to employing the most progressive technologies, enabling us to develop the products vital to advancing the quality of life for the hearing impaired. Our LasR technology and this new facility are truly the beginning of the next generation of manufacturing hearing instruments." Locations profiles selected siting and facility strategies by manufacturing companies. Send submissions to Senior Editor John S. McClenahen at [email protected].

About the Author

John McClenahen | Former Senior Editor, IndustryWeek

 John S. McClenahen, is an occasional essayist on the Web site of IndustryWeek, the executive management publication from which he retired in 2006. He began his journalism career as a broadcast journalist at Westinghouse Broadcasting’s KYW in Cleveland, Ohio. In May 1967, he joined Penton Media Inc. in Cleveland and in September 1967 was transferred to Washington, DC, the base from which for nearly 40 years he wrote primarily about national and international economics and politics, and corporate social responsibility.
      
      McClenahen, a native of Ohio now residing in Maryland, is an award-winning writer and photographer. He is the author of three books of poetry, most recently An Unexpected Poet (2013), and several books of photographs, including Black, White, and Shades of Grey (2014). He also is the author of a children’s book, Henry at His Beach (2014).
      
      His photograph “Provincetown: Fog Rising 2004” was selected for the Smithsonian Institution’s 2011 juried exhibition Artists at Work and displayed in the S. Dillon Ripley Center at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., from June until October 2011. Five of his photographs are in the collection of St. Lawrence University and displayed on campus in Canton, New York.
      
      John McClenahen’s essay “Incorporating America: Whitman in Context” was designated one of the five best works published in The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies during the twelve-year editorship of R. Barry Leavis of Rollins College. John McClenahen’s several journalism prizes include the coveted Jesse H. Neal Award. He also is the author of the commemorative poem “Upon 50 Years,” celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Wolfson College Cambridge, and appearing in “The Wolfson Review.”
      
      John McClenahen received a B.A. (English with a minor in government) from St. Lawrence University, an M.A., (English) from Western Reserve University, and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Georgetown University, where he also pursued doctoral studies. At St. Lawrence University, he was elected to academic honor societies in English and government and to Omicron Delta Kappa, the University’s highest undergraduate honor. John McClenahen was a participant in the 32nd Annual Wharton Seminars for Journalists at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. During the Easter Term of the 1986 academic year, John McClenahen was the first American to hold a prestigious Press Fellowship at Wolfson College, Cambridge, in the United Kingdom.
      
      John McClenahen has served on the Editorial Board of Confluence: The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies and was co-founder and first editor of Liberal Studies at Georgetown. He has been a volunteer researcher on the William Steinway Diary Project at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and has been an assistant professorial lecturer at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
      

 

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