How the 5 Fr Torcon Beacon Tip returned to Canton

We are happy to announce that as of today, physicians in the U.S. and Canada are once again able to order the Beacon® Tip Torcon NB® Advantage 5 Fr Catheter, used in angiographic procedures. In 2015 and 2016, Cook recalled all Beacon Tip Catheters due to an unexpected increase in complaints. Read the press release on our public website and the blog below about the return of the product’s manufacturing in Canton.

When the decision was made to recall the Beacon Tip nearly two years ago, some of Cook’s top executives—including Pete Yonkman, Derek Voskuil, and Shawn Lawson—immediately got on a plane and went to Canton, Illinois.

Why? Because it was the Cook Canton facility that made nearly all Cook’s Beacon Tip catheters, a catheter with a tip that could be seen through medical imaging as it made its way to a target in the arteries. Pete wanted to let this group of employees know about the recall before anyone else, as there could be a lot of fear in this Midwestern town when the news about the recall got out. Other industries had come and gone before in Canton with empty promises and jobs lost.

But what the Cook executive team wanted them to know was that the workers’ jobs were not in danger and that there would be work. The staff in Canton would keep their jobs. Some of the production of the Micropuncture® Access Set, along with some other types of catheters, would be moved to Canton for the time being.

And they would work.

“Enough to trigger our heart”

On a clear, sunny, cool December morning at the end of 2017, a small group from Park 48 traveled to Canton with a happy message: Sales reps in the field and staff in product management and engineering appreciated the top-notch work by the production staff at Canton.

And even better…the 5 Fr Torcon Beacon Tip catheters would go back into production early in 2018. No one was happier than the product managers, engineers, and others who had worked so hard to find and solve the problem that caused Cook—on its own—to recall the product.

Orville Bramwell (global product manager, Vascular) stood in front of the group crowded into the Canton lunch room and explained how grateful everyone was out in the field—those who dealt with the hospitals, the doctors, the labs. Many customers had missed the Beacon Tip catheter because of its visibility and were asking regularly when it would come back.

“Catheters are like the wheels of a car,” explained Orville. “When they work, you don’t think about them. When you don’t have them, you miss them!”

The group wanted the Canton staff to know how important the Beacon Tip was to many of Cook’s customers—and the patients. Leslie King (marketing, Vascular) showed a video of several sales reps and product managers thanking the Canton staff for their hard work.

Faith Glandon (global product manager,Vascular) explained how the recall had come to be. “We at Cook saw some issues happening in a few places, but not in large enough quantities to trigger the [FDA recall] system,” she explained. “But it was enough to trigger our heart.”

Many in the audience smiled.

When the presentation was done, Denise Kirgan (general manager, Canton facility), asked a question: “How many of you did not know how important the Beacon Tip was to doctors and patients?”

Nearly three-fourths of the hands went up.

“Okay,” said Denise. “Now, what questions do you have for the group from Park 48?”

Hands went up immediately. There were a lot of questions.

Why did this happen just to the Beacon Tip? Did we lose customers because of the recall? Are the competitors’ catheters also having problems? When will sales start? How will you sterilize the new packaging? Will it be packaged the same way, or is there a new method?

Other questions got into the specifics of the device components, but it was obvious that this group was very knowledgeable and engaged in what they were making.

It’s personal

Later on, one Canton employee, Karen Buoc, approached the Bloomington group with a personal story about her work as a Quality Control specialist at Canton. She’s been at the facility for five years and the work she does has come to mean more than just a job to her.

Karen has had both a very ill infant grandchild and her own husband hospitalized at different times. And each time, she saw Cook catheters being used on those who were very dear to her. She especially remembered the tiny catheters that were used on her grandchild. Karen knew how important it was for each and every product to be the absolute best.

“Some people question why I am so particular in QC with our products,” she said. “But when I’ve watched my loved ones with Cook catheters in them, I can’t let anything but the best quality go out of here.”

She stops for a moment, then added with a smile and shrug of her shoulders, “I also do it because we’re Cook!”

“Quality first, then quantity”

This facility is in the heart of Canton. The town is the childhood home of Bill Cook. But the Cook plant was not always there.

The iconic agricultural equipment company, International Harvester (IH), dominated the lives of the citizens of Canton for nearly 100 years. Many thought IH would be there forever. Then, in 1983, the company announced it was closing and moving out. Shock and anxiety was through the roof, unemployment was in double digits, and many people left to look for work elsewhere. The economic blow to Canton was profound.

But over the years after that, the citizens who stayed always had hope that the great buildings that spread over several city blocks would be purchased by another industrial business and jobs would return to Canton. There was always hope of that…until one night in 1997, when a fire ripped through the four city blocks of the old IH facility and burned it to the ground. The citizens of Canton where devastated. The situation seemed hopeless.

Hopeless, that is, until 2008. That was when Bill Cook announced that Cook Medical would build and operate a production facility on the old grounds of International Harvester. Like a phoenix, a new business grew out of the ashes.

Cook Medical opened in Canton in 2010, and soon after that Cook Polymer Technology opened directly behind the main building. Many of the current employees grew up in Canton or nearby, and most remember the days when IH employees were laid off or let go completely when the business didn’t go well.

“The fact that Pete came out here meant a lot to people,” Denise says. “Many people just assumed they would get laid off.”

And that is why the Vascular team came to thank the Canton employees shortly before the first Beacon Tip went through the line after the recall ended.

On a tour of the Canton production floor that day in December, about two-thirds of the seats were taken, workers focusing on individual tasks as bright light came in from the skylight overhead. Some of the tables and chairs were empty and the machines sitting on top of them were quiet, shiny, and empty. These were where the Beacon Tip catheters would be made, once again, by the Canton workers. Production of the first Beacon Tip began earlier this year.

A white board in the production room has goals set for the month, employee birthdays, and in larger writing at the top, the words, “Quality first, then quantity.”

Those are words to live by for the employees of the Cook Canton facility.