About JDC Consulting

Jim Coburn formed JDC Consulting in 2003, after spending 24 years with Rockwell Automation (originally Allen-Bradley) in product development and application consulting. During this time, he worked closely with companies such as Ford, Disney Imagineering, Proctor and Gamble and other Fortune 100 manufacturing leaders. More recently, he has decided to raise the profile of JDC Consulting and has enlisted the resources of a variety of application specialists to provide a comprehensive set of services to the marketplace.

These specialists include Dr. Andreas Inmann (medical device development), Jay Hardway (embedded control), Patrick Coburn (enterprise level data base design), Karl Edminster and his team at Electromechanica (custom machinery and control in a variety of applications), and Michael Haessly (quality strategies and analysis).

President

Jim Coburn  left NDI Medical in early 2008, a neurotech startup, to revitalize JDC Consulting. While at NDI Medical, he was Director of Operations and simultaneously contributed to a variety of software projects. He also authored several funded SBIR's for neurotech applications . He had joined NDI Medical in 2004 after 24 years with Rockwell Automation, the global provider of industrial automation power, control and information systems. At Rockwell, he was the Director of Product Development for Advanced Automation Products. Mr. Coburn has been a manufacturing strategy consultant for such industry giants as Abbott, Gillete, Proctor and Gamble, Ford Motor Company, and The Walt Disney Company. He holds a bachelor's degree in engineering from the University of Notre Dame, South Bend , Ind. and a master's degree in applied mathematics from Cleveland State University. He has published and presented at a wide variety of manufacturing conferences and holds a variety of patents in manufacturing technologies.

Mr. Coburn's core competencies include developing control and user interfaces for a wide variety of controllers and applications. He is fluent in C#, PLC code, Labview and other software packages.

He has been awarded several major prizes, including Control Engineering's software product of the year (March, 2004).

Contributors

Dr. Andreas Inmann Dr. Andreas Inmann's core competencies include leading technology development, research, and product commercialization of active implantable medical devices. He earned a Ph.D. in Biomedical Science and Engineering, an M.S. in Electrical Engineering, and an M.B.A. specializing in Marketing, and has worked with numerous medical devices for various applications in the human body.

Currently, Dr. Inmann provides his services for JDC Consulting as medical device consultant leading and supporting product commercialization activities. He was Director of Product Development at NDI Medical, leading technology development and commercialization for several innovative neurotech producs. Previously, Dr. Inmann worked at Metacure in product development and clinical engineering for an implantable stimulation system to treat obesity and diabetes. Additional experience includes work at Advanced Bionics developing, launching, and sustaining auditory products and product enhancements, and work as a research scientist at the Alfred E. Mann Institute for Biomedical Engineering using implantable microstimulators for stroke rehabiliation.

Jay Hardway has been the president and chief engineer of Exactest since 1994. The focus of his work has been on C programming of embedded microcontrollers for medical and industrial control applications. These designs involve a broad spectrum of timing, sensor interfacing, and communications.

He specializes in:

  • Data Flow, State Transition, and Structure Diagrams, minispecs, flow charts and pseudocode using C and Assembler programming for embedded products.
  • Real-time control.
  • Analog sensor and transducer circuits including switching, linear and battery supplies, semiconductors, opAmps, AD and DA conversion.

In addition, he has worked with digital logic, FPGA, CPLD (Altera), microcomputers, memories, RS232/485 and GPIB interfaces.

Patrick Coburn has worked with data manipulation and databases for over 25 years, the last 10 of which has been the database administrator for the Office of Research and Technology Management at Case Western Reserve University.

He has built a number of large complex applications, including a system for tracking millions of dollars in grant applications and awards. Other applications include tracking research compliance for the university including the conflict of interest, education, and effort certification.

He specializes in Microsoft SQL Server, with experience in Oracle and MySQL.  Application development toolsets include .NET, ColdFusion, HTML and Java.

He has served on the board of JDC Consulting since 2005.

Karl Edminster is the founder of Electromechanica, Inc.  Mr. Edminster comes from a background in military hardware design. Prior to founding Electromechanica, Inc. he worked for Sippican, Inc. (a division of Lockheed Martin )designing experimental buoyant submarine antenna arrays. His work included fiber optic based data collection systems, conceptual modeling and hydrodynamic tow testing. Mr. Edminster worked in the Design and System Integration Group of Foster-Miller, Inc. His work there involved the electromechanical design of miniature military robotic systems for advanced technology demonstrations. This design work included drive and control electronics, battery systems and payload systems. Mr. Edminster earned his B.S. degree in Electromechanical Engineering from Wentworth Institute of Technology.

Electromechanica specializes in:

  • Functional electronic test systems
  • Product development
  • Robotic & internal pipe inspection systems
  • Instrument design
  • Manufacturing and laboratory automation
  • Data acquisition & analysis
  • Custom equipment design
  • Government contracts

They are located in the Boston area but support clients across the nation.

Michael P. Haessly has thirty years of Operations, Project Management, Product Development and Implementation, Quality Systems and Regulatory Experience in the Medical Device, Automotive, Consumer Products and Chemical Industries where he has served as a Director of Quality and COO. He is a Certified Six Sigma Black Belt (CSSBB), Certified Manager of Quality/Organizational Excellence (CMQ/OE), Certified Quality Auditor (CQA), Certified Quality Engineer (CQE), Certified Reliability Engineer (CRE), and Certified Software Quality Engineer (CSQE) and is one of approximately 20 people in the world to obtain this level of certification. He holds both a bachelor's and master's degree in Chemical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University.

He is experienced in continuous improvement for both manufacturing and transactional processes and in implementing Lean initiatives into high speed and manual assembly operations as well as batch processes in the automotive, medical device and consumer industries. He has managed development and improvement programs on both products and processes and is experienced in stage gate methodologies. He has developed and implemented project prioritization methodologies to identify and segregate both viable and non-viable product and projects.

He is a leader in developing and deploying ISO certified quality systems from the ground up and in the transitioning of quality systems from ISO 9000 to ISO 13485 as well as integrating multiple plant systems into an overall corporate system. He has cradle to grave experience in bringing new products from inception to full production implementation and has lead cross functional development teams on multi-million dollar development programs meeting both time and budgetary constraints. He has designed and put into full production over 16 products and handled all stages of production implementation including inception, prototype development, tooling and plant equipment design and installation, production ramp-up and final full-scale implementation using DFSS, DOE, Value Stream Mapping, and FMEA tools.

He is an expert in statistical analysis of experimental data and experienced in FDA regulations, FDA audits, ISO 9000/13485, and GMP requirements.

3119 Essex Rd., Cleveland, OH, 44118 • 216.225.9928 • Copyright © 2009 James Coburn Consulting, LLC.