Case: MediSys Corp.

: The IntensCare Product Development Team

Situation analysis
MediSys Corp. is a private US located medical device manufacturer was founded in 2002. It
has an annual revenue of $400 million in 2008 and employed 1750 people. The company first
two products were really successful; pulmonary and renal monitoring systems though small
was profitable. Its entrepreneurial culture had fostered innovative thinking across the company,
yet MediSys was facing sign of slowdown. Soon two well-known companies with deeps
pockets announced their product in the same market as MediSys product IntensCare, their new
monitoring system for use in hospitals’ intensive care units. Partly to counter this challenge,
company hired a new President, Art Beaumont who introduced a series of changes in the
company like creating a Executive Committee consisting of his five direct reports: the VPs of
sales and marketing, R&D, design and engineering, production and administration. His aim
was to develop an executive team that would create and implement a strategy for growing the
business swiftly.
Art Beaumont introduced the system of cross functional teams. MediSys followed sequential
process earlier where R&D department would propose new technologies or new systems which
had the potential to yield new significant opportunities. Once the idea was accepted, it would
be analysed in various aspects by Marketing department like customer needs and passed them
to Product Engineering and Software Design to develop the specifications and conduct trials to
test the developed prototypes. After finalisation, it would be passed on to the production group
for fabrication and assembly of products. Beaumont, however introduced a new parallel system
for product development which entailed a core team of all the departments working together
looking after all stages and aspects of the product. The IntensCare team was thus formulated
along the lines of Mr. Beaumont to bring the product by August 2009. He believed this would
help rejuvenate the entrepreneur spirit of the company while keeping its current growth culture
and organization structure. The team consisted of following members Aaron Gerson, Jack
Fogel - Sr. Production Manager and IntensCare Project Leader, Dipesh Mukherjee - Software
Design Manager, Karen Baio - Regulatory Affairs 5 Bret O’Brien Senior Engineering Manager
and Valerie Merz - Marketing Manager, IntensCare Business Leader.
The project had funding of $500000 in July 2007after completion of ad-hoc process. Later a
total money of $20.5 million invested in it for rapid development. This meant it was extremely
important for the company to launch the product on time as there was a lot in stake. As project
went on, one thing which created a discontentment was modular design. It was evident from
the customer feedback that the demand was for modular design. This would allow the company
to sell it to a wider customer base from hospitals to military organizations to a variety of clinical
arrangements. Furthermore, the competitors had announced their product to be a modular one.
Merz thought that the product needed to be modular but she had her doubts regarding meeting
the deadlines. O’Brien acknowledged that engineering department had no intention of
developing modules for the model and added that the department was having hard time solving
the internal problems. There was issue of outsourced job given to an Indian firm which had
conveyed their inability to complete their task on time. This had disrupted the whole
development sequence and but Aaron Gerson was still confident that product would hit the
market on time.

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The underlying issue is the group cohesiveness, Jack Fogel met frequently with Bret, Gerson
and Mukherjee but kept Merz away from these meetings. He side-lined the marketing
department and hence failed to understand its importance in managing profit and loss, capturing
the market and increasing market share. This was even clear to Merz but she chose to ignore
this and thought it was better if she distances herself from the group so that the work doesn’t
gets affected. This had brought the product launch to a precarious situation and jeopardized the
company’s image and credibility. In order to tackle the issue, it is suggested that the team
addresses the team conflict head on. Also, it is important for the leader to bring out in open the
actual situation of product status so that necessary actions can be taken to mitigate the possible
damages in terms of loss and market share. The President, instead of having a blind faith on
the team, should monitor progress time to time, take feedbacks from team members and give
necessary inputs to ensure that the product comes to its fruition and the huge investment done
gets good return.

Submitted By: -
Prashant Kumar
P40193