Karan Trivedi Date:- 28/08/18

AU1814018

MediSys Corp:- The IntensCare Product Development Team

INTRODUCTION

MediSys is a U.S based medical device manufacture was founded in 2002. It’s revenue in 2008
were $400 million. MediSys develops, manufactures & sells medical monitoring system for
hospitals. It has been developing & working on IntensCare project, a new medical system that
monitors ICU care and relay patient information & provide data to medical staff when needed.
MediSys has invested $20.5 million in the development of IntensCare, and the success &
failure of this project will have significant impact on the company. It’s first two products,
pulmonary & renal monitoring system were success in the hospital segment. MediSys culture
emphasize on innovative thinking among the employees. MediSys had two major competitor
who also planned to move into company’s key market with products designed to compete with
IntensCare. To counteract this, company hired new president, Art Beaumont in Jan 2008 to
play strategic role & also to re-stimulate company’s rapid growth. Beaumont made changes in
company’s organization structure & introduced a parallel system for product development.

 He created an executive committee of 5 vice presidents from different functional areas

 He also created cross-functional team including people from all areas of function.

The product development procedures before Art Beaumont made changes were as like:

R&DMarketingEngineeringRegulatoryProduction.

IntensCare was launched in much same way by Aaron Gerson from R&D group in 2006. He
and Fischer made informal group with software deign development. In July,2007 group was
given $500,000 as starting capital. But there was no development & that’s why Beaumont
introduced system of cross functionality.

The Product development team consisting of people from several functional areas, been
working on the product for 6 months are now facing problems with the product design, clinical
testing, meeting deadlines & their own group dynamics. The relationship between team
members is quite tense doesn’t promise much progress.
ISSUES

Team Structure:- cross-functional development team & parallel development creates

challenges as team members still act as part of particular department and not the whole process.

Time constraint:- launch date of IntensCare is approaching fast. Several team members are
concerned about meeting goals. Also, product should be launched before competitor model to
be successful in market.

Lack of Leadership:- ineffective leadership, poor chain of command control, deviation from
path and personal conflicts.

Communication:- Team members hide information or data to avoid unproductive conflict/

confrontation

Product Failure:- If not launched by August 2009, company’s reputation/ market share will
get affected and destroyed.

Team Failure:- Leads to unsatisfaction, loss of promotion and risk of employees quitting the
company.

Reasons behind Issues arisen:-

 Lack of coordination & transparency between team members.

 Slow decision making progress

 Developed software was problematic in clinical test trials

 Emphasized more on modular design that delayed production process

 Lacked Direction, as team was working for two bosses, and trust was not present.

 Communication problems between departments & hierarchy

 Absence of constructive feedback

Solutions:-

 Re-establish team synergy

 Implementation of reward structure to motivate employees

 Centralized information system should be developed so that team members can upload
their information
  With more transparency, effective input plan should be plan out and work on it
accordingly to achieve it

 First work on basic design should be carried out and then move over to modular design.

 Internal conflicts should be resolved between manager, executive and team members
to come on same page

Question Emerged:-

If you were the President of an Organization, what would be the main things you would focus
on when constructing a team to work on a project ??