Medrad

Medrad
Industry Leader in Diagnostic Image Products Maintains Edge by Implementing Best-in-Class Processes

CLIENT CHALLENGES
  • Maintain leadership position in diagnostic image enhancement products.
  • Enter new markets.
CLIENT RESULTS
  • Reengineered the product development process in less than one year and reduced product development time approximately 50 to 60 percent.
  • Transformed project management structure in three months, prompting stronger marketing insight and project management.
PDC SOLUTIONS
  • Assessment
  • Change Management
  • Product Development Process
  • Benchmarking

Despite its industry-leading share of the diagnostic image enhancement market, Medrad wanted to put plans in place to stay on top as well as to enter new markets. The company turned to PDC to identify and implement appropriate best practices to ensure that internal processes were best-in-class.

PDC systematically diagnosed all processes that influenced product cycle time and new product development at Medrad. As part of the assessment, PDC rated baseline information for processes considered primary drivers of cycle time against best-in-class benchmarks. Working together, Medrad and PDC then established goals for quality, new product investment productivity, and predictability.

PDC helped champion the formation of a cross-functional steering committee bringing together senior-level executives to create an atmosphere of collaboration and propel the company's reengineering effort. Medrad prioritized improvement goals and aligned them with overall corporate targets. Medrad then implemented new policies corporate-wide.

Sophisticated Innovation

"At Medrad, we significantly fund innovation in the form of doing things that are not just directly related to current product development. We've got a lot of processes in place for making sure that people think innovatively… ethnographic work is very very useful for figuring out what a product wants to be and not just assuming that we know. We're not just listening to a customer tell us 'OK this is what we want.' …we're somewhat more sophisticated than that."

-- Don DeLauder, executive director, Product Innovation and Advanced Development, Medrad, Inc.