MediSys Corp.

THE INTENSECARE PRODUCT

DEVELOPMENT TEAM

Background and
Organization
U.S. based private medical device manufacturer
Founded in 2002, annual revenue of $400 million(2008)
Employee strength of 1750
Relatively small but very profitable
First two products were highly successful
Entrepreneurial culture and innovative thinking across
the organization
Competition from two competitors with deep pockets and
strong reputation

Good Practices
Appointment of new president, Art Beaumont, to preserve
innovative culture
Beaumont deployed an executive team to create and
implement strategy for growing the business swiftly
Introduction of new parallel system(concurrent
engineering) for product development to take advantage
of various cross functional skills and expertise
Most of medisys professional Employees embraced cross functional
team design

Bad Practices
Proper decision not taken on modular design on the
IntensCare product
Appointment of Valerie Metz for IntensCares P&L and not
as a team leader is waste of her talent. She was given a
lot of responsibility but no authority to direct employees
under her
Companywide cutback due to recession has forced
engineers to overwork.
Accepting Mukherjees proposal of overseas software
development even though they knew that overseas
software development was problematic in medical
diagnostics

Problems
Faced____________
There is concern about the impending launch date and

delivering a product that the customers will expect and

respond to.

A huge investment ($20.5 million) in IntensCare has

meant that MediSys is exposed to large financial risk.
Major conflicts had been developing within the IntensCare
project team that stemmed from team members being too
focused on their own area of expertise
There is a lack of a strong team leader for the project and
some confusion over roles.
There is an absence of trust within the team, with many
members expressing negative feelings toward each other.

Recommendation
Immediate decision on modular design implementation is
required (setting clear goals)
Internal conflicts should be resolved so that there is no
conflict between executive , marketing manager and core
team
Appoint Valerie Merz co-leader who can lead and monitor
the business aspect of the project.
In order to regain trust within the team, open
communication through face-to-face contact is essential
The president, must constantly monitor and provide
support to the team. This can be achieved through regular
progress meetings and assisting the team leaders when
they are experiencing difficulties.