English as a Lingua Franca

Meditech is decentralized in nature with independent regional distributors, retailers, and other warehouse partners. They do not have any virtual communication with their partners via information systems. Meditech needs to be able to view all inventories from each partner in order to coordinate proper delivery and manufacturing protocols. Without a system in place, Meditech resulted in late deliveries, which led to dissatisfied customers and loss of future business with hospitals. Product outs would lead to panic ordering to try to get their equipment faster and in bulk. Product outs would create massive back orders making deliveries postponed and net orders to increase. One final point is Meditech has too many products to be efficient at manufacturing from one facility.

What is driving these problems, organizationally?

Organizationally they lack an organic method of tracking data to make them more efficient in forecasting, manufacturing, and customer service. As mentioned in the case study, they reluctantly tried to develop trends by entering data into a computer, but identified it was too much work and it involved entering the data by hand with no automatic entries formulated. Marketing and Central Planners forecast quarterly based on demand - then break down annual forecast into monthly forecast. At the beginning of the month, they adjust goals accordingly. With poor forecasting and panic ordering, it is hard for the company to fully understand the demand. A nice portion of the problem within the organization occurred with the actual production team. With at least two weeks into the month for transfer approval, two weeks for assembly, and a week for packaging and sterilization, this set Meditech back a step in the beginning. Also, the case stated that it could take 2-16 weeks to obtain component parts from their suppliers. Shipping time is an underlying issue as well. Shipping problems persist since the shipping is from one location within the United States. Even worse, the international company, Largo Healthcare's, ships from one place within their whole country. Their production schedule had inadequate time references. Years, months, and days are confusing. No standard format such as an EDI is dreadful. Lastly, Meditech trigger point mechanism is not working for all their products, especially new innovative products.

Why is the customer service manager first to recognize major issues?

The customer service department is the first ear to the ground for the organization because they are fielding the calls from the hospitals wanting to know why they constantly and consistently have delays with new products being brought to the market. Meditech would not survive very long if their accounts receivables constantly ran longer than five months for turnover. How could they determine any type of cash flow