WBBB!!

Part of the success????? How do you define success?

Still posting from Indy while all key personnel are in Orlando at the national meeting.

Maybe if you did performed at Roche you could be part of the success instead of always sharing negative stuff. Be thankful you have a job and benefits.

SS tenure has been disappointing

2010 results were disappointing

A study in avarice for future MBA's

Long way from "Best in the Business" (Andre de Bruin) to now.

Operational Excellence = benefits & shuts up the shareholders in the short term and uber Senior management (Severin) in the long term.

Nepotism breeds mediocrity but apparently pays Severin's salary quite well: SFr.5,585,835.

The fish rots from the head down. The true problem at Roche is Severin. He is an extraordinarily arrogant, incompetent, bumbling leader. If this company were not majority owned by the family, he would have been shown the door long ago. Investors and employees alike, anyone who is linking a future with Roche, should DEMAND that he be fired! Quote from a European business publication

"Its (Roche) stock has fallen nearly 19 percent so far in 2010, making it the worst performer in the global large-cap drugs sector and piling pressure on Schwan to deliver more value for investors in the family-controlled business."

Schwan-what value are you bringing? The greatest value you could bring would be to leave!

Operational Excellence: Remap employees to a lower skill, lower paying job in order to foster unhappiness and facilitate the departure of said employees. Essentially, Roche is aiming to squeeze employees out without having to actually layoff said employees. In this way, Roche can keep their layoff numbers low and avoid paying severence.

...crap breeds more crap.....

You forgot LG as VP of Sales for a cup of coffee

"No leadership. Just a lot of "Operational Excellence initiative"
The old 6-Sigma con, then.

RY is now Head of Applied Science

The problems with Roche Diagnostics are symptomatic of the bigger issues under SS's leadership. Even the investor community is questioning his leadership. Look at how poorly the stock is performing and the recent comments from the CEO of Novartis on strategy mistakes Roche has made.

What happened to RY, head of global BD?

In past 18 months the majority of positions on the Dx EC have turned over, some through promotion or lateral moves but most through forced turnover incl. the Global Head of Dx, all 4 Business Area Heads, the Heads of NA, HR, BD, Quality. Hope the new team does a better job than the last one.

No leadership. Just a lot of "Operational Excellence initiative"

No leadership in Diabetes Care since Bill Lister retired. Marketing and product development also did not figure the "Ma & Pa Kettle" factor into the North American strategy. Customers are too high maintenance for complicated European systems. They have become a purely reactionary parody of themselves.

U.S. in 3 years:
3 CEO's TO, MT, JP
3 VP of Sales SZ, WB, CB (4 if you incl TM as acting VP)
3 VP of Mrkting JM, JM, RP
and never replaced AT's postition as SR VP of Sales and Mrkting.
What a mess
Give the current group 12 months at best!

They fired the VP of HR that had been there for awhile.
Funny how that Kharma thing works.
How many careers did he help destroy as he stood by and watched Roche trash people. Yes, many deserved it any many more do now, but BW was a spineless HR twit and flushed people he knew were being screwed.
Good luck finding a comparable job MR. middle age. Now you will find out what happens to those people over 50 that you have fired over the last few years.
You deserve everything you are getting and more you slime!
The rest of you, get ready, JP is looking for you unless you come from Tucson!

Roche's Global CFO and the Head of Applied Science Business both announced retirement...seems like good news in both cases but constant senior management turnover is an issue

Roche (Boehringer Mannheim) has not had US marketing leadership since Bill Lister left.

Regarding Roche Diagnostics "Customer Care" for years management had a goal of answering customer calls for new orders on the 2nd or 3rd ring. Whereas, because of lack of investment in customer service support (Customer Care), anywhere from 25% - 60% of the calls were dropped because the customer was disgusted with waiting. This focus on making money as oppossed to servicing the customers is one additional reason Roche Diabetes testing is falling off the map.

Where to begin? The motherland does not respect the US Marketing team and does not develop what is truely needed. At one point RDC was within a couple of points to surpass Lifescan. Ahh but this was Roche and failed launches of Compact, Active and Aviva due to lact of product inventory, maltose, and recalls. A classic example of one foot on the gas and the other on the brake! The maltose issues have been around for years; people have died and yet there is still no solution. Let's face it, Roche has serious issues. Let's bring back MT; he was such a great motivational leader... That was sarcasm in case you wondered.

Roche isn't the company with the flashy meters. Their only current meters are Aviva and Compact Plus.

Failure of marketing to understand the geriatric market. Roche had Advantage and owned them from the cradle to the grave. Newer and better is ok for some but not all. In desperate attempt to gain market share and demonstrate growth, they went after all market segments the same way. This is no good to have to sell everything two, three or more times. Some business is also not worth having.
There is no overall vision here.

You all fail to realize that most of the consumers in the US who have diabetes AND test regularly are the elderly. Those who are fat and lazy and have diabetes don't test. That is why they remain fat and lazy and slowly die. The elderly need help with their testing and if the primary pitch is "no-coding" roche has a product that does that. If your pitch is "flip-top" strip container, Roche has had that for years. These aren't new features. Roche has had a no-coding meter for over 12 years. What the elderly need help with is setting their time, asking questions, and learning about their disease when doctors won't take the time to help them. No one can compete with Accu-Chek's customer care, because no one else is willing to spend the money on it.

Truth be told in the consumer market Roche has more to offer the average consumer than it's competitors, but Roche doesn't market the product very well; borderline poorly. There are flashy meters on the market which have awesome options, which if I had to test I would personally buy, but that niche is not as high a volume. Most likely Roche is holding off on any marketing because they want to bring in new product, but can't do to what someone else mentioned. They did fix the Maltose interference, but that did bring-up another interference.

As an American in the market, and a former Roche employee, I replied to a TV commercial to get a free FreeStyle lite starter kit. No coding, the Roche "flip top" vial, and very quick results. And no maltose interference. There is no way Roche can compete with that, and several other OEM ventures out there.

Disagree. The preceeding comment referred to the market being unprofitable. Europe did underestimate one thing: the fact that American (US)consumers are not independent and require constant nurse maids. This offsets any profit. They need a more foolproof blood glucose device specific for use by the blockheads in the American market.

This has got to be one of the German members of Roche who consistently deny U.S. market realities. Working at Roche for 23 years I have heard the German "leaders" refer to Americans as stupid, fat and lazy. Could it be that you need a wake up call? Without the U.S. market you don't have a job.

"The stupid, fat, lazy Americans reduce any profits there once were in this market"

The stupid, fat, lazy Americans reduce any profits there once were in this market.

"Roche is letting go of it's blood glucose business, no longer competitive with the market, and cost too much to fix."
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Product lifecyle is effort to clean it up mess to 'let go.' Who would buy? Perhaps they turn it and other Dx losers over to Genetech and sell them also.

Roche is letting go of it's blood glucose business, no longer competitive with the market, and cost too much to fix.

The Inform II was rejected by FDA recently. Reps are informing POCCs that they expect a resubmit in several months.

Answer from FDA should come before end of Mayan Calendar 12.21.2012

Those strips still have maltose interference and always will until Roche comes up with a different enzyme. That ain't happening soon. Plus, there are other interferences Roche has to deal with on those strips that the FDA is looking into. The problem is Roche fixes one problem with their strip but then creates new ones - yet to find a total solution that works. The FDA is doing exactly what they should be.

Any update on FDA response?

Strips have been submitted to the FDA that do not have Maltose interference. In all aspects they fulfilled the FDA's expectations, the FDA responded by telling them to work on a few things. Roche sat down with the FDA to make it explicitly clear what needed to be done. Roche resubmitted and the FDA has not responded in months.

If the FDA continues to not approve Diabetes strips with the Malstose interference they will force the manufacturers into a corner. This is their intention so that the manufacturers like Roche spend some additional money on fundamentally solving the Malstose problem.

It is unlikely that Roche will invest in a fix for the problem. Their Diabetes franchise has been on a negative trend for some time and the Accuchek brand is losing it's "moxy"

I think it means Roche is Babylon.

Roche...is number 1!

It is not the likelihood of the interference but the potential death outcome that gets FDA attention. All brands have interference of some kind or another.

When Accu-Chek test strips were forumlated they had no over-the-counter interferences, unlike competitors products. When Baxter created a peritoneal dialysis solution for home kidney dialysis it created an interference for a product that already existed on the market.

The hold-up on passing strips that don't have maltose interference? No idea, you'd have to ask the FDA. People who are at risk of this interference are explicitly told not to use strips and meters that have this interference and the respective call centers should instruct customers as such.

The FDA originally made it's warning in 2005. Things don't always happen quickly, but when the risk of someone getting an elevated test result, over medicating and subsequently dieing seems like a good thing not to rush into production.

And how many years has the Maltose issue been going on? Class? anyone? anyone?

"It seems that new hires for Sales positions will have no idea that Ortho Clinical Diagnostics Vitros was originally Kodak Ektachem and that the ACS180 was a Ciba-Corning successful Immuno analyzer. In other words, people over 40 need not to apply."

And Vitros ECi was 'Son of Amerlite'. Bastard son (Amersham was screwed by Rochester), maybe but certainly nothing to do with Raritan.

A curved ball: Roche is co-developing a monoclonal-based cancer drug. Piggy-backing a statin to kill the individual cell.
J&J is co-developing a million-spot microchip, also monoclonal-based, as a 'non-biopsy' method (from blood sample) of determining progress of cancer during treatment.
If O-CD is involved (and with its immuno expertise it should be), maybe this is why Roche want O-CD. The chip would be a good tool for identifying a monoclonal specific to cancer type.
My guess is that J&J will not want to sell O-CD if it looks like the chip will be successful.

TO: MM, Greenwood Mall is looking for someone to play Santa for the holidays. Pays 4.25 and hr! Girl you better Jump on it!!

"Their new slogan is 'manage the damage' meters and strips is not the business for anyone to be in right now.
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says it all

We can't launch any new meter in the US market until the FDA gives 510k approval. They are not giving approval because of maltose and sodium interferrence. If so, we would have Nano no code launched. We are gearing up, but, no FDA approvals. Only launching into the rest of the world markets not controlled by FDA.