GE would have done better to have bought O-CD when the latter's Consumables Manufacturing was still on the Fforest Farm site.
Although how a company which is destroying Amersham can have the expertise to perform a 'due diligence' on an immuno company is doubtful. No expertise in radioisotopes manufacture before it bought Amersham. Less in clin chem and IDX.
Great instrumentation company though and would do a number on any DX company's hardware if it did buy.

Thanks for sharing this article with us.Keep it up.

An interesting contrast between GE on the one hand and both
Bayer and Siemens on the other. GE did a thorough job during the due dilegence phase. They understood the difficulties that Abbott was having with the FDA and the implications, thereof. They knew Abbott's strengths and weakness. They added it all up, and declined.

Bayer and Siemens, in contrast, did poor jobs during due diligence. Bayer thought they were buying a company with three major ready-to-launch systems. Two were launched shortly after the Bayer acquisition and never quite made it because Bayer was unwilling to fund the follow up required to fix the few deficiencies with DAX and AXON. Immuno 1 launch was delayed for a few years since it was nowhere near as ready for launch as Bayer thought it was. Siemens pretty much got fooled the same way by both Bayer (with the Advia I'm-a-mess) and Dade (Vista). The former system was killed shortly after launch and the latter has yet to fulfill the promise that Siemens expected. Bayer got in and out of diagnostics in about 15 years. They were just lucky to find a bigger sucker (Siemens) than they had been when they bought Miles and Technicon.

It is interesting the see the number of posts here that suggest that Siemens is already looking to abandon diagnostics. Problem is: there are no more suckers around with enough money to meet whatever price Siemens might require.

"...Highly successful companies rarely get sold. Companies that are not doing well, but can still make it look like they have value, do get sold. Companies like Siemens who don't know the business and don't carry out a thorough due diligence get fooled."

All the more reason why GE walked away from Abbott years ago. They knew the values were so inflated.

Bayer was hardly in great shape when they sold diagnostics to Siemens. Bayer had lost almost all of the clinical chemistry business they had when they bought diagnostics (roughly a 30 % market share went down to less than 10 %). Centaur was doing reasonably well, however, various attempts to developed new and improved versions of Centaur were not terribly successful The big problem was that Bayer had spent well over half a billion dollars on something called Advia IMS which everyone within Bayer knew would never be a successful product. The system never worked during development and Siemens had to kill it shortly after they acquired the Bayer business.

Both Dade and DPC were doing fairly well on paper, but Dade had the still-to-be-successful Vista system on their hands, and DPC had pretty much gone as far as they could in the market and were starting to show the decline that followed after the original Z's were no longer running things.

Highly successful companies rarely get sold. Companies that are not doing well, but can still make it look like they have value, do get sold. Companies like Siemens who don't know the business and don't carry out a thorough due diligence get fooled.

Over the past 20 years I've worked for Roche, Siemens and Beckman.
Hands down the worst company has been Siemens. They haven't a clue as to what they're doing. Between Vista, Centaur and Immulite it's a wonder they're actually still around.
Ironically, each company within Siemens DX (Bayer, Dade and DPC) were doing well on their own before being bought out. It all went to hell 7 years ago.
So glad I got out of that rat race.

Sad but true. We care more about the quality of the cars we drive than the systems that are used to monitor our health. This goes along with the decline in scientific and technical skill of the average clinical laboratory staff. The public has no idea of what's going on and how it could affect them and most physicians don't know either.

"From my perspective, 10yrs service, 20yrs sales, all of these instrument manufactures are responding to what their customers want.

Customer = purchasing department.

Want = perceived lowest cost.

If you can save 50 cents a test your golden."

True. The customer has come to accept poor quality out of the box and even worse service.

Form my perspective, 10yrs service, 20yrs sales, all of these instrument manufactures are responding to what their customers want.

Customer = purchasing department.

Want = perceived lowest cost.

If you can save 50 cents a test your golden.

"MTBF alone is a meaningless number. One also needs to know mean time to repair, and more importantly, the consequence of failure. Guess what? Even if companies gave their customers all of their testing data plus real field experience records, what customer wants to sort through all of it. No one. The industry and technology are mature enough that customers have every right to expect stable reliable systems much like people expect their properly maintained car to start every day. The instrumentation should be pretty much rock solid, the software simple and intuititive, and the methods, for the most part, should be pretty much standardized and robust. There are a few methods that don't meet those criteria. Often they are newer methods where it takes time to work out all of the unanticipated problems, but it having them on the market is still better than waiting for perfection. Methods like Vitamin D come to mind.

This isn't rocket science folks. Companies that cannot meet the basic standards and needs today will simply not survive. This is where companies should be focusing and not on new technology that may cost a lot to develop and not provide any marginal improvement as far the customer can see."

Very well said. I wish the companies that build instruments could follow these things rigorously. There will be very few problems in the field, happy customers and less headache. Unfortunately, companies do not pay enough attention to these aspects. Anyway, your made very important points.

MTBF alone is a meaningless number. One also needs to know mean time to repair, and more importantly, the consequence of failure. Guess what? Even if companies gave their customers all of their testing data plus real field experience records, what customer wants to sort through all of it. No one. The industry and technology are mature enough that customers have every right to expect stable reliable systems much like people expect their properly maintained car to start every day. The instrumentation should be pretty much rock solid, the software simple and intuititive, and the methods, for the most part, should be pretty much standardized and robust. There are a few methods that don't meet those criteria. Often they are newer methods where it takes time to work out all of the unanticipated problems, but it having them on the market is still better than waiting for perfection. Methods like Vitamin D come to mind.

This isn't rocket science folks. Companies that cannot meet the basic standards and needs today will simply not survive. This is where companies should be focusing and not on new technology that may cost a lot to develop and not provide any marginal improvement as far the customer can see.

"I doubt if most of them have ever checked the MTBF of their lab equipment."

THIS is the most relevant sentence in this entire thread. Barely anyone check/cares about MTBF when assessing vendors. Everyone seems to think "trust us" is sufficient proof of a reliable analyzer. There are so many people getting burned by good marketing and not necessarily looking past the smoke and mirrors at data behind the products...

Yes, everyone has old technology. Diagnostics has come a long way in the past 50 years and is now, for the most part, a stable, mature, and almost commodity business. Analyzers are pretty 'standard' too: a reaction container, pipettes or other liquid metering devices, and a colorimetric readout device. Existing products pretty much serve their purpose well. If one believes that necessity is the mother of invention, I would suggdest that as far as diagnostics is concerned, there is not much there simply isn't much necessity or motivation to invest miliions and millions on a 'new technoly' that is unlike to improve upon that which exists. Clearly, if a company can develop a non-invasive diagnostics technolgy, there could be some benefit, however any such product would have to compete with what exists in terms of both performance and cost to the customer and profitability to the manufacturer.

As far as service is concerned, most manufacturers try to build systems that require as little service as possible. Service is actually one of the few areas in which companies can compete nowadays (you won't find many sales people running around promoting the latest and greatest in glucose methodology). And, of course, service issues are avoided when trying to make a sale unless brought up by the customer. Most salesmen would want a customer to believe that service simply isn't an issue since the product is so robust. Strangely, the less service that a system requires, the more likely it is that service personnel will not be terribly good. Things one does routinely and often tend to develop skills; things one does rarely tend to allow skills to grow stale. An interesting paradox, wouldn't you say?

"We are now moving away from Siemens platorms and checking out Roche and Abbott.
What's weird is we were always told Siemens Diagnostics was State of the Art but their platforms are just old technology.
Time for us to see what the other Big Guys have."

LMAO - good luck with trying to find any new technology from Roche or Abbott - their platforms are even older than Siemens'!!

Thanks for sharing this article with us.Keep it up.

An interesting 'debate', eh? Plenty of room for both of us to be both right and wrong in some ways.

Yes, I agree, you make very very good points. And it is a bit of a "chicken and the egg, which came first" story"

Whatever the answer. I will say as a final point:

When I started in diagnostics, instruments like the SMA were around, they had very limited menus, much lower throughputs and a lot of tests had not been developed, or were run manually, or using very manual instruments with chemistries not "locked in". Sample numbers were much lower and there was lower reliance on the results in diagnosis. Instruments were not interfaced.

Now, in larger labs the sample is received and registered. It then is placed on a robotic system that will sort, centrifuge as required, uncap and place it into rack for specific instruments (biochem, immuno, haem etc). They are then run, reflexed and recapped and refrigerated without human intervention. The results are auto-validated where possible and sent out to those needing answers. Should a retest or additional testing be required, they are retrieved, rerun and re-stored. The sample numbers and throughputs are many times what they were. The data is secure and accurate compared to the "old days"

Whoever is driving this process I am now not so sure. But I do believe we are , for all the crap I deal with every day, improving and the world is a better place for the changes we have come through.

Thanks for the great converstaion, I am not used to positive comments on here. All the best..........

Siemens has its hands full with Vista and Centaur problems. Immulite is basically being phased out by customers. It was a good instrument but it's older than dirt. My lab returned three about 6 months ago.
Our Centaur has it's good and bad days. Service has been a problematic since downtown is costing us customers.
We are now moving away from Siemens platorms and checking out Roche and Abbott.
What's weird is we were always told Siemens Diagnostics was State of the Art but their platforms are just old technology.
Time for us to see what the other Big Guys have.
Thanks everyone for the market update.

As one who worked for O-CD R&D (before it was culled) I was amazed that ECi got market.(The 'Rocky Road'? What blx was that bumpy turntable idea for mixing?).
Even more amazed that it is still out there.
My,the competition must be shite.
Good luck to all FSE's out there.

Seems like Centaur has continuously gone downhill since the first version was introduced. Is it just a coincidence that Centaur was introduced by when it was still part of Chiron and all of the upgraded versions were done in Tarrytown under either Bayer or Siemens? The people who made Tarrytown the dominant player in automated clinical diagnostics have either retired or were laid off by Bayer. The replacements just don't seem to be of the same caliber.

My lab had platforms from all the major players.
I say "had" since we ended our contract with Siemens over a year ago. Said "adios" to two Centaurs and 1 Immulite.
Service was awful, Centaur kept going bipolar on us while overtime we just moved on from the Immulite as well.
We are having better success with the Architect.
But that's just us. I don't know how other labs are fairing.

How refreshing to find a thread on this site with some intelligent and balanced discussion. Congratulations to you all.

From my experience as a supplier, as the market for routine and high volume tests becomes more and more price sensitive, as the cost per test fall and the margins on reagents fall too, where are companies now looking to make some $?
The answer is services, including engineer/repair services.
Engineers will always be around. The most that a lab can hope for is that they only see their engineer when they come to perform the regular maintenance that is included in the exorbitantly priced service contract.

"Thank-you, I appreciate your response. Respectfully, I believe the blame for the current circumstances falls on the consumer, not the supplier. They demand new technology sooner, make decisions based on price rather than quality and those making the decisions are distanced from those who deal with the consequences. The market follows demand, though I do admit sometimes in a subtle fashion."

You make an interesting point here. I agree that customers in DX, like customers everywhere often make decisions based on price, rather than quality, and this is particularly true in times of cost constraints. However, I am curious as to what 'new technology' customers demand. It has been my experience that customers are not demanding faster instruments since instruments have been available for many years that range from 100-10,000 tests per hour. They are not demanding more precise instruments since, for the most part, precision is not a big issue for most customers and, in those few cases where precision is an issue, it relates more to specific assays than the instrument itself. Any demands for improvements in accuracy or freedom from interferences is, likewise, mostly a function of the chemistry and not the instrument. The specific tests that need improvement are relatively few and far between; no one I know is begging for a better glucose or cholesterol. Even the costs of instrumentation is a bit fuzzy since the companies can offer a variety of prices that depend on reagent contract prices. From my experience with customers, they want more reliability and lower costs per test or reportable result. They want increased simplicity when it comes to operating, maintaining and servicing their instruments. They want easy interface between reagents and instrument, easy-to-follow software (user friendly and intuitive), and infrequent calibration. And, they want a large menu on the system when they buy it (this means when the system is launched rather than a partial menu with a promise of more methods to follow in 6-9 months). They want very low MTBF (mean time between failure) and rapid response and time to repair problems. This is where service comes in.

Most of the above do not really require new instrumentation (other than the software part). Certainly, if you ask a customer if they want this or that particular bell or whistle, they will always say yes (but at no additional cost, of course). I believe that much of what they 'want' in terms of new technology is driven by marketing departments rather than true needs. Marketing says: we can offer you x, y, and z. The customer says: yeah, yeah, yeah, I could probably use those features (but not oh yeah, I really NEED that).

However, regardless of the source of demand for newer features and 'new technology', there is no excuse for companies to release new products before they are fully tested and really ready for field use. Just as with a car, you may respect your mechanic, but hope not to have to see him too often. Customers want version 1.0 to work properly and not have to wait for version 2.0 to have a system that works well routinely in their hands. Version 2.0 should represent true improvements to basic performance which is already acceptable. Customers resent being treated as guinea pigs and being used to identify problems that should be been solved before a new product is released. I have seen the hysteria that grips companies when product delays occur. They worry about so-called windows of opportunity and rush things through at the end. These companies know that their launch version is shaky and may not meet customer needs, and continue to believe that customers are willing to wait several months to a year or more before their new system has been 'stabilized'. (Would you buy a car that has no wheels with a promise that the wheels will be availabe in a month or so?) Companies tend to live in their own little world.

As one example, the DX industry has been talking for years about the importance of consolidation of as many tests as possible on a single system. They keep telling themselves that this is what customers demand. However, I have seen very few labs that actually consolidate onto a single platform. Most labs that I've visited have a variety of systems, often from different manufacturers and they divide the workload up among their various systems (e.g, one system may just be for 'stat' assays; one system is the 'workhorse' system, and other systems used for less routine and more 'esoteric' assays. I suspect that in the future, more and more consolidation will occur, but far more slowly than the self-hyped companies believe. The companies have built it, but the customers have yet to come.

DX is a complex business. Much of it can be considered to be a commodity business in which companies compete almost exclusively on price since basic performance is not an issue (most routine analytes fall into this category). However, at the same time, they are looking for greater variety of test menu, new tests to become available as the need arises (tumor markers, infectious disease markers, and the occasional new test like Vitamin D). However, I truly believe that there has been very little advancement in what an instrument can do in the past several decades. On the clinical chemistry side, what can the new system of today do that could not have been done on systems from the 80s like Dimension, Beckman Syncrhon systems, Roche Hitachi systems, or Technicon systems like the RA family? What is new in instrumentation that is an huge improvement over early systems like the Ciba-Corning acs180 (later versions called Centaur) or the Abbott AxSym or the Technicon Immuno 1? Today's systems still run the same basic tests and at roughly the same number of tests/hr. Menus have expanded in immunochemistry, but most of the newer tests could have been run on systems in the field decades ago.

I know I don't visit nearly the number of different customers that you would as a service person. Nonetheless, I suspect that much of the so-called demand for newer technology is a regurgitation of marketing propaganda than an organic need that arises from the customer base.

An interesting 'debate', eh? Plenty of room for both of us to be both right and wrong in some ways.

On a lighter note ... what happens if the New Jersey rally to win the Stanley Cup. Does this mean that the Governor of New Jersey, Republican Chris Christie, who has obvious White House aspirations, will have to lead a parade for the Devils? How will that play to the base who only read headlines? (If you don't follow NHL hockey and politics, please ignore his paragraph).

Its a sad fact but all of the big boys have successfully lowered the bar on the quantity and quality of customer service. There was a period about 10 years ago that Siemens and others thought that integrating on-board diagnostics into the instrument would accomplish two goals. A reduction in workforce and the ability to hire a lower grade (cheaper) field tech. Well guess what, the on-board diagnostics didn't help. Siemens and others went ahead with the force reductions though.

Ultimately the purchasing managers at the labs allowed this to happen by not holding the big boys accountable. I doubt if most of them have ever checked the MTBF of their lab equipment. All they are aware of is cost per test as the factory sales force quoted during the sales demo. Give away a couple of cases of free reagents and all sins are forgiven.

I respect you and your 30 years of service. You are correct that companies rush systems out the door before they are really ready and this results in the need for a good service force to service the instruments, especially in the early part of their life cycle.

Nonetheless, this is NOT what customers want to see or have. Most customers don't blame the service people for their system woes; they blame the company and its greed and rushing things. You have simply confirmed the reasons for these problems. It's not service; it's marketing and R&D and upper management conspiring to give the customers unreliable systems. But look at it this way: as long as companies continue to operate in this mode, your job is secure.

Thank-you, I appreciate your response. Respectfully, I believe the blame for the current circumstances falls on the consumer, not the supplier. They demand new technology sooner, make decisions based on price rather than quality and those making the decisions are distanced from those who deal with the consequences. The market follows demand, though I do admit sometimes in a subtle fashion.

I don't believe in the real world this will improve. When I first started 30 odd years ago, there was talk of us being obsolete as instruments became maintenance free...............I have never been busier.

Luckily, I actually enjoy what I do.

There are too many differences between cars and clinical analyzers to list. However, one thing they have in common is routine maintenance, either by the customer or service personnel. Even something as simple as calibration is a form of maintenance. This is very different from when the car won't start of the system won't run at all. With your car, you call towing, get a ride another way, and move on with your life. What does the hospital do when their system goes down? Tell the people the doctors or patients to just hold on until the system is up again? Yes, systems do go down from time to time, but when you hear stories about one such service call a week, that's far too much. If that happens to your new car, you bring it back to the dealer and get another one under most lemon laws. You can't do that with an instrument as easily since every new instrument requires some intial setup ('dealer prep' is done on site). I understand there are no ideal systems and that they do break down once in a while, even when well maintained and serviced. My comment about customers not wanting to see service personnel was limited to those 'emergency' calls when the entire system, or a critical part of the system, is down. There was never any intent to say anything negative about service people or the jobs they perform. The comment was more of a vehicle to get at the poor reliability many new systems have once in the field and to make my Orson Welles pitch to sell no systems before their time. It creates anger from customers, chaos for field service, damages the company image, puts a drag on sales for years to come, even when reliability improves. It's just plain bad business and a symptom of the poor management that currently pervades the DX business.

I want my car to never break down and my tires to last for over 100,000 miles. It sure would be nice if they would make these new cars easy for me to work on so I could have less down time.

There sure is a difference in wanting something and wanting something realistic. The knowledge,experience and response of a good service engineer sure can make life easier for a customer versus those who aren't as good. Remember most these systems run every day 24 hours a day with little breaks in the action.

I respect you and your 30 years of service. You are correct that companies rush systems out the door before they are really ready and this results in the need for a good service force to service the instruments, especially in the early part of their life cycle.

Nonetheless, this is NOT what customers want to see or have. Most customers don't blame the service people for their system woes; they blame the company and its greed and rushing things. You have simply confirmed the reasons for these problems. It's not service; it's marketing and R&D and upper management conspiring to give the customers unreliable systems. But look at it this way: as long as companies continue to operate in this mode, your job is secure.

Customers don't want field service engineers, period!!! They want products that work properly each and every day. They want products with simple maintenance schedules and procedures that are simple and don't take much time on the part of the tech. Customers don't buy products based on how good the repair guy is; they buy products based on how infrequently they expect to ever see an FSE (hopefully, never).

Does anyone here remember Maytag repair guy commercials? The loneliest job in the world?

As a customer, I don't want to hear how good your FSE is. We want to hear: We don't have FSEs; we don't need them!!

Speaking as an FSE with 30 years experience, the above opinion is naive. With the pressure on instrument companies to release product sooner and the market driven by price rather than performance and the distance between the decision makers in the lab and the operators increasing, FSEs should be more important, not less to your labs ability to meet it's commitments.

If you aren't respecting your FSEs importance, he's probably not giving you the best service he can. I do try to look after all my customers, but I can't help but go the extra mile (or five)for the ones that look after me.

Siemens engineers are really good at what they do, given what they have to put up with.. The management on the other hand is really full of morons and complete F#$%wits!! Everytime we have had a problem in our lab the engineer is right on top of it!! The crap they have to put up with is a joke!

Olympus had an interesting business plan. Produce the instrument and, for the most part, stay away from the reagents. Hitachi did this too, but in a partnership with Boehringer Mannheim (now Roche). Toshiba attempted to do it with Technicon just before it was sold to Bayer. The first was quite successful, to say the least, and the other was a disaster. As I understand things, most methods run on Olympus systems were applications of someone's else reagents that were either developed and validated by the individual lab or by various reagent manufacturers. This model worked very well for the large 'reference' labs. It, does, however have one flaw. When there is a problem with perfomance, it becomes the responsibility of the lab to decide whether it is an instrument (including software) or the reagents. Software bugs get worked out occasionally, and it is easy for Olympus to tell a customer that the reagent they are using is not necessarily 'compatible' with the instrument. For the most part, they tend to be correct with this position, and, as a result, they only need FSE's who know the instrument and its basic performance specifications (independent of assay) and these can be very well trained people.

This business model has worked very well in large volume 'reference' labs that require very high throughput systems. It has not, for whatever reason, been nearly as successful in medium sized (500 bed) hospital labs. It's not clear if Beckman or Danaher recognizes the reasons for this and deals with the Olympus line in the same way the deal with their pre-existing product line.

As a customer, I don't want to hear how good your FSE is. We want to hear: We don't have FSEs; we don't need them!!

Well that was Olympus but they got destroyed by remarkably inept management despite the best ever machine. Now just a dying ember in the boiler of Beckman Titanic adventure.

Customers don't want field service engineers, period!!! They want products that work properly each and every day. They want products with simple maintenance schedules and procedures that are simple and don't take much time on the part of the tech. Customers don't buy products based on how good the repair guy is; they buy products based on how infrequently they expect to ever see an FSE (hopefully, never).

Does anyone here remember Maytag repair guy commercials? The loneliest job in the world?

As a customer, I don't want to hear how good your FSE is. We want to hear: We don't have FSEs; we don't need them!!

Reality check time -

OCD only scored so high because the engineers are the customers themselves! OCD engineers are far too precious to lower themselves to a nasty lab visit. If they did they would never get any daytime TV in as the machines are always broke. Send the customer the pcb he can fit it himself.

Siemens engineers are OK but their management fill their days thinking up schemes to sabotage anything the engineers do right or any operation that works has to be rendered inoperable.

Beckman the lowest paid in the business, a gentlemens club, miserable old codgers forming 'god's waiting room' They can fix machines as long as they don't leaver their false teeth or zimmer frames in the works.

Abbott is the place for those with social disorders, for people that its either run around your high school shooting people, or work for Abbott service. Years of everyone (especially customers) detesting the site of them has taken its toll, they are all damaged people.

Roche staff and skills are stretched, megalomaniac management messing everything up (very much like Siemens above but not hindered with crap products)

Whatever company, its friendly engineers are constantly told to be professional and give great service, meanwhile behind the corporate wall colleagues are stamping on his balls. You would be shocked at the number of engineers go stressed out, freak out, are on antidepressants its a friggin hard life!

siemens let go a number of fse's in November. Their service was on the decline, that just helped it get worse.

ooooooh I wonder who works for Abbott then?

1.Abbott
1.Roche
2.OCD
3.Beckman
10.Siemens

Beckman is not a big boy.

Field service is really a local issue, because it will vary with your local area.

Historically, Kodak had excellent field service...OCD now sucks big time in terms of response. Most everything is always next day because their hotline will waste time and then there are delays contacting the FSE. Field service will show up next day, decide that they need to order parts which will take another day of downtime for the part to arrive and to install. Our typical outage is 2-3 days if a part needs to be ordered.

Abbott will try to diagnose the problem over the phone and order parts for next day before they come in to work on the systme.

It would be preferrable if they can come in during the day of the call to troubleshoot and order parts if necessary.

Beleive it or not for those Beckman haters out there, I've had the best luck with their field support. Most calls are handled same day. If parts are needed, they are ordered before the afternoon next day delivery cutoff and it is replaced the next day.