That may be true but don't expect it to happen for several years. By then, customers, would have moved on anyway.

If Trinidad is just another Centaur product extension, Siemens has no long term future. Both of their big systems, Centaur and Dimension are perceived as old and tired. They do nothing to excite or attract customers. Every time Siemens has another reagent problem, it just loses them more customers.

Siemens needs to bring out new products that excite customers and meet the economic and clinical needs of today's customers. They need to fix their image of unreliable reagents and poor service. Their next new product has to be something big and not incremental change to a product that fewer customers desire today.

Trinidad is just an updated version of Centaur. Immulite has had some major troubles the past year as well. With kits removed from its menu and significant reagent problems I wouldn't put my money on it. Vista seems to have begun fading into sunset.
Siemens still is putting its money on Centaur for now. Lets see if they have layoffs (rumored) and possible notification of site closures by summer.
Regardless, things do not bode well for DX.
So many at Tarrytown are bailing by years end. Guess nobody wants to be the last rat on the sinking ship.
Some sites have already instilled a "no hiring" policy.

What's left? Trinidad

I was part of a conference call with MR a few weeks ago(multi-site). Let me tell you he doesn't even sound like the same guy from a few short years ago.
He's stuck between a rock and a hard place. He's gotta know he's the fall guy which is why all the previous CEO's before him left.

Siemens said they did well last year; where did that come from?
END QUOTE

Siemens as a whole did okay last year. DX made some money but,let me clarify, not anything like Siemens expected to make 7years into the game. Hindsight...they never would have bought all three companies if they knew what kind of revenue they'd be bringing in now.
There are so many reagent issues across the board for all three instruments.
Any meeting MR does now is basically damage control and praying those that have a brain don't leave the company.
At his last meeting his tone had changed dramatically since when he first took over. He's a smart man and must realize he's fighting a losing battle.
Word has it Llanberis and LA are also not doing so well.
Much of Tarrytown are people just waiting to retire and be packaged out. I have a feeling most other sites are the same way.

For all the talk about MR being MIA, sounds like he gave a big town hall style talk in TTN on Friday. Anybody go? Anything interesting said?

Siemens has never had to deal with an aftermarket, let alone one as complex and varied as manufacturing hundreds of reagents. Business 101 teaches that you get rid of your low producers. The only question is, what are the high producers right now? And more importantly, where are the new reagent drinking machines of the future that Siemens will need to grow their business? Centaur has problems, Immulite will be in intensive care soon, Vista was stillborn, so what's left? Siemens said they did well last year; where did that come from?

They are also paying dearly for manufacturing problems. Centaur reagent issues on east coast continue to multiply while Immulite reagent manufacturing at Llanberis is rumored to have over a hundred issues alone. Vista...well, nobody cares about Vista anyway.
The cost of maintaining all three instruments is burying DX alive.
CEO,MR, has bascially gone under the radar for over six months.
Siemens seriously needs to cut low producers within DX or have a massive garage sale.

Is there really a need for four or five major players in DX? It's a mature business and most big companies won't carry the cost of research into new things to analyze. Smaller companies will continue to do that and license or sell the new tests to the big guys. Most, although not all, methods have fairly similar performance characteristics; most systems are fairly similar in terms of capability. Siemens big bet was that they could leverage a diagnostics business with their existing hospital instrumentation and integrating software. They failed to understand that, even though most of the big companies offer similar products, that differentiation existed in terms of reliability and service. Siemens wasn't used to the concept of providing an ongoing and consistent source of 'juice' for their machines. Most Siemens products have no such thing as a backorder status for consumables. Their service mentality wasn't geared to hearing: "my controls didn't come in". They didn't understand that a few substandard methods would be unacceptable to many customers. Most of their competition understands these things and Siemens is paying dearly for their lack of understanding and inability to learn.

Eventually, yes.
But it will be a slow and painful death with constant fear of layoffs and site closures. Basically it's a game of musical chairs.
I'm fully expecting another layoff schedule this summer as has been rumored at several DX sites already.
Many at Tarrytown already have plans to bail by end of year if they last that long. Directors and Managers receive phone calls from Headhunters weekly. It's reached the point here that no one hides this from anyone else.
Actually,I think that's a good thing. My immediate Supervisor already had two interviews elsewhere.
It's my understanding Glasgow and Flanders have the same going on as well. Best to look elsewhere while a paycheck is still coming in.
No pretty picture for DX the next few years. Much of it will not survive anyway.

Siemens DX will be history eventually.

We heard DX is planning another downsizing and that the SAP program proved too many people are employed with no work for them to do since orders have drastically decreased.
No workorder = no employee work. Stockpling up raw materials is also a thing of the past.
So all things are adding up to another layoff schedule but we don't know to what extent.
It's also very apparent the managers walking the hallways of Tarrytown are quite worried for their jobs.

Any news about the summer layoff rumor going around? Apparently it's spreading at multiple sites on east and west coasts.

Are the helpdesk's replies still coming from Ms. Kalashnikova in Belarus?

I was adding my comments to the post about SAP issues. Help Desk and SAP issues sometimes go hand in hand.

Any additional news regarding layoffs this summer?

so you wrote so long just to complain about computers? next time ask for Sennheiser, good German engineering never fails.

First order of business, in my opinion, is to bring back the "Helpless Desk" known officially as the Help Desk to the US. They want to know why the computers aren't running, it is due some to these low life, uninformed, untrained people that are the front line people that we have to talk to every time we call. They don't call you back and even when you escalate the ticket they end up closing the ticket when it is still open. Getting worse by the minute.

And another rant is why doesn't a company of this magnitude be able to afford new computers to those computers that the warranties are way expired and not running right, very slow. In fact, most of the times the computer/systems are very slow.

Instead of always the answer being laying people off, how about a re look that their inefficient technology that they gives us to work with and the nitwits at the help desk. Maybe it would be cheaper bringing it back to the US and training people on how to speak English when you call and oh yes, it would help if you would understand them. I mean this is a company after all. I get this type of no customer service as a consumer and I certainly have been dismayed and confused and may I say disappointed in Siemens that this situation has not gotten better.

Thanks for advice. Refer list-eruption-2.blogspot.com

I am trying to figure out how these two things relate. It is hard to imagine laying off SAP. And whether they lay off people or not, the SAP problems will need to be fixed. This won't be the first time that Tarrytown has been exposed to the basic problems with SAP. Bayer went through a similar nightmare. SAP works very well when it fits in with a company. But when it needs to be modified, it tends to be inflexible and difficult to customize. Good luck to any and all who have to deal with SAP. You will either love it or hate it.

Rumors are once again flying about layoffs this summer.
The SAP program has caused major problems at sites on east coast. People can't work until a workorder comes in. For many the downtime is adding up more than actual worktime...and Siemens accountants have noticed.
Will be interesting to see if this layoff rumor has any meat on the bone.

There are still LA, Sacramento and Berkeley,

Any rumors on west coast sites consolidation?
END QUOTE

What's left there to consolidate?

"Is this at Llanberis?"

No, I was talking about the main DX organisation at Disney World - Frimley head office.

Any rumors on west coast sites consolidation?

The original Zs put together a remarkable organization for its time. They had a feel for the business and for customer needs. By the time they left the world was changing though. For DPC, MZ had neither the vision nor inclination to run a diagnostics company. The market was changing as a combination of integrated systems, laboratory automation systems that linked various analyzers, and one stop shopping for clinical chemistry and immunochemistry took over. The differences among many immunochemical tests was disappering taking away part of DPC's competitive advantage. Without the original Zs and their flare for the business, DPC was probably going to decline no matter what. MZ was at least smart enough to see all of this and got out with the best deal he could get for himself. For Siemens it was a worthwhile deal for its cash cow value, its entry into smaller markets in less developed countries, and possibly, specifically China.

What happened to DPC was the result of losing irreplaceable leadership, changing market dynamics, and a stratgeic plan that didn not include DPC in its long term future, but rather a means to an end. Like it or not, this is the way things work in todays business world.

How many people left in LA?
When I worked there in the 90's they had close to 1000 people and a full Sales Force. It was DPC then. It was called the Diagnostic Boot Camp cause if you trained and worked there you could work anywhere. The pay sucked but the people and training were great.

Sounds like Siemens is just the opposite.
Past few years I've been working at Roche. Also a good place. I've noticed a lot of ex-Siemens DX people here now.
My DPC training has made working everywhere else a breeze for me.
Boy, those days are long gone.
Dr.Z knew what he was doing.

Is this at Llanberis?
We hear the facility is riddled with manufacturing problems with well over 100 backordered reagents.
At Tarrytown we have a small group designated just for trying to salvage kits before taking them off the Immulite menu.
We've lost a bunch already.
East Coast sites already rumored for layoffs sometime this summer.
I thought it was just another hoax till I read Loescher's letter a few days ago.

There is a steady flow of DX UK staff bailing out, every week the leaving cards are going round, the call for voluntary redundancy last year had too many volunteers, many, many others are looking around to see what is around. No rumour, fact.

At least consult with those guys. If nothing else, they should help you rinse away any vestigial carryover.

Need to pick a color? I wonder how many people remember IK, the short-lived head of the clinical chemistry and immuno business group (an Abbott refugee) who would always remind us that, as the person in charge, she got to pick the colors. Ahhhh, the good old days when Sr. VPs weren't afraid to make the tough decisions.

Trinidad needs passing to the domestic appliance division to design, Siemens make bl@@dy good washing machines...

DX CAI R&D is hugely challenged. I am convinced that Trinidad will be a disaster.

Siemens is painfully laborious, even a simple job like Trinidad is vastly slow, it takes them years to assemble task forces and groups to just pick a picture for reception. Yes the Centaur Trinidad should have been out by now but I doubt they have even agreed on a color yet!

People thought IMS was a joke after the Chem 1 experience, too. And look how that turned out. The real joke is that the possibility could only be credible in Tarrytown. There is something very arrogant and self-destructive about Tarrytown culture that has existed and grown ever since the Whiteheads sold the company. It started under Revlon and has grown ever since under each of the many owners.

It is a joke idiot.

Back? Where? How can something that never was, be back?

How in the world could it have come back. The only explanation is that some psychotically obsessive zealot finally found the missing microliter after all of these years. How ironic. I knew where it was all the time, but no one ever bothered to ask me.

30 years after Chem 1 and you want us to believe that someone would still put money into capsule chemistry? Bayer alone spent close to a billion dollars on it and Siemens wound up covering the cost in the acqusition. You really think they want more? Maybe they can bring Hans L out of retirement to run it, eh?

you are all wrong, IMS is back

If Trinidad is simply a re-skinned Centaur with a few new bells and whistles, then no one will care. If that is Siemens' answer to the perception that all of their systems (from Dimension and Advia chemistry systems, to Vista and Centaur) are all old, tired technology, then Siemens will be in for a rude shock. Do they really believe that customers can't distinguish between a truly new system and a cosmetic refurb? Didn't they learn their lesson from their last Centaur upgrade which turned out to be more of a downgrade? Do they think that substituting AG for DS will make a difference? Neither DS nor AG has any history when it comes to putting a successful system on the market; the only real difference is that one was a mean, nasty SOB and the other is just totally incompetent.

We've been hearing about Trinidad for several years and if it's only new skins and a few new features, then something is already wrong; such a system should be on the market by now. With the possible exception of Siemens secret long term strategy, Siemens continues to prove to the world that they know nothing about diagnostics or how to manage it. So either Trinidad is a lot more than you suggest (e.g., a truly new system that will take another 3-6 years to launch), or it's just much ado about nothing and is probably not worth the effort that Siemens is putting into it.

Siemens: We know how to make the competition look good !!

Trinidad won't take 6 years!! how long do think it takes to reskin a Centaur? because thats all we have coming...

I am pretty sure that if you shaved Hitler's moustache off people would still have recognised him. Likewise replacing some injection moulded panels on a Centaur won't fool them for long, its still the same largely unreliable, badly designed, over complex elephant its always been.

If it makes it out I don't think Trinidad will hit the market for a minimum of 6years.
By that time several sites will be long gone as well as at least one platform (your choice).
Llanberis backorders are just as bad now as several years ago.
Here at Tarrytown things aren't much better.

Where Siemens DX expected to be six year into the game is no way near where they current are.
Did you read Loescher's letter yesterday. What CEO starts a letter with a "light and shadow" comment. The 3000 new employees in train/tram division will offset any layoffs elsewhere.
Get the hint.

Trinidad is at the breadboard stage? That should make it around 3-4 years from launch. Please, don't go on and on about aggressive schedules or improved processes at Siemens that let them get things done faster. We have all seen the results of Siemens 'excellent' processes, and know what the FDA thinks of them.

Doing Trinidad at multiple sites will only slow things down and create its own set of problems. Of course, if AG has a key role in Trinidad, you can change the launch schedule to 5-6 years, if at all. And you can just bet that the system will launch prematurely with many problems that still need to be addressed in the field prior to Trinidad becoming a viable product. All one needs to do is look at recent releases from Delaware and Tarrytown to understand the quality the work at these sites.

If you think things have changed, and that this time everything will work during development, then you should be able to explain why that is. A short, maybe 500 word essay, would be appropriate here including information about new and better people and processes, giving several examples of each internal improvement to justify your optimism.

I leave it to you to decide if I am a cynic or just a person with a ton of experience in developing many successful diagnostics products, generally on time and within budget. I know what it takes to do things right and I know that most of Siemens will take short cuts, relax specifications, delete or postpone launch features in a vain attempt to meet a schedule. Remember that, despite the spin, Siemens is all about schedule, meeting dates, etc. The quality and true customer needs are secondary. Just ask any early evaluator of recent introductions such as Advia IMS, Gen-y-mess, or even Vista.

Not as impressive as you try to make it sound. So two years ago, things were so bad, Siemens had to lay people off and slow down production. Now things are picking up which probably means that Siemens is back to where they had hoped to be two years ago. That is quite different that where they had expected to be today when they made projections two years ago. And I would assume that part of the increased sales include the fire sales they had in China last year to meet projections.

The real questions are:

How many years has it been since the first launch of Vista?

What were market projections for number of systems in the field at the time of launch?

How many systems are actually operating in the field as primary analysers and are operating more or less full time.

What is the current frequency of service intervention (roughly MTBF)?

How many of the Vistas in the field simply replaced prior Dade systems (Dimension?). Cannabalising one's own business is not a recipe for growth.

Bottom line: What is Siemens market share with Vista (and, Dimension for that matter?

I'm wondering if VISTA's are being placed as a larger purchase of imaging equipment bundle. The marketing hype about the all-in-one and does everything "VISTA" may have swayed some customers, but I think the overall stratgey is to bundle their products cheaply with the higher margin imaging products.

Trinidad is NOT a rumor. Operating breadboards exist with well-defined development paths. R&D is heavily involved with a major headcount commitment by the DE, TTN & FLDS sites, especially Delaware. BTW, the much-maligned Dimension Vista is selling at twice the rate that was projected two years ago when production was slowed (major layoffs occurred at Brookfield in January, 2012). BFD had to hire back and/or train new people to keep up with customer demand.

biofind...man is this place laughable. all mis-information. im starting to wonder if its just reps from other companies bad mouthing each other. almost nothing is accurate here.

Any progress with making the FDA happy? DX, you do realize that you're putting pressure on the rest of Siemens Healthcare, don't you? Thanks a lot!

LOL - I said rapid, my apologies :-)

Heard of a project named Allegro mentioned a few times, some kind of small modular kit that being rapidly developed

Salessolution has a large range of products and offers theleading brands
(Absolute software, Ruckus wireless WiFi)that provides endpointsecurity
and management solutions to reduce theft and IT costs.