Or to put it another way: Llanberis now has a full time professional to screw things up rather than a temporary amateur.

Cheers.

We finally have a new full time Site Head at Llanberis.
This should be interesting. He use to work for Bayer.

DH could be a man named after Goliath's protagonist. The 'H' could be a mark left on the skin when sucked on for a while. It's mostly a teenager thing.

People are baling from Siemens DX now, meanwhile management play musical chairs to get on the one with more than 3 legs before the next tune stops playing soon.

The smokescreen of beating up on the little guys continues to distract them, but many will just leave. Most of us are just cashing the cheque and playing the game until the monopoly money dries up.

They are getting desperate, any posts on here about Siemens gets flagged as they try to shut them down.. denial won't make DX work.

Who's DH?

SAP? That should complete the job......
Go to Aggresso.

Latest from Llanberis.
Two more Immulite kits are being put to rest. EPO and PSA.
Talk of layoffs here and LA this summer is making the water cooler rounds.
We don't think Mr. Big and Management in general is happy with the situation. Lots of scared managers here.
Well, if they shut us down do we get a free sausage with our package?
Baaaaa Baaaaa

uh r uh r, uh r, cantona. what happenned to DH

Is Mr. Big ex-Bayer?

Mr big is Mike Johnson Head of Global Diagnostics Manufacturing & Logistics

Had my free sausage with chips and spent the night running to the bathroom.
Nothing like being updated on how badly you're doing with every trip to the canteen.
Things have gotten so much worse since EF left.

Who is Mr. Big in this case?

Looks like we have as many backorders as several years ago. The SAP program just puts it in out face more.
Many of us think it will hit the fan when Mr. Big comes back to Llanberis in a few months.
For sure Immulite isn't doing nearly as good as Management would want us to believe. They are all afraid for their jobs.
Even the sheep know that.

Baaaaaaa

Thanks for the update. It was as expected. Despite the hype, systems like SAP do not, by themselves, improve anything. And SAP has done an excellent job of fooling companies like Siemens into their one-size-will-fix-all-problems programs. Most people I talk to have the same basic comment: It's great when it does the things you want and need it to do, but it is a very rigid system as well that is clumsy or difficult to tweak to special needs. (If I were a bigot I might just ask if such a system is a surprise coming from a German company).

The real question is whether Siemens itself will be like SAP for the long term: very good at what they do, but incapable of adjusting to the peculiarities of diagnostics, specifically that in diagnostics they not only make the machine, but they have to make a large variety of after-market products (reagents, calibrators, controls, etc.) and that it is latter products that actually make the money. It is very much like the difference between a company that makes electric shavers/razors and a company that makes razor blade holders which they almost give away and make money on the blades themselves.

Latest update from the knuckle-dragging Neanderthal bigots at Llanberis

Llanberis has now finally “limped into the twenty first century” and switched from the JD Edwards to the S A P system.

We are now being kept up to date with our back order progress [or lack of it] via an information board being up-dated on a daily basis in the canteen.

The change over “did not go smoothly” and probably lost the company at least half a week in production... wiping out at least three consecutive weekends working overtime. Stating the obvious... the back order count is pretty much stagnant... and the stress on the managements face is showing... and the odd one has stopped washing.

This week has seen “a slight inprovement” I believe this is down to the managements
excellent management skills forward thinking and attention to detail.

In way of reward... a free sausage or bacon roll and sachet of tomato sauce were on offer at the canteen [one per person one day only offer] “What a brilliant idea” carrots don’t come much bigger and better than this.

Mr big’s coming back soon to assess the situation in June... tick tock your time’s running out and you’re in for a very big shock comes to mind.

Well that’s it from Llanberis for this week... the village that lives on beer rugby and sheep dips, Oh and don’t forget our own sort... twitch twitch.

Stay tuned...Next week I’m starting my useless manager/supervisor of the week awards.

Bye bye for now I must dash... I’m doing voluntary care in the community work... I’m on sheep watch tonight... That reminds me I must remember to load some Simple Minds music on my MP3 Player. baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

What you say’s not very complementary to the Llanberis site... but very true... The mentality of a large proportion of the work force is very limited... And lots of problems at Llanberis stem from these type of people managing the place... and any new supervision job becoming available will be done on a who fits in and who we like the best basis... and not the best qualified and experienced person for that job. Nepotism is another big factor when recruiting, an aunty or uncle is often better than a degree... and if you speak Welsh the job’s yours. Another contributory factor to the poor performance at Llanberis is the quality... or lack of it... due to the fact not enough checks are carried out during a production run... end result... the product fails and then is scraped. Then in comes the limited Llanberis mentality again... these beads cost pennies it’s nothing to a big company like Siemens... You think WHAT ?... them beads have been going through the production system for the past two weeks, how much time has been wasted., and two weeks behind on that order... God there thick.

And the term rednecks are American... The correct terminology for this type is IN-BRED WELSH HICKS or Sheep sh@ggers.

Proud to be Welsh.... not anymore.

Is that the reason why there's so many dickheads there!

At least Siemens isn't doing its usual trick and trying to move the jobs to Germany.
END QUOTE

Germany was never the destination.
China!

"Maybe if the employees worked and stop horsing around, (worked in Tarrytown) and I have never worked in a place where workers have time to have affairs!"

Haha! nothing compared to Llanberis, most the staff share common DNA from inter-breeding, Welsh Redneck country.

At least Siemens isn't doing its usual trick and trying to move the jobs to Germany. I would guess that the German Labor Unions and Politicians were unable to find a way to carve out a piece of the DX pie since it was so American based.

Where will it all end for Siemens in the Diagnostics industry... Too late and too big to sell in one chunk, so slowly move operations to more cost-effective countries and emerging markets, and only keep a maintenance team in the US for service and handling the FDA issues? If that's all that's left for US workers, there's little chance they can capture the "best and brightest" that this field has to offer. It seems they all read the writing on the wall and departed for better opportunities years ago...

Seems strange - whenever there's a group of humans who see each other on a regular basis, don't affairs almost ALWAYS happen? Why should Tarrytown be any different?

Seems to me that the strategy of DX at the moment is to focus on emerging markets in Asia-Pacific, South America, etc., and significantly scale back the American operations. So it's no wonder that the American sites seem like they're "wandering in the desert". Bored humans will find ways to fill their time, including, you guessed it, having affairs!

Maybe if the employees worked and stop horsing around, (worked in Tarrytown) and I have never worked in a place where workers have time to have affairs!

Apparently Amazon are big on this...

"Mbwa managers listen to the employee by asking How are things going?, Whats working?, whats not working, what do you need to do to make your job better? How can I help you accomplish that? What are you thoughts on how to do a better job. What do we need to drop and what do we need to do to replace what we dropped?"

FFS the guy pushes a trolley between shelves on a route directed by a computer on a handheld and he shoves the book in the trolley then goes gets another trolley... how much more can the job be 'optimised' even by a 6 Sigma guru?

What's the difference between " a penny for your thoughts" and " my two cents worth" It cost twice as much to talk as to listen.
Mbwa managers listen to the employee by asking How are things going?, Whats working?, whats not working, what do you need to do to make your job better? How can I help you accoumplish that? What are you thoughts on how to do a better job. What do we need to drop and what do we need to do to replace what we dropped? In short they listen to the employ who is doing the job, not issuing new policies and proceduresto hindering the process and creat false numbers to make them look good to upper management who do not understand what the numbers really mean.

Since no one will answer. Mbwa is Management by wandering around.
A great Idea and my perferred style of management. If we can't shoot mico-managers , can we hang them?

There is a big difference between MBWA and micromanaging. While they can be overlapping activities, MBWA is more about finding out what it going on at the 'worker bee' level than managing every detail. It's more about listening than issuing orders.

It appears that what you have in the UK is a bunch of micro-managers who have not been able to define their own appropriate role in the organization (or organisation). Micromanagers, like most pure paper-pushers should all be rounded up and shot. However, given our current level of civilization (or civilisation), shooting is hardly a practical solution. I, therefore, encourage everyone here to offer up reasonable and morally acceptable ways of eliminating the worthless offenders without having to resort to capital crimes.

Noooo please!!!

In the UK we wish we could get them to go back in their offices shut the door and do what any good manager does, Facebook and wait for retirement.

They keep poking their noses in and coming up with 'initiatives' that were born in 'clueless land' and make it all the way to 'blind policy' unhindered by qualified opinion or a moments thinking it through.

Its killing us!!! we are being hindered at every turn by these daft changes, all of which are united in their pointlessness and overhead on staff trying to get on with the job they KNOW. Last year we were laying people off but more people stepped up than there were redundancies required. This year people are leaving like lemmings and its on just begun, many have had enough of it all.

Help Siemens recover best, support Shoot a Middle Manager Day. coming soon.

Management By Walking Around

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

The term management by wandering around (MBWA), also management by walking around, refers to a style of business management which involves managers wandering around, in an unstructured manner, through the workplace(s), at random, to check with employees, or equipment, about the status of ongoing work. The emphasis is on the word wandering as an impromptu movement within a workplace, rather than a plan where employees expect a visit from managers at more systematic, pre-approved or scheduled times. The expected benefit is that a manager, by random sampling of events or employee discussions, is more likely to facilitate the productivity and total quality management of the organization, as compared to remaining in a specific office area and waiting for employees, or the delivery of status reports, to arrive there, as events warrant in the workplace

What is MBWA?

Heres's one big solution: MBWA

Ever since the Bayer days, management in Tarrytown hide in their plush offices and never associate with the workers and knowledgeable people. Management only talk among themselves. There has been an eerie parallel between the lack of contact between management and workers and the decline of Tarrytown's business. Even in the rare cases, like Advia IMS, in which upper management did get involved, they forgot to bring their eyes and ears and just showed up once in a while to bark out the new orders without a clue as to what was really going on.

MBWA is simple and costs nothing. And it works.

Siemens DX is a shining example of why business consultants should never be CEOs. Sure, they get all the levers to pull to increase profitability and look good to their management and possibly shareholders for quarterly timeframes, but they don't get how the levers are all CONNECTED. In fact, they are trained that all can be separable, and that you should never *really* care about employees and customers. Stay objective. Keep your distance. Helps you sleep at night. The image of a cold hard business man is who you should aspire to be like.

Here's the problem. The products aren't worth buying, the company isn't worth working for and it's a bad company to invest in. In short, it's not a world worth living in, is it.

Here's what I don't get.

Say I'm a centralized lab service business, like ARUP in the US. I own several diagnostic units, and let's say 60% of these units are Siemens products. From my local region, physicians offices send me X ex vitro samples a day for me to analyze and send back the lab results. Due to the fact that I can't get reagents for 50% of my Siemens machines, I am not able to process 30% of the samples I receive on a daily basis. Screaming at Siemens doesn't help - there's just no reagents to be had.

What are my choices? Work an extra shift and run these samples on the more reliable machines? And how soon until I figure out it actually makes more business sense to dump the Siemens machines and buy machines I can rely on? Can I pull the FDA in to "make" Siemens properly support their products, or can they only be pulled in if I'm getting erroneous results? Will threatening to sue Siemens help the situation at all, since they are not living up to their commitments and promises? Or does it all just get chalked up to Siemens being a bad business and I swear I'll never buy anything from them again, causing a loss of Siemens reputation in the market place.

Hello, Siemens? Are you there? Do you care? Did all the employees who both cared and knew how to deliver quality products all leave? Why did you let them go? Why are you bleeding your reputation like this? Help us so we can help you, PLEASE!!!

As an Ex-Siemens employee, I think I could give them another headache with the FDA if I wanted. But since what I know is not life threatening in any way, I'll let them continue to smugly reward themselves. I love auditors, they're quite simply not worth what they're paid!

I was not talking about likelihood. I was simply presenting a possibility. The odds of Siemens following my advice are roughly zero to none. Companies like Siemens are all about process and internal control. They are about loyalty, going along with the plan, etc. and the majority of people at DX fit in just fine. Employee satisfaction polls show alot of negatives, and I suspect that many of the complainers still publically fit in with Siemens culture. An outsider who really understands the business would simply rock the boat too much and wind up telling Siemens that they have to make some adjustments to their holy process.

Diagnostics to Siemens is a commodity, something to be bought or sold. It's not an old fashioned business to be grown and valued. They take gambles and sometimes they lose. However, it will be hard to sell diagnostics in its present state of old systems, poor service, and reagent manufacturing problems all over the place. And as I understand things, in certain countries a company must give up to a year's notice before withdrawing a product so that customers have enough time to switch over to something else. It is hard to imagine the chaos at diagnostics should Siemens give public notice to customers that, in effect, says 'we are closing diagnostics in a year, period.' If you can't sell it and it's losing money, what else would a company like Siemens do?

Not a pretty picture at all.

A 14%-16% sustainable margin for DX is, well, just not possible. At least by normal standards and not playing the numbers.

Here's an example how Siemens fixes the numbers.
Llanberis was having quite a large amount of backorder issues with kits they couldn't supply to their customers a few years ago.
A graph showed a steep curve of increasing backorder issues. A year later the Site Head proudly displayed a new graph with virtually no backorder issues.
So how was this done? As it turned out, the backordered kits were discontinued and removed from the instruments menu. Magic! No more kits and no more backorders. Roughly 25kits gone. POOF!
Present Day: Llanberis is back in heavy kit/reagent backorder problems again.
Lets see how they solve it this time.
Centaur is having similiar issues. Vista they don't even know what to do with.
Company's like Roche which went modular years ago are reaping the benefits of Siemens ex-customers each and every quarter.
Tarrytown continues in a management haze. No guidance on where things are headed. Just cheerleadng sessions which are meaningless to scientists, programmers and office workers.
Sure we collect a paycheck but how long will that last while nothing new is being generated.

Guys-you're not playing the right game. The real game is the corporate one. Those who are in power seek to hold it and advance. Why on earth would they give up their power to those with domain knowledge and feel the business? This rarely if ever happens. It's simply not part of the corporate process-which strives to make all plug and play and expendable. When it no longer works you sell it-you don't fix it.

You hit the nail on the head. Siemens has different requirements for profitability for different divisions depending on their perception of risk. Diagnostics 'requires' a 14-16 % margin whereas other divisions can have acceptable performance with less than 10 % margins. (The same 'profit structure' existed under Bayer as well). So for those who keep crowing about performance last year, I will remind them that diagnostics has still failed to achieve that 14-16 % goal, despite the fact that 2012 was better than 2011 and maybe better than plan. Being better than plan means nothing if the plan is not agressive. It is always possible to set the bar so low that it is impossible not to exceed it. This is probably the best explanation for the joy in DX-ville with the 2012 numbers.

I also fully agree with you that unless and until Siemens gets some high level people in place that really understand the diagnostics business almost intuitively (as did the pioneers who started Technicon and DPC) they will continue to be a ship adrift in hostile seas. These people still exist; they just don't work for Siemens right now. I continue to believe that there is still time for Siemens to turn things around, but without knowledgeable people who are listened to and followed, I see no hope. And going through another round of outside consultants will just be throwing good money after bad, so Siemens really needs to avoid that option. They need people on the inside to drive the company forward, which means they need people in positions of power and influence who actually know how to drive. However, I doubt they even know where to look for people like that who could really help them straighten things out. It is not that hard to do for those who know what they are doing; it's virtually impossible for those like MR who don't understand and 'feel' the business.

And now, I think I'll make myself a nice scotch and soda .... and sit around for a while and just wait to groove on the rubble.

Cheers !

In an industry that is facing ever increasing pricing and cost pressures, it will be imperative to streamline platforms and assays to compete. Just can't see Siemens able to get this done within the next few years. Germany want 15-16% profit and just can't see that happening based on internal structures and industry dynamics.

I think we agree on mostly everything.
The longer Siemens waits, the more customers they lose. They will not be coming back either.
Any new platform is years away. I don't know of any "see all", "do all" instrument being developed in US at Siemens sites.
If outsourced, how embarrassing that would be also.

Tarrytown has changed a lot over the past decade. Siemens, as hard as it sounds, just continued to make it worse.
Llanberis, from what I hear, is falling apart. Onced again backorders and failed reagents plague the place...and Siemens puts a part-time Site Head in charge.
They need to replace HR with someone who understands the financials involved within all these Diagnostic Sites. MR, whom admittedly told everyone he knows nothing of Diagnostics, needs to be replaced with someone who understands the industry and "how things work".
Billions have gone to waste already. You would think someone would have learn't something by now. They haven't

It isn't simply three systems or four if you include Advia chemistry systems for larger volume labs. The far bigger issue is consolidation of sites and eliminating those that are not part of the future equation. Specifically, this means coming to a final resolution with respect to LA (and probably eventually Llanberis), and consolidating R&D to a single site rather than one each in NY, NJ, and Delaware. There is simply no substitute for the day-to-day contact among various R&D people and groups and, even with today's technology, electronic communication cannot do what face-to-face can do.

Siemens has tried to take steps with regard to Immulite. They cancelled development of ungraded systems, killed any plans to replace the solid support used on Immulite, and cut back drastically in LA. But somehow, they just can't seem to close the deal (maybe they just ran out of nails for the coffin). Siemens is still operating in the twilight zone with Vista which seems to be a system that is still not ready for prime time, and yet not quite bad enough to kill, in particular since they have no replacement for Vista right now.

I have been maintaining for a long time that if Siemens is to be successful, the will have to develop a single platform base for a future line of systems that include routine chemistry, special chemistry, and immunochemistry in terms of assays and have capabilities that meet the needs of small, medium and high volume labs (not necessarily reference labs, at this point). They also need to look at the former Dade (DuPont) chemistry reagents from the point of view of packaging costs which are probably considerably higher than the industry average, if so, represent a big drag on earnings.

Agenda 2013 and 2014 sound nice and warm and cozy and, at least, suggest some effort to look at the longer term. This is a welcome change from the culture that existed in Tarrytown for decades in which long term planning meant 6 months.

The two really big questions now are what will Agenda 2015 look like and when will it be announced and when, if ever, will Siemens come out with an integrated line of systems for the future rather than the hodge-podge mix they have today (e.g., is Trinidad real .... or is it just Memorex?).

The FDA issues are slowly being cleared up but you are correct on several counts.
The QA oursourcing from private companies was very expensive. It was determined by Siemens for US employee's to "foot the bill" by taking six months of their merit raise (January-June). Another demonstration on what they think of employee's.
You are also correct regarding customers bailing to competitors. True, majority will not be returning.
Agenda 2013 and the 2014 programs are clear examples on how badly DX has performed. First, dump your aging product lines at heavily discounted prices(China market) and secondly, selloff or shutdown low performing divisions.
The divisions in this case are Vista, Centaur and Immulite. Although all three are under same banner, each product line is handled separately. Now, I don't know what Siemens has planned with what gets cut but I do know it will happen.

Who is 'They'?

Did 'they' say what the cost was to Siemens to 'fix' things?

Did 'they' say that customers will return to Siemens for those methods that have been unavailable since the consent order?

I assume they did not mean 'fix' things the way Siemens has done in the past in Asia.

Either 'they' or you need to supply more detail for this to have any meaning.

They told me, that Siemens is about to solve the problem with the FDA.
Does anyone know if it is true?

Don't sweat it.
I totally agree with you. It's one thing googling for stats and another working in management and seeing everything firsthand.
China was a numbers quick fix since instrument sales weren't what you'd call a windfall. It did boost the numbers enough to keep Loescher from seeing red.
But China is a card you can only play once. It "might" stabilize the next few quarters but MR and HR are betting everything now on phase two, 2014. It gives them permission to get rid of all unnecessary underperforming instruments and sites...and take the loss now.
It was a two stage attack. Agenda 2013--dump as much as you can at bargain basement prices. 2014--shutdown & closeout the line. They can still keep providing reagents as that slowly dries up.
The Chinese might even buy the line themselves and move all reagent manufacturing to China. Cheaper, faster, they dominate the asian marketplace.
Siemens hasn't even broken even yet on the initial cost of DX. But taking the loss now is far cheaper than later. Look how many billions were wasted on a failed integration. Even MR admitted that at the last conference he gave here.
China, Agenda 2013 and 2014 are a bubble. When it burst things will get very nasty.

I'm sorry, but I don't ask questions to which I alredy have the answers. If I did have the answers, I would have simply posted them. The purpose of my previous post was to flush out several other important pieces of data upon which we could more rationally evaluate claims of the recent successes of Siemens DX. Selling off an old line of products to the Chinese is a tactic that may allow for a year or two of good numbers, but it is far from a strategy to regain a role as a major player in DX worldwide. The answers to the questions I posed would go a long way towards establishing the true situation with Siemens DX.

If you want to call it wind, be my guest. That response to my request only suggests that the truth does not simply reside in the limited data you provided. I can only believe that your negative response and attempt to impugn my honesty is an attempt to hide something and deflect attention away from the whole picture.

Nice stats. I just wonder if you have just a few more, please.

What is the Siemens market share in diagnostics in terms of systems placed and tests run. Can you compare the 2012 numbers to the numbers for the past 4-5 years so we can have a legitimate perspective.

Well, 5 minutes of googling didn't turn up any reliable stats on market share. Any chance you can answer your own question? Do you have *any* numbers behind what you say? If so, please share them. If not, just wind, my friend.

Yes, nice stats.
Why? Agenda 2013 Garage sale to mainly China. This is a one shot deal. No other country is buying into these old instruments unless they were sold at bargain basement prices.
Agenda 2013 is mainly DX related.
2014 is for all of Siemens regarding overall sales. How will this effect DX? Loescher was clear enough. Underperforming divisions will face massive cutbacks, discontinued or sold off if possible.
The minor quarterly financial bump was basically a "chemo" dose with a Chinese Label. Just adds to the DX bubble.
Why would a company which supposedly was doing so well penalize its employees by holding back 6 months of a merit raise? This is also only US DX employees so Siemens can payoff the outsourced QA assistance regarding the ongoing FDA issues.
Company's like Roche love Divisions like DX as we handoff a constant supply of customers each and every quarter to them.
Any new platforms, even if being worked on, are a good 5years off. Without major cutbacks, the DX division will not last that long will all three Dade, Bayer and DPC facilities and products as they are today. Financially it never made sense.
The in-house employee survey, at most sites, slaughtered Siemens despite the damage control still going on today. We hear about it everyday at Tarrytown and how management demands Directors and Supervisors to fix the problem.
Wasn't it suppose to be anonymous? They white lied. The survey was broken down by each site and department.

Nice stats. I just wonder if you have just a few more, please.

What is the Siemens market share in diagnostics in terms of systems placed and tests run. Can you compare the 2012 numbers to the numbers for the past 4-5 years so we can have a legitimate perspective.

What will be the products of the future? Is Siemens just planning to survive on upgraded Dimensions and Centaurs and limp along with Advia Chemistry systems and Vista? (What are Vista sales numbers for the past 3-4 years? and what are Vista reagent sales like?)

The reason that so many of us have heard that one can prove anything with statistics is that too many statistics people based their conclusions on a subset of data that proves their preconceived notions. So let us see all the numbers (like those above) before you ask us to accept your faith that Siemens is turning around and will be a force to deal with in the future.

On the other hand, if you cannot supply the above information, we can still appreciate all of the hot air on a cold winter's day.

While I admire and smile at your ability to swallow the company line I hope you also have two good eyes and ears.
You will see and hear a company that is having a ton of trouble trying to keep up with the roches of the world and you will hear that way too many of the employees that can only be described as disgruntled. You will also see incompetent region and middle managers who have pictures in the dictionary next to the word 'clueless'. You will see upper management that thinks the bayer (or dade or dpc) way is the best and when all this collective management is done wiping the brown stains off their collective noses all that remains is chaos. No one knows how to run this division and where it is going.
Good luck, and keep up that attitude!
You too could be management material.