Project Description

Medical Devices Failed Product Launch

Business background

Physiolab since 2007 had been developing a physiotherapy 13405 medically certified heating / cooling and compression device to aid recovery called Elite. The business had spent £9.5m  developing this product and had many failed attempts to get the product to market, caused by over commitment, in service failures and quality issues. This led to a significant loss in in house, investor and customer confidence

Ability to integrate into the client company

From day 1 Tom took ownership of the product development, supply chain and operation. He established a team review of the issues and stopped all further development with a focus on achieving robust analysis of the product’s robustness and getting the existing product stable and fit for relaunch. In 3 months, the product was analysed and corrective actions put into place to get the product robust and on sale. In parallel the plan was established to launch a market entry level product called S1 and platform to compete at a more competitive price point. It was established that the internally led design team were not capable so an alternative was established along with a selected manufacturer was established and the founder / owner was moved into a non exec / concept role.

Impact on the business / bottom line

The manufacturing line was established to produce the elite product. The new medically certified entry level s1 product was launched in 6 months at a development costs of £350k. This technology and supply chain became the platform for the further 4 product iterations.

Achievement of objectives

The original assumptions for the for the s1 launch timeline of April were shown to be further over commitments, so were realigned accordingly to June. Because of the complexity of the product the launch and approval schedule was finally realised in July.

Working style

Resourceful, Very collaborative, people development centric with a high degree of business and product analysis and implementation. Coached the executive team to resolve behaviours and communication that had got the business into trouble and wasted so much time and money.

Leadership / people management skills

Unafraid to make the tough calls to move the owner / founder into a non exec role, yet built a robust team and organisation. Worked with the young technical director to develop his concurrent engineering and put the exec reporting structure in place aligned with the product strategy