Interaction With Siemens Engineers
GOA : 13.01.2004
ADDRESS
I am delighted to be here with the Siemens India Ltd., at Goa. I am happy to note that you are in medical equipment business and your main products are ultra sound and x-ray equipments. One of uniqueness of this factory is that, assembly and testing plant is co-located with the R&D Centre. This will facilitate producing next generation versions of equipments much more easily than the conventional technology transfer.
Your R&D effort must be directed towards producing state of the art equipment at an affordable cost. Your R&D Centre could be used to generate new type of medical equipment and also produce human resource which can undertake entrepreneurship of the new product. This will enable you to network with number of entrepreneurs and produce cost effective systems. To a certain extend, you are already getting the subsystems from the different vendors locally for the ultra sound and the x-ray project. This policy should be extended to generate new entrepreneurs for the full range of products.
I am not fully sure how much you are now importing components and subsystems for your products. If you want to be cost effective and competitive it is essential that equipments must be made with totally indigenous components and subsystems. This will be one of the key tasks of the R&D establishments to find functionally substitutable indigenous systems. It will also enable you to export the products to other countries in a competitive manner.
To improve your business, you can consider providing mobile diagnostic systems on wheels to the hospitals in a cost effective manner as a package. This will enable bigger hospitals to move around the villages and provide diagnostics services with out the need for the patients to go to the towns. Also you can have a scheme by which you can lease the equipment to government hospitals.
Your mission should be focused on providing improved, cost effective and quality health care systems to all. Become the partner to the mission of developed India by 2020.
I wish you all success.