Drug Delivery Device Aftermarket Service

Helping a major healthcare OEM keep their promises.

Aftermarket service can be a tough thing to entrust to an outside provider. It’s your brand and reputation on the line. See how Plexus took on the challenge for a leading manufacturer of a medical device — dramatically reducing costs, cutting turnaround times and improving quality. All to keep their products where they’re needed most — delivering life-saving care to patients.

Solution Spotlight

CUSTOMER:

Major Healthcare OEM

PRODUCT:

Drug Delivery Device Aftermarket Service

SOLUTIONS:

Aftermarket Services

Drug delivery systems are hardworking medical devices.

At any given time, in any given hospital room, health care providers — and the patients they’re serving — are counting on drug delivery devices to function accurately. Medical teams rely on them to deliver needed liquid nutrients, fluids, and life-saving medications with extreme precision.

Because drug delivery devices are so prevalent, repair, maintenance and eventual replacement are inevitabilities. And when a device needs service, it’s critical to get it back up and running, fast.

Our customer, a major healthcare OEM, needed to find a new solution for providing that service. Every year, they would receive up to 35,000 devices for repair and maintenance. Each of those devices would need to be repaired, tested, properly calibrated and returned to its waiting owner — quickly and accurately. But keeping up with that volume and doing it consistently was a challenge. Turnaround times were too long. Quality issues were cropping up, causing additional service requests. Costs to provide aftermarket services were hard to control, and customer satisfaction was suffering.

As one of the top medical device companies in the world, our customer needed a better solution. That’s when they turned to Plexus.

Turning the corner toward world-class aftermarket service.

Your product and reputation are on the line when you entrust aftermarket repair and service to an outside provider. If there’s a failure, if service turnaround times are too long, if there are quality issues or compliance-related recalls — all of it can damage a brand and impact revenues. In some cases, an entire business can be put at risk.

So we needed to prove ourselves. Plexus had to prove that we could provide a better solution and higher-quality service. And we had to demonstrate that we would both protect and actively build the manufacturer’s brand through flawless execution.

To provide this service well, the Plexus team would have to replicate the know-how and experience of the medical device manufacturer’s own people. Repairing these devices requires not only understanding the complexity of the product, but also the ability to solve problems you may never have encountered. Problems that require intimate knowledge of the product and its use.

Our team proved to be up to the challenge. Not only did the Plexus team get up to speed quickly, but we were also able to bring innovations to the table that dramatically improved the repair, testing and tracking processes.

Together with the customer, we were able to optimize processes and save cost by reducing the footprint necessary for service by about 50%. Our team implemented a unit tracking system, which provides valuable data that drives greater efficiency of service. Tracking each device throughout the process allows for faster turnaround times and less downtime for the healthcare providers who own the devices.

Plexus helped the customer achieve a 25% cost reduction for aftermarket service.

Strengthening a truly invested relationship.

The healthcare OEM started the relationship cautiously, testing us out with a smaller contract. Our results — improving efficiency, reducing cost by a quarter, cutting turnaround times by up to a half — convinced the customer to move all of their drug delivery device aftermarket services to us. They knew their business was in good hands.

One key to the continued success of our relationship has come down to communication — and to our seamless integration with the customer as an extension of their own team. From the beginning of our relationship and to this day, our dedicated team is available and in constant contact with the customer, at multiple levels throughout the company. We’re engaged in weekly operational and engineering reviews, continually tracking metrics, holding quarterly discussions with leadership, and staying in daily communication to cover all the execution details.

Underlying all of this, another powerful motivator has continued to drive the Plexus team … there are real people counting on these devices every day. We know that any one of us could find ourselves or someone we love in a position where these very devices mean the difference between receiving care or not. Where getting a drug delivery device back to the hospital could mean there’s one more bed available for someone who needs it. Where a properly functioning medical device could make a life-saving impact. That’s the kind of passion and care that inspires the Plexus team in everything we do.

Keeping the promise of better patient care.

Working with Plexus to provide aftermarket repair and maintenance for their drug delivery devices has made a massive impact for this medical device manufacturer — and for the health care providers and patients they serve. The turnaround process - from return to repair, to back and working in the hospital - has been improved by up to 50%. Our customer has realized a 25% reduction in cost for the service program. Quality issues that were previously common have been significantly reduced. Compliance issues resulting in recalls have been all but eliminated.

Being able to rely on Plexus to provide fast, consistently high-quality aftermarket service means our major healthcare OEM partner has also been able to increase revenue. Today, they can confidently offer warranty and service contracts that build their business, strengthen their brand and provide increased value to happier customers.

Most of all, the health care providers who rely on these drug delivery devices are able to keep their facilities properly equipped. Which means more patients can receive life-saving care and treatment. And that’s the metric that makes all the difference.

Plexus cut turnaround times by up to 50%, increased quality and consistency, and provided a predictable cost model that allows the customer to confidently offer aftermarket service as a revenue stream.

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