General Devices Grows to Meet Demand

Background:

For over 30 years, General Devices (GD) has been the leader in providing products and solutions for connecting EMS prehospital care providers with emergency medicine in the hospital.

As GD’s products handle thousands of ambulance emergency calls a day, GD believes strongly in streamlining response time for efficient customer service. Designing such product innovations as the CAREpoint™ Workstation and e-Bridge Mobile Telemedicine, enabling hospital emergency departments to access all EMS-hospital communications from a single device, GD has made it their mission to provide Responsive Innovation to those first responders and hospitals working to provide emergency care to the public.

Challenge:

In keeping with their goal of delivering top quality to their clients, GD acquired new technologies to offer the most modern means of service and expand their reach. As the need for their services continued to grow, GD became concerned they would not be able to meet the rapidly increasing demand. Along with this growth came a need for a more streamlined sales approach, as well as the management teams necessary to handle the increase.

Solution:

NJMEP employed Lean manufacturing techniques to help implement newer, more efficient business practices into GD’s operation. By doing so, NJMEP enabled GD to integrate the latest technology into their services, allowing them to better help clients and continue their growth by incorporating NJMEP’s expertise. Several training programs were initiated to facilitate GD’s needs.

Training Programs Included:

• Admin Lean
• GMP Awareness
• Customer Service
• Managing People and Performance
• Innovation Training

Using the newly acquired Lean training, General Devices was able to parse out administrative roles to an expanded Admin team. This addition not only increased productivity but enabled them to add products to their product line, further increasing sales.

Results:

NJMEP provided the knowledge and resources necessary to implement Lean Manufacturing practices for General Devices. The following are a direct result of those improvements.

•     Increased Sales: $50,000.00
•     Retained Sales: $200,000.00
•     Cost Savings: $80,000.00

Along with employing Lean to reduce waste and increase productivity, GD was able to grow the size of their sales team, enabling them to focus on growing their business.

“As a New Jersey-based manufacturer of medical devices and software, we appreciate NJMEP’s assistance in improving our company’s operations through their training programs, which have helped us maintain our competitive advantage.”

• Curt Bashford, CEO