Kalypso

Digital transformation is always a significant undertaking, but add the context of global operations in the mission critical and quality-conscious field of medical services and the effort becomes even more daunting. Such was the scenario for Fresenius Medical Care (FMC), a $20 billion company seeking to modernize dozens of manufacturing sites globally that provide outpatient kidney dialysis products and solutions to some 350,000 patients worldwide.

As this examination of FMC’s case shows, the company’s approach to transformation involved a massive process makeover to implement a global product lifecycle management (PLM) system. In doing do, FMC was able to generate “digital twins” of every product in its portfolio–enabling a collaborative, global culture of “design anywhere, build anywhere, ship anywhere” flexibility in operations.

Business Challenge Header

FMC employs more than 120,000 workers at 30 research and development and manufacturing sites around the world. Yet despite this global reach, FMC found itself hindered by a regionally-focused, paper-based mindset. This made collaboration across global product teams exceedingly difficult and slowed development cycles and time to revenue.

Inefficiencies included outdated methodologies, duplicated work efforts, manual transfer of product data between disconnected systems, lack of automation and non-accessibility of systems on a global scale. All of this threatened long-term growth, especially in context of next-generation therapy systems whose design and operation needed to involve highly connected IoT systems. 

To address these unique business challenges, FMC undertook an aggressive modernization effort –a comprehensive PLM transformation program to realize digital twins of all the company’s products globally. Digitaltwin simulation capabilities allow companies to create virtual representations of physical assets for real-time monitoring and control of those assets. For FMC, this could translate into increased efficiency in product teams, higher product quality and simplified administrative efforts. Most of all and, the PLM/digital twin capabilities would enable more seamless global collaboration around design, building and shipping of products.

Cross Disciplinary Collaboration for Enhanced Execution and ROI

The effort began in 2016 as a four-to-six-year business transformation. Very early on, FMC engaged Rockwell Automation and other external partners with the needed business and technical expertise; while also convening a corps of global topic owners (GTO) and expert groups within the FMC workforce to represent every capability throughout the organization.

These stakeholders collaborated closely with the business team, a technical/solution team, a cloud team, cybersecurity group and training team, as well as a global 24/5 support team devoted to implementing the transformation effort. The project roadmap consisted of four phases that could be implemented to progressively deliver value to the FMC product team, with minimal disruption to ongoing production.

ROI quickly accrued from the transformation in the form of better collaboration, enhanced digital processes and a lower administrative burden. The value continues to grow as PLM/digital twin team members embed into new areas of the business to drive adoption beyond initial program scope targets like requirements management, product structure and parts and bill of materials management -- and into new use cases involving unique device identification, manufacturing process management, product cost management and other areas.

Conclusion

FMC continues to reap benefits from a transformation that is still going on today. As the successful rollout continues, it’s a growing lesson on the power of PLM and digital twin capabilities to reap value for organizations through production efficiencies, accelerated time to market and other business operational improvements.