Siemens Healthcare uses Teamcenter to meet the needs of partners
Globally we are all facing tough challenges at home, and the challenges at work are not stopping. With all of the attention right now on our health and healthcare systems, it’s a good time to take a look at a Teamcenter customer helping us face the crisis with products that are ready to fight on the front lines.
Siemens Healthcare (Healthineers) is one of the world‘s largest suppliers to the healthcare industry and a trendsetter in medical imaging, laboratory diagnostics, medical information technology, and hearing aids. Siemens Healthcare consolidated their product systems engineering requirements into a single system using the Teamcenter portfolio.
The diagnostic group within Siemens Healthcare has grown through acquisitions in recent years, combining three disparate groups under a single umbrella. “Each had different backgrounds from a systems engineering viewpoint,” says Gerrit Salemink, director of engineering at Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics. “And each had different ways to capture and monitor requirements. Tracking requirements or sharing of information among the different groups was difficult.”
The groups were using an internally-developed database system, Excel® spreadsheets and Word® documents, a mix that was difficult to maintain. “We wanted to harmonize the requirements engineering process,” notes Salemink. “A major motivator was the need to generate accurate and consistent bills of materials (BOMs).” An accurate and complete BOM is crucial for manufacturing any product, but even more so in the healthcare industry. Regulators such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) conduct thorough reviews of healthcare products prior to use on human subjects and require detailed information on every aspect of medical devices.
Easy access to knowledge
Because Teamcenter is closely integrated with Word and Excel, the new requirements system enables engineers to interact with Teamcenter via these familiar Microsoft Office® software tools. “No one is working directly with Teamcenter itself,” Salemink notes. “They simply use the Office tools they are accustomed to working with.”
“We’ve seen some qualitative benefits of using Teamcenter,” says Salemink. “Re-use of requirements has increased and we can now do things we never could do before. We are more platform-oriented, which enables us to see the product as a whole. In the near future, we expect to be able to re-use from 70 to 80 percent of requirements.”
Re-using requirements enables the diagnostics group to better manage product variants, which improves productivity. “Now, everyone has access to the same data,” says Salemink. “Instead of managing three separate systems, everything our users need is in a single place.”
Users include medical technicians conducting chemical analysis in hospital laboratories, for example. “Teamcenter is going to help us move towards being more of a solution-driven organization that will be better able to capture user needs and deliver products that meet those needs,” says Salemink.
“Using Teamcenter has really facilitated the coming together of our three groups,” says Salemink. “It has been a key tool in helping us re-align. Teamcenter is very configurable and that helps improve productivity while enabling us to reduce errors and rework.”
Read more about Siemens Healthcare’s Teamcenter story. Siemens Healthineers is committed to supporting their partners in the healthcare system to provide the best possible care for patients during this health crisis. Siemens Healthineers recently released a test kit for Coronavirus COVID-19. The test kit will help detect SARS-CoV-2, the cause of COVID-19.
The coronavirus pandemic continues to spread, confronting healthcare professionals around the world with unprecedented clinical and operational challenges. Siemens Digital Industries Software President and CEO, Tony Hemmelgarn, posted a public statement on how we are supporting our customers, partners, and employees during the COVID-19 pandemic.
