The Bio/Pharmaceutical and Medical Devices industry is a growing industry experiencing increasing competition and stricter regulatory standards. The three major challenges for this industry are effectively expanding globally, dealing with massive change and reducing costs in order to maintain healthy margins.

While many Bio/Pharmaceutical and Medical Device companies are fairly sophisticated in terms of standard leadership development, lean six sigma, balanced scorecard, dashboards and steering committees, the challenge is maintaining cross-functional leadership at middle management levels in order to breakdown silo behavior between different functional groups.

For over 15 years, IMPAQ has assisted many companies in this industry to create clear alignment between senior and middle management groups. As a result operational excellence improves dramatically by reducing conflicting priorities, effectively managing resources and developing high performance teams that have a sense of focus and urgency in accomplishing projects. As a result, manufacturing plants have reduced inventory, cycle time and transformed the culture from a single product plant to a multi-product facility.

This industry is being hammered to lower operating costs, improve quality and patient satisfaction in order to survive the on-going changes in the healthcare worldwide. While the US is experiencing the impacts of the Health Care Reform Act, other countries are experiencing their own major cut backs in resources. New technology in the form of Medical Electronic Records is a major change and expense that medical centers have been dealing with for some time.

Peter Drucker said in a speech to the University of California, Irvine, Hospitals are the most complex organization that exists. It is based on this complexity that silo’s are easily created between clinical, ancillary and operational departments. Because the culture is very service oriented, often times people aren’t held accountable for performance, communication and teamwork other than what is required by healthcare standards.

Since 1983, IMPAQ has assisted medical centers to dramatically and quickly lower operating costs, to improve patient satisfaction, increase access to physicians by patients and develop high performing leadership teams. Some organizations have moved from being in the 4^th quartile in measurable performance to the 1^st quartile in measurable performance within 12 months. In other cases we have assisted Medical Centers in reducing their operating costs by millions of dollars within a few short months. Our key competency is breaking down silo behavior between departments and building cross-functional teamwork and accountability. Operational excellence improves along with employee morale, which is critical for retaining high performers in a competitive landscape.

The challenge facing manufacturing plants involves reducing operational costs while increasing quality and safety standards. The use of new technology, new equipment and the use of lean six sigma practices have largely been developed by manufacturing plants to improve operational excellence.

However, many manufacturing plants still suffer from silo behavior between operations, quality, and maintenance departments. When productivity becomes a challenge, too often, safety and quality standards are compromised. Then, there is the coordination challenges between marketing, sales and manufacturing that results in crisis and breakdown.

IMPAQ has worked with manufacturing plants for over 20 years to help develop the senior and middle management teams in order to breakdown silo behavior, plan major change efforts that result in plant shut down, and assist the organization in moving problem solving and decision making down the organization through meaningful employee engagement. The result has been to improve cross-functional coordination and teamwork, increase the success for massive change efforts, and develop top performing leaders from middle management levels.

The success of high technology and engineering organizations, and IT departments rests on their ability to achieve projects on schedule, on budget and with full attainment of deliverables. The challenge is the demand of IT services, keeping up with changing technology, the number of projects, and the limited number of resources.

These organizations have great expertise in program and project management. Unfortunately, their success is not only determined by their ability to manage projects, but also given their challenges they must have impeccable cross-functional coordination and accountability for areas outside of the control of the project team. This could involve departments like purchasing, supply chain, contracting, and even HR.

IMPAQ has been working with IT and Engineering organizations and IT departments for over 15 years. We have assisted a global IT department made up of 2,000 employees transform their structure from being decentralized to centralized within 9 months. IMPAQ has also assisted IT/Engineering organizations to significantly improve project performance by reducing costs, increasing on time schedules and improving customer satisfaction.

Petroleum and Pipeline companies are continually pressured to improve efficiencies and lower costs. Besides using lean and six sigma improvement programs, they also apply advanced technology to develop better metrics, improve efficiencies and better utilize resources.

The challenge in these industries is to continually reduce costs, manage projects effectively and provide excellent customer service. Often times, silo behavior between departments and competing priorities can cause major delays in project completion and wasted resources in coordination breakdowns between departments.

IMPAQ has assisted petroleum and pipeline companies for 20 years. We have provided our Leadership Accountability System to rapidly change the culture of execution necessary to support the implementation of new technology. IMPAQ’s services helped to improve project effectiveness, develop leaders within middle management, and improved employee engagement for resolving cross-functional breakdowns. In addition, IMPAQ has supported its clients in developing more effective working relationships and accountability with their key suppliers.

Small and medium sized companies are generally in the state of constant growth or change in order to respond to market conditions. As organizations grow or must respond to change, the culture must also be developed over time. Yet, with limited resources, there may not be the same deliberate attention to the culture as it is on the growth of the organization.

Over time, small breakdowns turn into crisis when silos are created between departments, when people aren’t being effectively held accountable for performance, and when competing priorities cause confusion and conflict at all levels. It’s critical for small and medium sized business to develop leadership in order to have consistent standards and expectations, and to develop the organizations future leaders, or growth will be undermined by poor bench strength.

IMPAQ has assisted organizations to develop strong leadership teams that are well aligned and cross-functionally coordinated and accountable the seamless organization. IMPAQ has assisted small and medium sized organizations make the transition from thriving based on individual heroes to developing functional team excellence, and eventually developing cross-functional teamwork and accountability. As a result, leadership and performance standards are developed, accountability at all levels increases, and project performance/customer service increases.

Nuclear and utility plants are highly regulated industries with high standards for safety, productivity and efficiency. Besides the pressure to continue increasing performance standards expected by INPO, the NRC and other regulatory organizations, there is the constant pressure to reduce operating costs.

In addition, the costs and operational difficulties to deal with forced and unforced outages require cross-functional and multi-level coordination under extreme conditions. Sometimes, the number of corrective actions to address from regulatory visits can become overwhelming especially for plants with low performance scores.

IMPAQ has been assisting nuclear and utility plants for over 15 years. As a result, most plants that have implemented IMPAQ Leadership Accountability Systems have improved their regulatory scores, achieved their outage on time or ahead of schedule, and improved employee engagement. In addition, outstanding corrective actions were significantly reduced ahead of schedule.