Episode Transcript
0:00:06 Tom Salemi: This is Tom Salemi of DeviceTalks. Welcome back to the Structural Heart Talks podcast. We’ve got a really fascinating conversation about supply chain going on at Edwards Lifesciences. I was really fortunate to speak with Joe Nuzzolese, who’s the corporate vice president of global supply chain and quality at Edwards Lifesciences. Edwards, of course, is building out its structural heart business and like any MedTech, it faces some supply chain challenges.
0:00:31 Tom Salemi: This interview was recorded before all the conversations about tariffs and whatnot. So we won’t get into that, but we’ll, we’ll delve deep into the responsibilities and challenges that Joe is able to meet at Edwards. So I know you’ll enjoy this conversation with Joe Nuzzolese. Very informative and really fun guy to talk to. So before we begin that conversation though, I want to introduce another fun conversation between our managing editor, Kayleen Brown and the fine, fine folks at this episode’s sponsor, Daikin.
0:01:02 Kayleen Brown: Dr. Matthew Orr, Technical team lead for Daikin America. Welcome to the podcast.
0:01:10 Matthew Orr: Thank you so much for having me. And please feel free to call me Matt.
0:01:14 Kayleen Brown: Fab, thank you. So, Matt, as I understand it, last year was Daikin’s 100 year anniversary. Congratulations.
0:01:22 Matthew Orr: Thank you so much. Yeah, it was an exciting time, definitely.
0:01:25 Kayleen Brown: And for our audience, who I’d be shocked if they don’t know who Daikin is after 100 years. But will you please tell us about Daikin?
0:01:33 Matthew Orr: Yes. So we have a presence globally in over 170 countries. We have nearly 100,000 employees and then within Daikin actually work in Daikin’s chemical division, where we are the largest manufacturer of fluorochemical products in the world.
0:01:47 Kayleen Brown: One, I didn’t know that. Two, I want to learn more about you. So where are you based then, Matt?
0:01:54 Matthew Orr: Yes, I’m actually located at our technical center in Decatur, Alabama, where we’re actually just across the highway from our manufacturing facility in the United States, where I can actually just look out the window and wave at my friends across the street there. Right now we provide fluorochemicals that go into a wide range of essential applications, including medical and life sciences, which would, of course, include medical device, pharma, and biopharma.
0:02:21 Matthew Orr: And then within the technical center, I’m here along with my colleagues to provide technical support for our existing customers and new customers as well, where whether it be supporting existing applications with our current materials or providing new products and developing new products for innovative solutions to tackle the next new and exciting challenge that may be out there.
0:02:48 Kayleen Brown: You mentioned that Daikin is the largest manufacturer of fluorochemical products in the world, for the lay people like myself can you please help us understand why fluorochemicals are used so extensively in MedTech?
0:03:05 Matthew Orr: Absolutely yeah. So fluorochemicals, the base of that is fluorine, the atom, and that atom on its own is a really reactive material, really reactive element. But once it bonds to something, for example, like a carbon in a polymer, that carbon fluorine is a really strong bond. That fluorine is really happy with getting to bond with something else rather quickly. And so because of that, that carbon fluorine bond doesn’t really want to interact with anything else. It’s happy the way it is.
0:03:38 Matthew Orr: So that leads to some really interesting properties that are really attractive to MedTech. This includes high purity, so there’s low extractables and leachables. It includes just being chemically inert. So like I said that fluorine really doesn’t want to interact with anything else, including other acids or bases or really nasty chemicals that may come across with some of these devices. And then it also leads to interesting mechanical performance such as low friction.
0:04:13 Matthew Orr: So it has really great lubricity, which in, you know, MedTech means that something can slide in and out of the body rather easily, which I know personally would want that. So it’s a more comfortable experience whenever going to the doctor’s office, but then also leads to biocompatibility as well.
0:04:36 Kayleen Brown: We’re going to take a quick break from my interview with Daikin America’s Dr. Matt Orr to bring you our interview with Joe Nuzzolese, Corporate VP, Global Supply Chain and Quality at Edwards Lifesciences. But if you can’t wait to learn more about Daikin America, please visit their website. That’s daikin-america.com. Daikin-America.com.
0:05:01 Tom Salemi: Well, Joe Nuzzolese, welcome to the podcast.
0:05:04 Joe Nuzzolese: Thank you very much. Good to see you, Tom.
0:05:05 Tom Salemi: Great to be here talking about Edwards and talking about supply chain, which everyone has become a supply chain expert over the last couple of years with all that’s gone on. But I actually went to an expert expert about both supply chain and MedTech. So before we get into that though, I’d like to understand how you found your way into the medical device industry.
0:05:23 Joe Nuzzolese: So when I was in college, I went to school for engineering. I was an electrical engineer by training and one of my first jobs, or the first job actually that I got was an intern for Johnson and Johnson at the time in pharmaceuticals. And that’s how I started my career. So I started at JJ. I worked in pharmaceuticals actually for the first 27 years of my career.
0:05:46 Tom Salemi: Okay.
0:05:46 Joe Nuzzolese: And then I moved over to Edwards just about eight years ago.
0:05:50 Tom Salemi: So what was the move and when did the move to operations or supply chain happen? And does your electrical engineering career factor into that or?
0:05:58 Joe Nuzzolese: Well, it did.
0:05:59 Tom Salemi: Your education, not your career, but your education?
0:06:01 Joe Nuzzolese: Yeah, yeah. So when I first started, I started as an engineer and I worked in a variety of different engineering disciplines, mostly in pharmaceuticals, probably for the first eight years of my career. And then around year eight of my career, one of my bosses approached me and said, would you be interested in moving over to manufacturing and working in supply chain? I said, sure, it’d be something I’d be interested in. I didn’t know a lot about it because most of my background had been technical.
0:06:29 Joe Nuzzolese: At that point. I moved over into manufacturing. I became actually at the time, a third shift manufacturing supervisor, believe it or not.
0:06:37 Tom Salemi: Is that overnight?
0:06:39 Joe Nuzzolese: Yeah, exactly. It was midnight to 8:00am oh, lovely. In the morning. And it was actually still one of the most formidable, formidable jobs that I’ve had, I think. And the reason is you’re a supervisor by yourself with 200 people on third shift.
0:06:55 Tom Salemi: Wow.
0:06:55 Joe Nuzzolese: Yeah. So you certainly learn a lot quickly.
0:06:58 Tom Salemi: Yeah, I bet.
0:06:59 Joe Nuzzolese: But one of the things that I learned was how much I really loved being in supply chain and manufacturing. And so from that point forward, I continued my career essentially developing it in manufacturing and in supply chain.
0:07:12 Tom Salemi: What was it about supply chain that you liked? And talk a bit about the process. Give us kind of an overview of what supply chain actually means and what it entails.
0:07:22 Joe Nuzzolese: Sure. Well, a lot of people, I think, misinterpret supply chain, but supply chain, in a company like ours as an example, incorporates everything. The simple way to think about it is we call it plan, make, source, deliver, which is how do you procure materials? How do you manufacture them into a finished product? You know, certainly, how do you apply the right quality principles to them? But finally, how do you deliver them to your patient? You know, how are they receiving them at the tail end of all of that. So that’s essentially how people think about supply chain. The parts that often aren’t considered is there’s a huge responsibility as well at the beginning of the process, which is when we develop products.
0:07:59 Joe Nuzzolese: So from development, we have R&D engineers, obviously that develop products, but now you have to make them manufacturable. And all of that responsibility is part of the supply chain responsibility as we would define it today.
0:08:12 Tom Salemi: So early on, you’re acquiring the materials, you’re acquiring the parts.
0:08:16 Joe Nuzzolese: Correct.
0:08:17 Tom Salemi: You’re doing everything. Everything that goes into a medical device, you have to go out and find it somewhere.
0:08:21 Joe Nuzzolese: Correct.
0:08:21 Tom Salemi: Interesting.
0:08:22 Joe Nuzzolese: Yeah. So we have to find the right suppliers that supply the components that you need to make a, a product. You know, obviously they have to be the right suppliers, right quality. So it starts with procurement, you know, finding, sourcing the right parts and then converting them obviously into the product that you’re manufacturing.
0:08:40 Tom Salemi: How is it, how you’ve been in life sciences with supply chain your entire career, but I’m sure you’ve had conversations with other supply chain counterparts. Outside of life sciences and MedTech, are there any big differences? I mean, you’re dealing with a lot of different materials.
0:08:54 Joe Nuzzolese: Yeah.
0:08:57 Tom Salemi: Are there differences in between MedTech and life sciences and other industries where supply chain and other industries?
0:09:02 Joe Nuzzolese: There’s a lot of differences, but there’s a lot of similarities as well, you know. So let me talk about the similarities first. You know, at its most basic level, you know, whether you’re making electronics or whether you’re making consumer packaged goods, or whether you’re making pharmaceuticals or you’re making medical devices, you’re doing the same types of things. You’re taking raw materials, you’re converting them into a finished product, and you’re distribute, distributing them to your customers.
0:09:26 Joe Nuzzolese: So that’s kind of the basic, the basics of it and how it works. However, here are the differences. The things that you value from a supply chain and how you manage your supply chain differs greatly. You know, as an example, in a consumer packaged goods company, you know, you could be making millions, if not billions of units, you know, so every cent of the product that you manufacture matters. So consequently, there’s a large and significant time spent, if you will, on the cost of the product.
0:09:57 Joe Nuzzolese: Also, their margins tend to be smaller. But when you look at, for example, a pharmaceutical or in the life sciences industry, one of the big focuses is on the quality of the product. You want a perfect product every time, and so you spend more time on the quality of the product. You spend more time on having the perfect product, and you want to have it available for your customers all of the time, because you can’t have a sick patient, for example, that doesn’t have product available.
0:10:25 Joe Nuzzolese: So of course, that’s not to say that cost doesn’t matter, but it’s not the primary driver. So there’s differences in terms of how you manage the supply chain and what you prioritize based on the type of industry that you’re in.
0:10:38 Tom Salemi: And I imagine with new technologies coming, and again, any industry has new technologies being incorporated in their products. But MedTech and life sciences, we’re seeing more with sensors, more with other technologies. I imagine you’re being charged or your group is being charged with finding different types of devices or pieces or parts for products that we haven’t seen before.
0:10:57 Joe Nuzzolese: Yeah, no, absolutely. Kind of as technology develops, we call them. So in our industry lingo, right? We call them NUDs. N, U, D. New, unique and different technologies.
0:11:10 Tom Salemi: Fun to say.
0:11:11 Joe Nuzzolese: Yeah, NUDs, exactly. So the idea is, of course there’s common parts and supplies that you purchase for all types of products. Right. But as well as, for example, if you talk about sensors, that would be a consideration of what we would call a NUD or new unique and specific technology that we might use. If you’re in a high tech environment where you’re doing a lot of innovative research, you’re coming up with new innovations, you deal with a lot of new types of products, new types of components, new types of materials that are necessary and importantly, new manufacturing techniques that are required and that are often significantly more difficult than kind of traditional manufacturing.
0:11:56 Joe Nuzzolese: And that’s the uniqueness about being in an innovative environment versus being in a, I’ll call it a ‘me too’ or commodity environment.
0:12:05 Tom Salemi: How often do you interact with and employ or contract with smaller manufacturers and suppliers and bring in their unique skill sets or their unique abilities into the process?
0:12:17 Joe Nuzzolese: Yeah, I would say quite often because often, you know, kind of on this concept of new unique, you know, types of components or devices, you know, as an example, a lot of times the innovators of those are smaller types of companies. You know, they tend to be startups or they could be smaller companies versus big companies that are large scale manufacturers. So in those cases with new technologies, often you might find that you’re dealing with a lot of smaller contractors or subcontractors, if you will, suppliers, you know, if you will, you know. Whereas if you’re buying large scale commodity type products, you know, then you’re dealing with larger firms typically.
0:12:53 Tom Salemi: How are you? Let’s…
0:12:54 Tom Salemi: I’ve got COVID on my mind the past three years and I kind of want to, I keep putting it off, but let’s just get it out there because it was such a fascinating time for supply chain. It’s when everyone went from not knowing what you did, to having opinions on what you needed to do. And I’m sure you were very popular at barbecues once they, they became something we could all partake in again.
0:13:14 Tom Salemi: What was life like at Edwards, supply chain-wise, before COVID and then talk about sort of how the pandemic changed things?
0:13:21 Joe Nuzzolese: Sure. Well, one of the things from an Edwards perspective, one of the things that we valued a lot is our patient focus. And as such, this is pre-COVID. Now I’m talking about one of the things we did from when we created a global supply chain, so that was about eight years ago, is we focused on creating resiliency in our supply chain. And we could talk more about that. But when COVID came, you know, obviously it was a very difficult time for everyone, including ourselves, you know, so we had issues with, for example, you know, employees that had COVID that couldn’t come into work. You know, same across the industry, or suppliers that couldn’t supply product, you know, that sort of thing.
0:14:00 Joe Nuzzolese: Fortunately, we had built a strong enough and robust enough supply chain. Whereas even with all those disruptions that we felt, we actually never missed a case or a delivery of one of our products. And that’s something that I’m really proud of. But it was a very difficult time because similar to most people in our industry, we were dealing with disruptions, obviously in component supply. We were dealing with disruptions in employee through absenteeism as an example, which you would expect.
0:14:33 Joe Nuzzolese: We were dealing with logistics issues as an example. It was harder to move product around because I think Everybody’s familiar with 50 ships that were out in the bay here pulling it to the port of Long Beach. So getting materials in and out was very difficult. It became ever more important. And I think this is true throughout our industry. It really brought into the focus the issue of do you have a supply chain that’s robust and resilient?
0:15:05 Joe Nuzzolese: And so that’s one of the things that we had spent a lot of time working on from an Edwards perspective pre COVID, and it certainly carried on. But if you look industry wide today and you talk about to a lot of supply chain executives regarding, you know, what are some of their objectives? You know, one of the things they’ll tell you is, as an example, creating resiliency in their supply chain, particularly their supply base, is one of their top priorities.
0:15:31 Joe Nuzzolese: And that’s one of the things that has changed.
0:15:34 Tom Salemi: What sparked the push toward resiliency prior to COVID, was it, I remember the hurricane in Puerto Rico disrupted some medical device companies. Was it things that were happening that made you say, we need to become more resilient? And if you would unpack what resiliency means, Is it tighter connections with fewer suppliers? Is there multiple connections with many suppliers?
0:15:59 Joe Nuzzolese: No. So let me unpack that a little bit. For you, what we mean by resiliency is that we’re able to supply product to our patients in the case of a disruption in our supply chain through one of multiple methods.
0:16:11 Tom Salemi: Okay.
0:16:11 Joe Nuzzolese: So, for example, if there’s a supplier disruption, we either have inventory available, or, number two, we have alternative suppliers that can supply the same product. So dual sourcing, we would call that. In the case of manufacturing, if we had either a catastrophic failure or we had something happen at one of our factories, we have resiliency in our supply chain, meaning we can move that production from one factory to another factory and be able to supply the majority of our patients and the same on the distribution side. From a distribution side, if we had an issue with shipping product from one of our distribution centers, we have the ability to move that order to another distribution center and still get that product to our patient.
0:17:00 Joe Nuzzolese: So that’s how I would define resiliency.
0:17:03 Tom Salemi: So you had that backup already built into your supply chain?
0:17:07 Joe Nuzzolese: Well, we’d been working on it for years, and for us, it was really important because one of our standards for the types of products that we manufacture here at Edwards is that we can never have a patient that doesn’t have our product available. So we shoot for 100% service. And to create that standard, you need, by definition, to create resiliency in your supply chain, because you never know when you’re going to have a disruption. For sure, COVID happened to be a big disruptor.
0:17:35 Joe Nuzzolese: Obviously, that’s the point that you had made earlier. But it could be a hurricane, it could be a weather event, it could be an earthquake, could be a natural disaster, you know, whatever that is. And we’ve seen all of those, right. Over the last five years. You know, certainly in different places, you need to be able to build a supply chain that can withstand that input or that disruption and still be able to support and supply your patient.
0:18:00 Tom Salemi: So let’s explore that a little bit. So you said you never missed a patient, which is fantastic. How did your resiliency in your supply chain weather,COVID? Did it. Did the waves knock out some of the seawall, or did everything hold tight?
0:18:11 Joe Nuzzolese: No, we had significant disruptions. Like. Let me give you an example. In one of our facilities, a facility we have in Singapore as an example, about half of our workforce is Malaysian. They come from Malaysia, and they migrate into Singapore, work, and go home at night. And so in the case of Singapore, as an example, during COVID half of our employees, they closed the border between Malaysia and Singapore, which meant half of our workforce could not come to work.
0:18:40 Joe Nuzzolese: So, you know, call it a seawall. Right. We had to be able to absorb, if you will, that impact. And you know, there’s different methods for dealing with it. But those are the types of disruptions that we’ve seen that certainly we saw. One of the biggest. Let me just add this. One of the biggest disruptions, you know, that I think we saw actually wasn’t an internal disruption, but it was an external disruption.
0:19:01 Joe Nuzzolese: And what I mean by that is that we could do everything perfectly within our supply chain and certainly others can as well. But there’s the other component which is we’re all heavily dependent on our suppliers. So every one of our suppliers also had equal amounts of disruption. And that’s where you have to have resiliency.
0:19:23 Tom Salemi: We’re going to take a quick break from this conversation to hear from our sponsor.
0:19:28 Kayleen Brown: So Matt, you mentioned lubricity, biocompatibility. What are some examples of key applications in MedTech?
0:19:37 Matthew Orr: Yes. So I think the ones that may come to mind to the audience here would include like PTFE liners or FEP shrink wrap for catheters. But it can also include like coatings that are used on endoscopes, guide wires, as well as like surgical robots and stents.
0:19:55 Kayleen Brown: So it really hits all aspects of MedTech.
0:19:58 Matthew Orr: Yes, it really does.
0:20:00 Kayleen Brown: You mentioned earlier about innovative solutions. I understand that you have a new Co-Extrusion technology. Can you walk us through those features?
0:20:10 Matthew Orr: Yes. The new technology that we developed is based off of our Daikin Neoflon EFEP and partnering with another supplier for Co-Extrusion with PEBA. And what this does, what we envision this doing, is actually replacing kind of the inner liner that are existing in current catheters where you have to have inner layer material, an etchant with a tie layer that are done in kind of consecutive steps, whereas this is done in Co-Extrusion and can be done in one step to provide multiple layers within the one catheter construction.
0:20:47 Kayleen Brown: Perfect. Thank you, Matt. So for those who are listening to us and not watching us on YouTube, I’ve just put an image that shows the difference that Matt is talking through. So please look in the show notes, please visit us on YouTube so you can see what that image looks like. Matt, you talked through the features. Can you share some of the benefits?
0:21:07 Matthew Orr: Yes. So with this being a Co-Extrusion technology, both the EFEP and the PEBA layers are actually co screwed together and it provides a strong chemical bond between those two materials. And so this Co-Extrusion actually allows multiple layers to be extruded at one time and built up at one time within the catheter. So that actually eliminates things like an etchant layer to build up the inner layer with the other layers in current catheter designs.
0:21:36 Matthew Orr: So you can imagine that can help with other things like improving quality, reliability, decreasing labor and complexity in the design of catheters.
0:21:47 Kayleen Brown: Those are all exactly what I think our audience wants to hear when they think of benefits. So thank you for sharing that with me. Matt, any last thoughts?
0:21:56 Matthew Orr: Yes, I think this, as well as other innovative solutions that we are providing at our technical center here in Alabama, should show the audience that Daikin is committed both now and in the future to providing innovative solutions to essential and critical sectors such as the medical device space.
0:22:14 Kayleen Brown: Well, Dr. Matthew Orr, Technical Team Lead for Daikin America, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
0:22:21 Matthew Orr: Yeah, it was a blast. Thank you for having me.
0:22:24 Kayleen Brown: For our audience, please visit Daikin-America.com to learn more about this incredible Co-Extrusion technology. Once again, that’s Daikin(D A I K I N)-America.com and I want to take the time to once again thank our incredible sponsor of Structural Heart Talks, Daikin America. Thank you very much for sponsoring this episode. Without your support, we cannot tell these incredible MedTech stories. So once again, thank you Daikin America. That’s Daikin-America.com.
0:22:58 Kayleen Brown: And now we bring you the conclusion of our interview with Joe Nuzzolese, Corporate VP of Global Supply Chain and Quality for Edwards Lifesciences.
0:23:07 Tom Salemi: What lessons did you learn from COVID and did it do you have any long lasting changes or adaptations that were required by COVID and that you’re using now?
0:23:19 Joe Nuzzolese: Yeah, certainly we learned a lot of lessons, but probably the most important one was it validated the strategy that we had to create resilience. But what it did cause us to do would be, I call it double down. In other words, invest more heavily in creating dual sources of supply generally on the materials side. So on our suppliers side, you know, that’s one. On the manufacturing side, you know, we, you know, certainly had a strategy to multi source through multiple of our plants already. And so we’ve continued. But one of the things that we learned, you know, through that lesson was when you run a manufacturing operation, you know, one of the things you always pay a lot of attention to is utilization. You know, how much, how occupied is one of your facilities. Right.
0:24:05 Joe Nuzzolese: Most companies would say 90% utilized, meaning it’s idle 10% of the time. Well, in a big disruptive situation, that’s not enough. One of the standards that we have is we usually now plan on having about 30% available capacity at any one of our sites. That’s different than most of my peers in our industry. And on the distribution side, you know, again, what we’ve learned is that we have to create resiliency, if you will, from our distribution centers. And we’ve put that in place since as well.
0:24:36 Tom Salemi: So with your suppliers, and forgive me if you’ve said this already, but is your, Is the plan going forward with resiliency, is it having dual sourcing or is it. Do you have trial trio sourcing? Do you have more than two, more than one source? More than two or two sources? Are you adding more suppliers for each need that you have, or are you having, again, more, maybe tighter or almost exclusive relationships with a couple of select suppliers?
0:25:01 Joe Nuzzolese: Well, we do all of that. So it really depends on the material and on the component. So in some cases we have dual suppliers. In other words, we have more than one supplier that supplies the same material. In other cases we have inventory buffer, we call it. In other words, we have a strategic inventory in house. It could be a year’s worth, you know, as an example, in order to absorb any shock to the system.
0:25:27 Joe Nuzzolese: And we would do that selectively on materials, on certain materials, particularly ones that were single sourced, you know. And the third is we do have special agreements, I would say, with some suppliers where they’re single sourced. They may have a special technology, you know, that we need and it’s not readily available by others. And so in those cases, we have what we call a strategic sourcing agreement.
0:25:50 Tom Salemi: Interesting.
0:25:51 Joe Nuzzolese: Yeah. So we use multiple tools, I think is the bottom line, Tom, you know, in order to manage all of that.
0:25:56 Tom Salemi: And how about manufacturing locations? We hear again more broadly on shoring, near shoring, movement. Have you done any of that? Do you need to do any of that? I mean, you’re a global company, you’re sending product everywhere. But how has it changed, if at all you’re manufacturing?
0:26:12 Joe Nuzzolese: Yeah, so the strategy that we’ve had for manufacturing is that we have. I call it a regional/global strategy, which is any one of our factories can supply any product anywhere in the world, but yet we also have a regional footprint where we have a factory that can supply a region. So one is for proximity and speed, the other is for resiliency and capacity management. As you can understand, that’s been something we’d been working on for a long time, actually even pre-COVID, but it’s actually materializing in the next few years. But so that’s the strategy that we adopted from a manufacturing perspective.
0:26:50 Tom Salemi: So supply chain is, would seem to me, at least from the outside, be sort of a different part of a MedTech business. You’ve got your engineers, you clinicians, regulatory, all very patient focused, patient forward. You’re in the back, you’re bringing the tools up front. How do you bring that patient first mentality to the supply chain operations in the back?
0:27:13 Joe Nuzzolese: Yeah, so this is a great question, I think, because I think being patients first is a belief that’s in your culture. And I think it’s really important that people see it and live it every day. So whether you’re in the front room or you’re in the back room, I think it should make no difference. So how do we bring that to our factories every day? You know, first thing, I think the most prevailing element is culturally it’s something that we talk to all of our employees. So I have 12,000 employees in my organization.
0:27:49 Joe Nuzzolese: We talk to them daily. We make decisions based on patients first and they see that. But more importantly, we take as many opportunities we can to connect our employees directly with our patients. So as an example, in every one of our factories, we have what we call patient days every year where we bring in patients and they get to meet, if you will, the operators that have made the device that they have as an example, in our case, one of our valves.
0:28:23 Joe Nuzzolese: For our employees, it becomes real because now they’ve met not only a patient, but actually the patient, that device that, that the device they’ve actually manufactured has been implanted in. What a reality that is, right? And then on an ongoing basis, as you can imagine, every communications meeting that we have, we always highlight a patient. So I think it’s part of management’s responsibility to create the culture where your connection to your patient is well understood.
0:28:53 Joe Nuzzolese: And I think if you do that well, your employees will understand that and embody that. And it’s one of the things that they really, really look forward to. And they, I think they really value particularly as being part of our company because they see a purpose to the work that they do and it creates value for them.
0:29:13 Tom Salemi: Did you see that? Did you feel that during COVID where people felt perhaps driven to come to work and to continue to continue to work?
0:29:20 Joe Nuzzolese: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you think about the manufacturing environment during, there were a great many people in society in general that could move to, example, work from home, you know, remote work in manufacturing, you didn’t have that privilege.
0:29:35 Tom Salemi: Sure.
0:29:36 Joe Nuzzolese: You know, so if you’re a manufacturing employee, you had to go into the factory. And I could tell you, you know, of course we had people that had COVID or, you know, had different issues, health issues, you know, potentially that couldn’t come to work appropriately. But throughout most of COVID every one of our employees came to work every day. And obviously part of that is they had an obligation. Right? As we’re their employer.
0:30:03 Joe Nuzzolese: But part of it was because they really felt a commitment towards what they’re doing and they saw the value of their work. And it’s something we impress on them every day. And I would tell you it’s why we had such a high turnout, you know, during COVID you know, from a employee perspective. But as well as why I go back to what I said earlier is we never missed a case. And it was because our employees were dedicated, you know, certainly to the cause and understood that what they’re doing makes a difference in a patient’s life every day.
0:30:36 Tom Salemi: So one of the pressures we’re seeing in other industries is attracting talent. Yeah, getting workforce. What have you seen that challenge on the supply chain side of things? And what are you doing to meet that challenge, if you are?
0:30:49 Joe Nuzzolese: Yeah, I think generally, I think, as is the case in most industries today, but in supply chain, I’m talking in its broadest sense, there’s the need to find more qualified talent. And as such, we’re always searching for professionals that are interested in developing, if you will, their capabilities in either materials management and planning, you know, certainly in engineering. These are areas in these scientific disciplines. These are specifically areas, you know, that there’s always a need in our industry in general, and we’re looking for the best and brightest people.
0:31:26 Tom Salemi: And final question, I mean, you talked about six years ago, you made resiliency a priority. You built that, you moved forward on that, built that out. What are you looking at today that you want to build out six years from now? What is, what is your future focus on?
0:31:39 Joe Nuzzolese: Well, there’s a couple of things that I think that are really important to us. So when I think about what our strategy is, there’s a few things that are really important as we think about the future. One is how do we use automation more effectively in our business? In the MedTech industry in general, automation is largely underused. And what I mean by that is there’s opportunities to continue to develop, if you will, processes that are more automatable, you know, versus manual assembly.
0:32:10 Joe Nuzzolese: So that’s one opportunity. The second opportunity is digital. You know, essentially you hear this probably all the time from a variety of people.
0:32:18 Tom Salemi: Sure.
0:32:18 Joe Nuzzolese: But in today’s day and age, right, 2024, you know, we’re trying to create more of a digital connection throughout the entire supply chain. You asked me a little bit earlier, what’s the differentiator between MedTech as an example, and other industries. So in other industries that have been either higher volume or more cost sensitive, for example, they digitized many years ago. In many ways, Life Sciences has been behind, if you will, things like CBG or electronics companies.
0:32:52 Joe Nuzzolese: So we have an opportunity to continue to build that digital thread, we call it, from R&D all the way through final distribution. So that’s a big opportunity for us. And the last is how do we continue to onboard these new technologies? So I told you before, you know, we call them nuds. You know, we’re going to have plenty of them. We’re an innovation company. We’re going to continue to come out with new innovations in the marketplace. And we as supply chain have to be able to support those very effectively. And so we’re focused on bringing in new technologies and new capabilities that will support our future portfolio.
0:33:25 Tom Salemi: I want to pull just, just a moment of that digital thread. What does that mean? What does that look like? Is it just a following of a product from conception to development, or where is the digital connection between all of that?
0:33:37 Joe Nuzzolese: The digital connection is exactly right. It’s from development all the way through distribution. A certain part, you start with a certain part, that part finds itself into a finished product. That finished product finds itself into a patient. So how do you follow that product from cradle to grave, from development essentially all the way through to the patient? That’s what I would call that digital thread.
0:33:59 Tom Salemi: I’m guessing you’re not just using a Google spreadsheet for that. It’s probably a lot more complex.
0:34:03 Joe Nuzzolese: Very much, very much so.
0:34:05 Tom Salemi: Great. Well, Joe, this has been a really fascinating look inside supply chain. Thanks for joining us on the podcast.
0:34:09 Joe Nuzzolese: Awesome. Thank you, Tom. It’s been a pleasure.
0:34:12 Tom Salemi: All right, well that is a wrap. Thanks so much for joining us on this episode of the Structural Heart Talks podcast. Many, many thanks to our sponsor, Daikin. We can’t make these podcasts without great
0:34:22 A: companies like Daikin backing us up.
0:34:25 Tom Salemi: Please connect with us on LinkedIn. You can follow DeviceTalks, you can follow Daikin. You, of course, could follow Edwards Lifesciences and connect with myself, Tom Salemi, editorial director of DeviceTalks, and our great managing editor, Kayleen Brown. Also, if you wouldn’t mind following, liking or subscribing to the DeviceTalks Podcast Network so you don’t miss a future episode. Also, share this episode on social media so others can enjoy it as well.
0:34:48 Tom Salemi:
0:34:50 Tom Salemi: That’s it folks. Thanks again for being part of the Structural Heart Talks podcast.
