Baxter uses Visual Planning to plan technical service visits

Company

Baxter acquired Hillrom, a supplier of medical technology products for hospitals. Its product range includes, amongst other things, beds, operating tables, patient lifts and solutions for water treatment, nutrition and dialysis. The original source states that the group employs 50,000 people worldwide.

Background

Technical equipment requires preventative and corrective maintenance throughout the year. Before Visual Planning, assignments were managed using Excel. As the company grew, this approach was no longer sufficient. The company was looking for a powerful planning solution that would make activities more transparent, improve communication between technicians and the planning department, and support tracking.

Solution

Visual Planning brings together resource planning in a single view. Assignments can be planned by region and business unit, enabling workloads to be identified at an early stage and distributed more evenly. Colours and pictograms help technicians to quickly grasp tasks. According to the client, the application was installed, configured and adapted to operational requirements within a few days.

Results

Baxter reports greater transparency, more accurate tracking of technicians’ assignments and improved communication between planning, technical and management teams. Real-time planning is intended to enable the company to handle more assignments and provide customers with more precise information. Specific figures for increases in turnover or productivity were not published in the source.

“Visual Planning is an integral part of our team’s day-to-day work. The software improves communication and helps us track technicians’ assignments more effectively.”

Stéphane Le Borgne, Head of Technical Support at Baxter (Hillrom)