Microsoft Office 2010Customer Solution Case Study

Medical Firm Accelerates Manufacturing Improvements with Shared Notebooks

OverviewCountry or Region: AustraliaIndustry: Manufacturing

Customer ProfileWith operations in Australia, ResMed is a global leader in the development, manufacturing, and marketing of innovative medical products for the treatment and management of respiratory disorders, with a focus on sleep-disordered breathing.

Business SituationResMed wanted to change how its Core Engineering team collects, tracks, and reports on manufacturing process recommendations.

SolutionResMed deployed the Microsoft Office 2010 suites and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. The Engineering team is using Microsoft OneNote 2010 to track manufacturing process improvement ideas.

Benefits Reduced costs with faster

improvement

"With the OneNote-based solution, we are not duplicating effort around the same idea, which saves time and reduces rework.”

Doug Gray, Director of Core Engineering, ResMed

ResMed manufactures products that help people with sleep apnea and other respiratory conditions. ResMed aims to keep its development and manufacturing costs low through process improvement suggestions from its employees. Its Core Engineering team was using a manual system both to capture ideas for its Continuous Improvement initiative, and track the status of those ideas through evaluation and implementation. In March 2010, ResMed deployed Microsoft Office 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, and created a solution based on Microsoft OneNote 2010 to develop and track new ideas. ResMed expects its new solution to deliver faster implementation of process improvements, leading to greater efficiency and cost savings.

SituationResMed is a global company with 1,200 employees in its Sydney, Australia operations. It is a leading developer, manufacturer, and marketer of products for the screening, treatment, and long-term management of sleep-disordered breathing and other respiratory disorders. Sleep-disordered breathing affects around 20 percent of adults. The company develops mask systems connected to a small portable airflow generator to deliver air at positive pressure to keep people’s airways open during sleep. The company holds over 1,700 patents (issued and pending).

A part of the ResMed Product Development division, the Core Engineering team consists of 43 engineers who are responsible for support after product release. To stay competitive, ResMed encourages all of its employees to continually look for ways to refine processes across the board. Through its Continuous Improvement initiative, the Core Engineering team focuses on both product development and manufacturing processes. Doug Gray, Director of Core Engineering at ResMed, says, “Customer expectations are always increasing. If we are not improving, we are going backwards. The people who are involved in daily work processes are the best at providing ideas for our Continuous Improvement initiative.”

For the initiative, Core Engineering decided to engage the organization directly, requiring that all Product Development employees be involved. The success of this initiative is key to helping meet the company’s Continuous Improvement goals.

In early a solution to capture the suggestions gathered from employees, the company set up glass boards for project teams in central areas where team members could post sticky notes with their Continuous Improvement recommendations. Recommendations moved through three columns on the glass board: Idea Capture and Generation, the Active Ideas evaluation phase, and Completed Ideas, when the suggestion was implemented. With its flexibility, the sticky note solution made it easy to capture ideas, but a few drawbacks became evident as more employees provided input. Gray explains, “A project team will likely include mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, and software engineers, who are all in different physical locations. Our challenge was how to get these people, who are in different places, together to easily share Continuous Improvement suggestions from where they work."

The sticky note solution had problems with its scalability and visibility across the organization. One department would develop

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“Our challenge was how to get these people, who are in different places, together to easily share Continuous Improvement suggestions from where they work.”

Doug Gray, Director of Core Engineering, ResMed

valuable ideas into which other parts of the organization had no visibility, so they lost the opportunity to multiply the benefit of these recommendations. Frequently, multiple project teams found that they were working on the same ideas, duplicating effort on multiple glass boards.

Core Engineering had no way to track a suggestion, such as who moved it from one phase to the next or how long it had been inactive, which kept the process from moving forward and being effective. They also had no way to search or report on the ideas, so it had no overall view of the idea pipeline. On a monthly basis, someone had to go around to all of the boards and manually type the completed ideas into a spreadsheet for reporting. This process wasted time and increased the chance of incorrect data getting into the spreadsheet.

In addition to increasing participation in the Continuous Improvement initiative, the Core Engineering team also wanted a better way to share product design details in order to resolve design issues faster. Chris Godfrey, a Team Leader in Core Engineering at ResMed, is responsible for bringing together engineers from Paris, France, and Sydney, Australia, to develop design enhancements for ResMed’s ventilation products. “The concepts we discuss can be quite complex and trying to describe a

design concept in words only can be very difficult. We didn’t have a good way to create and share drawings of design concepts in our remote meetings,” says Godfrey. ResMed wanted a solution that would allow engineers to easily draw a picture, such as a diagram of a product, in order to communicate and resolve product design issues faster.Solution

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Figure 1 – Enhanced Continuous Improvement Solution with OneNote 2010

To help solidify its Continuous Improvement initiative and make it easier to use, ResMed decided to participate in the Rapid Deployment Program for Microsoft Office 2010. By May 2010, 200 of its 1,200 Australia-based employees were using Office 2010 Professional Plus. David Lewis, IT Infrastructure Director at ResMed, says, “The rollout of Office 2007 within ResMed required a large investment in training and user assistance. In comparison, the adoption of Office 2010 has been very straightforward. The pilot user base, given minimal formal training, picked it up easily, including functionality, such as OneNote 2010, not previously implemented. The cosmetic changes to the product certainly make it easier to use." The Microsoft OneNote 2010 note-taking program now includes the Ribbon, part of the Microsoft Office Fluent user interface, so employees were able to start using

the solution faster and with almost no training.

For its Continuous Improvement initiative, ResMed used a solution based on OneNote 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 to track all process improvement recommendations. Gray says, “We had looked at other options to help us better work across multiple locations. E-mail wasn’t effective because people were disrupted by constant e-mail updates. We tried a glass board on the ground floor, but people just didn’t use it because it wasn’t convenient to where the project teams worked.”

ResMed selected the OneNote 2010 solution because it provided the flexibility of a free-form experience, with the structure to provide reporting and visibility across the organization. With the OneNote 2010 shared notebook, ResMed employees can simultaneously edit

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Before OneNote OneNote 2010 Solution

recommendations from almost anywhere using OneNote 2010 or OneNote Web App. Lewis says, “ResMed is a global organization that requires its IT solutions to make it easier for employees to collaborate. The Office 2010 Web Apps really assist here as a companion to the full Office suite that ResMed employees use at their desks. Whether in other ResMed locations around the globe or outside the office, employees can now make changes to shared documents or the Continuous Improvement notebook without worrying about file fidelity problems.”

Project team members manage suggestions effectively through the three phases of Continuous Improvement. In the first phase, Idea Generation and Capture, team members use a prepopulated OneNote 2010 template to enter information about the manufacturing process recommendation. (See Figure 1.)Employees can easily advance ideas to the second phase, Active Ideas, by moving to a different OneNote 2010 section. Core Engineering can see who has edited the notebook by using the Find by Author feature in OneNote 2010. Gray says, “We are better able to track suggestions because we know when and by whom suggestions were moved. On a sticky note, all we had was the concept itself. Now we have a complete view of the idea pipeline, including who

submitted it and the potential cost savings. The ideas are also easy to organize and search.”

Once the recommendations are implemented, employees move them to the third phase, Completed Ideas. Instead of someone manually typing completed recommendations into a spreadsheet for reporting, ResMed and Microsoft partner Oconics developed a custom Office Business Application, an add-in solution built using the Office interface, to OneNote 2010 to extract completed recommendations into a Microsoft Excel 2010 spreadsheet. In this application, a Core Engineering team member can click “Export to Excel” to populate the Continuous Improvement reporting spreadsheet, which includes the idea originator, dates, and cost and time savings.

The Core Engineering team is also using OneNote 2010 and Dell Latitude XT2 Tablet PCs as a way to easily share drawings and diagrams, regardless of location. The team uses desktop sharing, made possible with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2, so that people can view the presenter’s OneNote 2010 notebook. Godfrey says, “When I am discussing ventilation system designs with engineers from Paris, I can quickly draw a picture of a system design in OneNote 2010, which helps get my point across more quickly.” One engineer can

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"We are better able to track suggestions because we know when and by whom suggestions were moved.... Now we have a complete view of the idea.... The ideas are also easy to organize and search."

Doug Gray, Director of Core Engineering, ResMed

draw a design and others can simultaneously add to the picture to help facilitate a discussion as effectively as if they were in the same location.

ResMed realizes that different parts of the organization can benefit from the capabilities of OneNote 2010, such as sharing drawings, and capturing videos and voice recordings. ResMed expects to deploy Office 2010 to all employees by October 2010.

BenefitsUsing Office 2010 shared notebooks, ResMed expects to improve how its engineers and other employees work more efficiently together. With the Continuous Improvement solution based on OneNote 2010, ResMed is increasing organizationwide participation in its efforts to reduce costs and become more efficient. ResMed expects more employees to contribute their recommendations, helping to meet its goals.

Reduced Costs with Faster Improvement ImplementationUsing the Continuous Improvement solution, ResMed employees can more quickly implement approved processes, reducing the cycle time from Idea Generation and Capture to Completed Ideas. Gray says, “We'll be able to track ideas because we'll have a time stamp against them. We can remind someone if an idea hasn’t moved forward.”

Because it can implement new processes more quickly, ResMed expects to see greater efficiency in Continuous Improvement and increased capacity. For example, a Continuous Improvement idea could have a cost savings impact of A$10,000 (U.S.$9,200) annually. If this saving could be made two weeks faster, the employee will start saving time immediately. The result—both ResMed and the team member gain an immediate and on-going benefit.

ResMed provides visibility for different departments to see process improvement recommendations. The benefits and cost savings multiply as project teams across the organization adopt them.

Improved ProductivityResMed expects that engineers within the Product Development and Core Engineering teams will save time with the new Continuous Improvement solution. With visibility into ideas across the organization, engineers can search across notebooks and instantly determine if someone else is already working on an idea. Gray says, “We have a lot of distributed teams. With the OneNote-based solution, we are not duplicating effort around the same idea, which saves time and reduces rework.”

Because employees can extract ideas from OneNote 2010 into an Excel 2010 spreadsheet, they will

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“We will have an updated view of improvement ideas and can view report information by person, by department, by date, or even by expected cost savings amount.”

Doug Gray, Director of Core Engineering, ResMed

save about 10 hours per month. Individuals from Core Engineering will no longer have to manually type information from sticky notes into a spreadsheet. The automated extraction also reduces the risk of employees entering incorrect information in the spreadsheet.

ResMed is reducing the time that Core Engineering spends generating reports on improvement ideas. With the sticky-note solution, the company created an up-to-date report only once per month. Now it can create reports anytime. Gray says, “We will have an updated view of improvement ideas and can view report information by person, by department, by date, or even by expected cost savings amount.” Core Engineering will spend less time on administrative tasks and more time implementing new processes.

Lewis says, “One of the best things about this OneNote 2010 solution is that we can use it as a process template for multiple areas of the organization, providing even greater productivity gains.”

Faster Resolution of Design IssuesThe Core Engineering team now uses OneNote 2010 to draw pictures to communicate design modification concepts. Team members in different locations can add to the design drawings, which helps to get the team on the same page more quickly. Engineers in

Sydney, Australia and Paris, France work together as if they were in the same location instead of being 17,000 kilometers (10,000 miles) away. Core Engineering predicts that this improvement will help resolve post-release design issues faster and improve customer satisfaction.

Lewis says, “The capabilities of OneNote 2010 provide a lot of value to ResMed globally and we didn’t realize what we were missing until we began using it. With Office 2010 we have all of the right tools in place to help the entire organization deliver Continuous Improvement success.”

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Microsoft Office 2010Microsoft Office 2010 gives your people powerful, timesaving tools to do their best work from more places. With new capabilities and insightful updates to Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and Outlook, Office 2010 offers the complete package—with familiar, intuitive tools. Now you can express ideas, solve problems, connect with people, and create amazing results—in the office, at home, or on the go.

For more information about Microsoft Office, go to:www.office.com

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about Oconics products and services, visit the Web site at: www.oconics.com

For more information about ResMed products and services, call (61) (2) 8884 1000 or visit the Web site at: www.resmed.com

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.Document published May 2010

Software and Services Microsoft Office

− Microsoft Office 2010− Microsoft Office

Communications Server 2007 R2

Microsoft Server Product Portfolio

Hardware Dell Latitude XT2 Tablet PCs

Partners Oconics