Overall results were discouraging, to say the least. Even so, a detailed postaudit found that:
• Technical and managerial personnel were on a par with those of the competition.
• Production facilities and equipment were among the best in the industry.
• Hourly employees were experienced, well paid, loyal, and hard working.
• Of the problems Medical Technologies had encountered when introducing new products in the past, none had even remotely approached those posed by the Unitech.
• Although the Unitech represented a big step forward in technology, it was really a logical extension of the company’s prior products, differing only in that it used many more purchased components and relied largely on electronic and output mechanisms that lay outside the company’s design and manufacturing capabilities.
The audit concluded that the Unitech program had been plagued with unusual bad luck in addition to poor internal coordination and recommended that a new control system be developed for future new product programs.