Organize for Product Development
Stevens Corporation is a multidivision manufacturing company with diversified products serving the aerospace, automotive, and medical markets. Its medical instruments division is located in the Midwest and has a plant with over 1000 employees. It sells various medical instruments, such as analyzers, monitoring equipment, and testing instruments to hospitals and medical laboratories. It is a market leader, and its business has been steady. It has a very good reputation and command a premium price for its products. However, the business is not growing as fast as the rest of Stevens’s divisions or as fast as the board of directors things it should. They feel that the division’s management has become complacent. There are several new competitors entering the market with products that have more features and lower prices. Last year, the chief executive officer told Kareem, general manager of the medical instruments division, the he had to start developing new and enhanced products in order not to lose market share to the emerging competitors.