Health Check
A journey towards self-improvement may be long and, at times, difficult; not taking the trip, however, could ultimately prove harder.
So figured New Plymouth-based medical bed and stretcher maker and supplier Howard Wright when it signed up for the government-subsidised Better by Design (BBD) programme five years ago — a decision that now seems to be reaping rewards. The company’s first product to go through the complete design process instituted as a result of BBD — the M8 critical care medical bed — is helping boost the company’s export prospects and garnering awards. Last year the M8 won a Designers Institute of New Zealand BeST Design Award as well as an iF international product design award.
“It’s really nice for everyone involved — either directly or indirectly — because it’s a path we set out on five years ago when we did Better by Design,” says the company’s CEO and majority shareholder, Bruce Moller. “That gives us a sense of confidence in the process — and of more exciting things to come.”
It also signals something of a return to roots. The company is eponymously named for its founder, Howard Wright, a motor mechanic who started his own home-based engineering business in the 1950s. With a reputation for solving problems, he was approached by a nurse from the local hospital asking him to make a modern hospital bed like those staff had seen in pictures from overseas.
Wright, in fact, came up with something much better using the latest in hydraulics. In the early 60s he opened a hospital bed factory and by the 70s he was making and selling most of New Zealand’s hospital beds. It was Wright’s 1976 M4 bed, which used remote hydraulic pumping at the foot of the bed to raise its surface, which proved an export hit and signalled the company’s shift to the forefront of hospital bed design internationally, continuing into the 80s.
Moller landed at the company as general manager in 1991, later becoming its majority shareholder when the Wright family sold on Wright’s retirement in 1997. During the 90s, Moller notes, New Zealand and the world were starting to change. Domestically the Crown Health Enterprises were introduced and, with them came a focus on costs, driving the company to look for more opportunities internationally.
“There was quite a lot of pressure on us. We became very customer focused then, but almost to a point where we did a lot of customisation work for people, which took up a lot of energy,” recalls Moller.
“We felt in a way we’d lost the leadership. We just became a responder, like an engineering shop, rather than a leader by doing research and the market looking to us and saying ‘you guys are the experts in this area’ — a position the company may have been in in the past.”
The BBD programme began in 2004 to help New Zealand companies boost their international competitiveness by integrating design principles across their business. Signing up for the programme in 2005, Howard Wright was at the vanguard, but Moller says the process wasn’t scary.
“We were keen to get all the help we could,” he says.
The key learning from the process says Moller, was the company felt it made a good product, but wasn’t considered a leader. “It created a pathway to get to that position.” The company brought in industrial design expertise, and started building a design “language” and philosophy, reinforced by research. Walking in the shoes of customers and users is at the heart of the design process, says Moller; while designing the M8 bed, members of Howard Wright’s R&D team spent time in intensive care units, leading not only to a better product but closer relationships with clinicians and customers. As part of the BBD programme, the company’s brand, positioning and communications were also put under the design microscope. While BBD has helped the company create value, a lean manufacturing programme (LMP) instituted three years ago has also helped reduce waste and boost productivity within the business. BBD has a long gestation, says Moller, while the company was able to make significant productivity gains in the first year of LMP, which are ongoing. “It’s a competitive world and no one is standing still … so you have to have a lot of areas of your business working really well.”
While Moller is not keen to divulge turnover, it is up more than 60% since the company began BBD. The company has just under 40 staff, six of whom are based in Australia. Around 60% of the company’s turnover comes from exports, mainly from across the ditch, although Moller says he has high hopes for the M8 bed’s export potential beyond the South Pacific.
One of the company’s biggest challenges now, he says, is developing channels to market. The company has been in Australia for seven years although it has taken time to get traction there, he says. “I don’t know if there was a shortcut to that. It was just the school of hard knocks a little bit,” he says. But late last year, for example, the company was selected as the sole provider in the Western Australian Public Health Unit’s contract for critical care beds and as preferred supplier for a number of other products — a win that could be worth in excess of $10 million.
Learnings from Australia have included the importance of professional communications, being well connected to remote staff and New Zealand staff spending more time in offshore markets.
While the company is confident its drive for self-improvement is now paying off with new business, efficiencies and accolades, Moller says another consequence has been a change in company culture.
“The process of design is very much about walking in other people’s shoes and trying to really understand, in our case, our customers or users of our product,” he says. “But once you start getting that mindset in the company it starts to work internally. It builds for a really nice feeling amongst people.”
Judith Thompson, director of Better by Design, says Howard Wright’s transformation embodies BBD’s goals. “Our aim is not just to help companies design better products. The aim of Better by Design is to help CEOs design better companies,” she says. “Bruce has approached this in absolutely the right way — open-minded, understanding that it’s long-term, that it’s holistic, that you have to take your whole team with you and be committed. He is doing all those things.”
