What we can do

We have a duty to develop a complete understanding of the limits within which we can carry out our production activities. Today, it is within those limits that we can grow and do more.

Photo by pine watt on Unsplash

As a company that has always had close ties with the medical and scientific communities, Esaote is working to tackle the emergency by drawing on our valuable network of partners, which we have built up over more than 40 years of operation. We know that we can count on the fantastic ability of our people to identify the key priorities for the health industry and provide swift solutions.

Esaote is working on a number of fronts.

• Production of our range of imaging technology is able to adapt to market fluctuations to ensure continuity of supply and safety during the production process. Though many of our staff are working remotely, the entire organisation is proving that it can move quickly to adjust to the necessary and progressive measures being taken by the government in order to tackle the emergency.

More specifically:

• We acted quickly and responsively to reach an agreement with trade union organisations to double up shifts associated with the production of ultrasounds and probes in our Florence and Sesto Fiorentino plants, with plans to extend this to our Dutch plants. On top of this, safety standards have been adopted by all sites across Italy and around the world. This means we’ll be able to respond reliably and flexibly to fluctuations in demand, including where delivery times need to be cut to just a few days - for obvious reasons
• At our Genova Multedo site, our global hub for spare parts and repairs for US and MRI machinery as well as a production facility, we have taken advantage of the way the building is split over two floors to separate the two areas out and make these autonomous, including from a logistics perspective. A special movement layout has been designed to help with this.
• Implementation of our smart working policy, which was already introduced via a pilot project in the wake of the Morandi Bridge tragedy, and was forecast to reach complete operability in the next 18 months, was rapidly brought forward. This was made possible thanks to the work of our IT Department, which swiftly adjusted the security settings of the various devices, and the generous collaboration of a number of employees who made their own equipment and home connections available in order guarantee business continuity while the company set about providing all staff unable to work remotely with the systems they required to do so.
• The additional effort we need to make on top of our regular activities involves tapping into the potential of our global network in order to make available all diagnostic solutions that could be necessary at this time of emergency - even those that don't traditionally form part of our core business. Over the decades, we’ve built up trusted relationships with some of the leading organisations in the international scientific community.
• In Italy, we are currently going through the most critical period of the outbreak. We are at the peak of the curve and we hope that this will now begin to flatten. Some countries have experienced this period already and can now spare human resources and technology to support our health services. Within this context, we are trying to use our extensive experience in Italy/China relations to benefit the country by helping to communicate the requests of our medical personnel and healthcare facilities, acting as a kind of bridge in the hope that the required equipment can be made available for use as quickly as possible. We have already seen some fantastic responses from our partners in China, just as Esaote - at the start of the global epidemic - adapted its production operation to reflect the needs of our colleagues in Asia when this was necessary. These supply chain connections mean we work as one network, making decisions and setting priorities as a collective.

Like other Italian companies, we have the tools - in production and in other areas - and the talent and collaborative spirit to build a strong system which is capable of rising to the complex challenges facing us currently. A few months ago, we spoke to our teams about the concept behind our “complexity is simple” vision, which was adopted by the Group on a global level this year. As an organisation, as one, all over the world, we're working to make sure these are more than just empty words. Globalisation is not without its flaws, but it also provides us with the most simple solution there is: to get back to working together to take decisions and set priorities around shared objectives such as the health of all people - with no distinctions.