Jeff Silverstri QA head is retiring. Thank you for trying to put quality first at BD. In spite of the messaging from above our commitment to quality is reflected by our too frequent recalls, FDA 483 and warnings letters. Head count reductions to QA and support staff. - the next guy in line will do just that, get in line. Cash in and cash out, platitudes and all.
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@th Well said. I agree 100%. The BD way is not always the best and BD has too many layers of mgmt. Bard was lean and agile and we could make changes or modifications quickly (ie Clock time vs calendar time). BD could learn a lot from doing thingsbthe BARD way
I am former Bard, and comment about looking back with rose colored glasses, and being difficult with integration is 100% true. That said, Becton Di-kinson under Vince and Tom is BD. It’s all we know. Veteran BD people claim it was a once great company. I bet that’s true, it just got too big, too political.
@hp we can justify our need to continue the business we were.
BD tries to push all the BUs into a single cookie cutter framework without really researching the cost to our momentum and customers. When forced to adopt a half-baked process from BD, we recieve backlash from our customers so yes we choose our customer relationships over "BD way"
As Bard, each BU was able to actually make decisions rapidly, adjusting and adapting to environmental changes and customer feedback quickly. Now we're weighted down with corporate initiatives that were poorly rolled out often without proper training and documentation.
Bard actually felt like caring company for both our customers and employees. We cared. After becoming part of BD that fizzled and personally BD feels like a cold shareholder focused company.
For BU level processes that we need to maintain for compliance or legal reasons or as a result of CAPAs, BD still years later tries to dismantle those processes without offering a solution to replace them. We continue to win those arguments for the reason they were implemented. We let them know when they offer a BD solution we'll migrate, until then we continue to use the solution we have that is working.
So BD may not like how Bard stands out but we have our reasons and they have nothing to do with "this is how we do things". Contrary to what BD says customers research is saying, our customers are often saying something different.
and to think Tom P makes over 17 million a year to run this sh-t show
@en BD people aren't too fond of legacy Bard folks either - when you hold on to fantasies about how great Bard was while refusing to integrate, well.....these culture wars are what you get. Same sh-t is happening with APM - "we're great and BD su-ks". Top management in key areas of the last major acquisitions - Carefusion, Bard and APM were/are arrogant stubborn and unable to justify their need to be different. Same old story.
@ew Come on now - you're kidding, right?
Following Becton Di-kinson's (BD) $24 billion acquisition of C.R. Bard in late 2017, the combined company inherited and experienced substantial medical device quality challenges, regulatory scrutiny, and high-profile product liability litigation involving legacy Bard lines and newer manufacturing flaws.Legacy Bard Product Litigation and SettlementsPelvic/Transvaginal Mesh: BD faced massive multi-state and private litigation tied to discontinued Bard pelvic mesh products sold prior to the 2017 acquisition. This resulted in a $60 million multistate settlement in September 2020 involving 48 states and the District of Columbia.Inferior Vena Cava (IVC) Filters & Kugel Mesh: Legacy Bard lines like IVC filters and Kugel hernia patches continued to yield long-standing safety controversies, widespread adverse event reporting, and ongoing personal injury lawsuits.PowerPort Complications: Thousands of lawsuits have accumulated against Bard regarding implantable port fracture, cracking, and systemic medical complications linked to catheter and port body integrity
so.... you're kidding, right? lol Bard was NOT a great company for quality. It was a bad acquisition - same with Carefusion. Alaris pumps were a JOKE. I will say though that BD should have been aware - which is a reflection on their quality standards. But let's not let legacy Bard fantasy take over.....
@f6 I wish I worked for BARD myself! You’re making me want to know what BARD was like
@en I so much wish we could go back to Bard. Bard was a great company to work for.
@en Bard people had company with high standards for quality and regulatory compliance. Our QA leaders that had backbones did not last long. They either refused to compromise and left or held on to retirement. We are all BD now. And when Bard was purchased we were told BD had great IT systems and state of the art infrastructure…🤣
@dp 100%. BARD people hate BD. Worst thing to ever happen to them regardless of dept, leadership or length of service they want to go back to being Bard
@db ain’t that the truth we cannot integrate to save our life. But wait! We have Mr Bob pe-k the VP of mergers and acquisitions and quality integration who is there to lead the way .. he successfully integrated carefusion and bard into BDX quality hahahahahaha that is the biggest joke ever. He’s absolutely clueless .. carefusion integration quality wise was painfully completed by the BUSINESS and BARD we still have areas where they refuse to integrate and there is no one at the top to say this has to be done or else .. no one.. it’s a free for all.. talk to ANY BARD associate and the conversation quickly turns to how their days as a bard employee is deeply missed and how much they hate being part of BD.. integration is not bd’s strength not just in quality the other big flop is the IT integrations.. how many erp’s do we have????? Years and years of disjointed processes and systems but wait! Bhsinsss excellence is going to fix it right?
Carefusion was acquired with a plethora of problems that were never addressed during the transition -because go live was the most important "vision". So, what BD inherited was a patchwork of systems that no one knew how to run and non existent quality controls. I predict the same for APM - while folks are declaring "green" and "we're a go" I have no doubts that what will be unearthed after "go live" will be more of the same. Business Excellence is a joke - not one person there knows how anything actually works. Ah well - just another day at BD
@as Great post. MMS is hilariously embarrassing… also don’t forget, the same people that cause the consent decree and a plethora of warning letters get celebrated and given CEO awards and bonuses when they finally crawl out from under the self-caused mess…. forget rewarding people who just do their jobs well to begin with!
@OP Allow me to break this down! remember those classics: “Quality is everyone’s job” and “Quality comes first”? Apparently they’re more like inspirational wall art than actual operating principles. Great slogans for town halls, especially when delivered by TOM and the business presidents, but once everyone leaves the auditorium, it’s back to sell more, cut more, streamline more, and somehow magically maintain quality with fewer people and fewer resources.
We’ve streamlined processes until there’s barely a process left, cut organizations down to the bone, eliminated resources, and then act genuinely shocked when quality problems show up. Who could have possibly seen this coming?
And then there’s MMS/CareFusion. Honestly, where do you even start? Years of issues, a consent decree, and now a 483 related to the absolute calamity surrounding the dispensing/Pyxis system. At this point, it’s hard to know whether the organization has a quality problem or whether quality has simply been declared an optional feature.
What fascinates me about that side of BD is the apparent combination of incompetence, arrogance, zero sense of urgency, and an almost supernatural ability to make collaboration unnecessarily painful. Fortunately, I have very little interaction with that organization these days because nearly every interaction I’ve had has left me wondering how something that should take 15 minutes managed to become a three-week exercise in organizational dysfunction.
And the quality culture across BD? What quality culture? Quality gets bullied by Operations, Marketing, and pretty much anyone else with a louder voice and a more urgent revenue target. We don’t ask, “How do we follow the process?” We ask, “How can we get around the process?”
And we’re exceptionally good at it.
Then, of course, we have our dear friends in Business Excellence, whose apparent business model is: Cut. Cut again. Cut some more. Congratulations—you’ve achieved excellence. 👏
And we cannot talk about quality without talking about Central Quality, because that deserves its own comedy special.
I genuinely believe Central Quality could disappear tomorrow and large portions of BD wouldn’t notice. Why? Because the actual quality work has always been done in the businesses. When a plant has a serious problem, it’s the business teams who are working nights, weekends, and sometimes for weeks to investigate, contain, remediate, and prevent recurrence. Not some distant Central Quality organization sitting in meetings discussing “strategic quality alignment.”
Central Quality seems to have perfected the art of creating an impressive hierarchy of directors, senior directors, VPs, and whatever title comes after “Head of Headship,” while somehow producing remarkably little value for the businesses.
There are absolutely some good people there. A few. Very few. But far too many positions seem to exist because someone figured out how to play the corporate game, build the right relationships, and keep saying the right things to the right people.
So yes, I hope the new VP takes a very, very hard look at Central Quality. Clean house. Challenge the org structure. Challenge the titles. Challenge the headcount. Most importantly, challenge the actual value being delivered.
Because if the answer to “What would BD lose if this organization disappeared tomorrow?” is “not much,” then maybe we’ve finally identified the quality problem nobody wants to put on the CAPA!