A leading Finnish medical device company was experiencing long lead times in fixing defects in its MRI systems, sometimes reaching 40 weeks, resulting in long delivery timelines and unhappy customers.
The Challenge
The company’s development process wasn’t keeping up with the complexity of its hardware and software systems. Defect resolution times were twice the target of 20 weeks. The main issues included:
A large, complex medical device product organization achieves a 75% reduction in cycle time for developing solutions to defects found in the field.
- Slow feedback cycles
- Unclear ownership
- Communication gaps across multiple teams
- Inefficient prioritization and product development
Our Approach
We partnered with the company to introduce the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). Over three-quarters, we worked closely with leadership and development teams to:
- Coach leaders and teams on agile principles and practices
- Set up Agile Release Trains
- Improve planning and coordination
- Facilitate regular review sessions and data-driven decision-making
Our goal was to improve the workflow, increase transparency, and align teams around shared objectives.
The outcomes
The impact was clear and measurable:
- Defect resolution time dropped from 40 to 19 weeks within two quarters
- Continued adoption brought it down to just 8 weeks in another 6 months
- Teams communicated more effectively and responded faster to issues
- Increased transparency helped the leaders to remove impediments swiftly
- Delivery speed and product quality improved significantly
This transformation went beyond short-term fixes. The company built a sustainable agile culture that supports innovation and responsiveness, even in the highly regulated field of medical device development.
