07/06/2017
This is the very special experience of service and repair of Medical Equipment.This blog is giving details about how multinational companies dealing in medical equipment are exploiting Indian buyers. W Perhaps e worked with B Braun of Germany as their service franchise for a short period.Their Syringe Infusion and other infusion pumps are very popular in India.These are small devices used to deliver drugs to the patient at the preset rate for the longer duration.Smallest of their pump, Model Perfusor Compact they used to sell at anything between Rs 25k-Rs 40 k, as per negotiation and quantity someone is buying.This unit used to fail very frequently whenever there is power functions at the site, input to the machine.Power fluctuations in India is very common.Most of the time a particular part fails called N-Module costing at Rs 2500. We out of curiosity decided to find out what this N-module is ?
The first shocking discovery was that this company supplies same part to europian customers at much lower rates.We could not understand why this disparity was.India being developing country cost of parts must have been lower.Also, consumption wise quantity used here are also large.Then what was the reason that they were exploiting Indian doctor.
Worst came out was further digging into this failure, spares replacement, This N-module was a simple AC input transformer available at Delhi market at Rs 50/ only.We for testing purposes replaces same in many units and they were just working fine.So they are charging about whooping 50 times more !!
This is one particular example of one company that does not mean that other companies are honest.We worked with almost 10 companies and almost all followed same practices.Indian companies are not far behind. Earlier BPL company used to charge Rs 250 for a Rs 5 electronic components.
Now the situation has worsened as components level repair is not happening and the trend is to replace complete board, also the salary of technicians, engineers has increased many folds.Worst part is that all companies are running Service related activities as profit centres , hence charges exorbitantly high charges for repair and spares,
By our experience of repair of 25 years, we learned that equivalent spares are as good as given be company's, many a time even they are sourced from the same place.Some companies like Siemens, GE, Philips go for contract manufacturing and strictly maintains their Spares parts secrecy as unique so that later on they can befool customer and charges as per their fancies.To my pleasant surprise, I found many international sellers for these spares, especially those who are dealing with used/reconditioned equipment.
Our basic idea of having Portal for spares of Medical Equipment can provide a platform for offering alternative/equivalent/used /new OEM spares for saving lot and lot of money.If convinced with blog do give suggestions and feedback at [email protected]
