Tom Taylor grew up in Grand Blank, Mich., just a short drive from Flint and the belly of General Motors’manufacturing machine.
The son of an auto executive and a registered nurse, the president of
Roush Life Sciences always felt the pull of the two industries.
While a plastics engineering student at Ferris State University, Taylor worked at the GM technology center. But the idea of spending a career locked in a cube as a “right panel guy” forced him reconsider his options, a decision that today looks positively prescient.
The 43-year-old recently took the helm at Roush Life Sciences, a division of Roush Enterprises Inc., and a spinoff from Taylor’s former employer, plastics giant Nypro Inc. (where he was president of the Life Sciences division).
Taylor told MassDevice that Roush Life Sciences is a hybrid company, a contract manufacturer that builds products for other companies to market and also provides prototyping, machining and tooling and other services. Taylor describes the division as a “products company,” and says it is getting ready to launch its first 17 products, which will be marketed under the GE Healthcarelabel.
Taylor is also the newest chairman of MassMEDIC, where he will lead the industry council through its 14th year.
Taylor spoke with us recently about what the medical device sector can learn from the auto industry and the reason he’s so bullish both on Roush Life Sciences and the medical device industry in general.
MassDevice: How’d you get into the medical device industry?
Tom Taylor: I went to college as a plastics engineer. My mother was a nurse and my father was an auto executive. They would argue about the best place for me to focus. My mother convinced me that medical was a far better approach and I think she was right.
I grew up in between Flint and Detroit, which is GM’s belly. As a kid we had 16 GM facilities in our town; 27 out of the 30 kids in my class had parents who worked for GM. My father was at GM for 43 years and I interned at a [GM] tech center in college and my experience there is what made me think medical was they way to go. GM was just a huge company where you could spend 30 years as “the right panel guy,” or “the left panel guy.” I didn’t want to be locked in a cubicle and be “the left rear bumper guy.”
With medical, the demographics just made sense. So I went to work for Gelman Sciences, which became Pall Corp.. I got my MBA and went from engineering to management.
MassDevice: Are there correlations between the automotive industry and the medical device world?
TT: I think there is, the automotive industry has improved so much in regards to quality and validations and I think there’s a lot more correlation when it comes to quality. One of the things we’re very interested in at Roush is that the company is so dependent on quality. We’re very similar in terms of a product development standpoint, because whether it’s a medical device or an automobile, you’re thinking about the safety impact to the end user.
MassDevice: Since you know both industries so intimately, what lessons can the medical device world take from the American auto industry?
TT: You have to continue to focus on innovation and be as lean and mean as possible. Companies can never sit back and get comfortable that they can sustain leadership positions. You have to continue to look at ways to evolve as a company and a product line.
I think the lesson learned is there was a lot of complacency in the auto industry. They didn’t pay attention and we know what happened because of that. The lesson for big U.S. medical companies is that those same competitive threats that hurt the American auto industry will occur in this industry and they can’t be fat and happy.
MassDevice: What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned during this recession?
{IMAGELEFT:http://www.massdevice.com/sites/default/wp-content/uploads/headshots/Taylor_Tom_100x100.jpg}TT: I personally believe there need to be more companies like Roush, which focus on innovation. I hate to beat a dead horse, but innovation is a pillar. During this recession, we’ve added people and we kept developing products people want. Look at a company like Apple. Sales haven’t suffered, because they came up with stuff people wanted to buy even in a recession.
The second thing is that you have to manage your cost structure, be frugal and lean and get the biggest return. Whatever you spend money on, it has to be contributing to revenue in the future. You still see companies not being as frugal as they could be.
However, one benefit of the economy is that it gave me an opportunity to get good, quality people that I don’t know I woud have gotten had it been normal circumstances. So, that’s the other lesson: Use this as an opportunity to make good investments. And people are a great investment.
MassDevice: What is your take on the climate for companies in the medical field ?
TT: It’s still a very good climate for healthcare companies, for a variety of reasons. The biggest is the demographics. Look at the 65-year-old population and older, that category increases dramatically over the next 20 years. I’m very bullish on healthcare industry.
MassDevice: What do you want to concentrate on during your chairmanship at MassMEDIC?
TT: I think the focus is to do what I can to provide more exposure for the council, because there’s a lot that the council does for medical device companies in our region that isn’t known. At the end of the day, we’re an advocate; we play a role with the federal and state governments; we try to provide information and briefings. It’s not just about networking.
One thing we need to think about in Massachusetts is to continue developing an environment for smaller companies. We should look at how other states support these smaller companies. There’s a need to continue to focus on that; those small companies do a lot of hiring and innovating and they need help.
