Scandinavian Health Group

Taiwan gave Roger Samuelsson the chance he was looking for

Happy Memories of MIT Prompt Scandinavian Health Group to Locate in Taiwan

The Scandinavian Health Group is a world-class manufacturer of medical equipment. Its founder, Roger Samuelsson, took his first step as an entrepreneur because of a trip to Taiwan,and set up his production base on the island. The industriousness, loyalty, and stability of Taiwanese workers remain today a constant reminder of why Samuelsson considers that Taiwan is far superior to the mainland.

Among the many reasons why Roger Samuelsson loves Taiwan, the most poignant one is this: Taiwan gave him the opportunity to set up his own business. When he established the Scandinavian Health Group in Denmark in 1986, Samuelsson set up his production base in Taiwan because, he explains, I had built up experience and personal relationships here, and that's why I chose Taiwan to develop my business.

Growing Together with the Taiwan Economy

Samuelsson has developed the Scandinavian Health Group into a world-class specialized manufacturer of medical equipment, and he was able to take his first step toward that goal because he came to Taiwan. Today, nearly 20 years after its inception, the group includes SHL Medical, SHL Technologies, and SHL Pertinax; and, with business locations throughout America, Europe, and Australia, it counts the world's top five pharmaceutical manufacturers among its customers.

When Samuelsson was a young man, he saw a lot of products around the world bearing the Made in Taiwan label, and that aroused his interest in visiting the island to find out the reason for this. When I first thought about setting up my business in Taiwan 17 years ago, he recalls, everything here was just starting to develop. With the Viking spirit that coursed through his veins, and undisturbed by his inability to speak Chinese, he traveled all around like a local to seek out any possibility of developing the market.

One incident from that time remains fresh in his mind. To equip his first little office, he needed a number of telephone connecting lines. A friend introduced him to the used-goods market under Taipei Bridge and, he comments, I rummaged through a small batch of products, and the seller quoted a price of almost NT$5,000-that was 50 times more expensive that it is now. Samuelsson castigates the behavior of that small vendor as highway robbery. In comparison with those days, he notes, you can get anything in Taiwan now-and everything is cheap.

Fortunately, his happy memories of the Made in Taiwan label kept Samuelsson from becoming discouraged. With his own eyes he observed the dedication with which Taiwan's industrialists pursued their business, how the island's technicians were never stumped by the manu- facturing of any new product or the repair of any old machine, and how an endless succession of products stamped MIT moved out from the domestic market into the international arena. He was happy to make friends with local business people, and frequently chose Taiwan products for his own operation. Finally, he even chose an MIT product as his life's mate, and took a Taiwanese maiden to be his wife and accompany him in his Taiwan struggles.

First-rate Medical Equipment Requires Innovative R&D

Since Sweden is his real home, and the place where his best friends live, Samuelsson established his headquarters company there and used his network of personal relationships to organize the state-of-the-art technological resources needed for medical equipment. He turned product design, R&D work, and other operations over to his Swedish team because, he explains, That requires a different kind of environment to accomplish, and Sweden has what it needs to provide that environment. He says that first-rate international- class R&D personnel for product design can be nurtured only in an internationalized society that has been immersed in openness for a long time. In this respect, he insists, Sweden still surpasses other countries.

The drug delivery device in which SHL specializes has 14 parts, and the company produces all of the parts itself. It currently offers 10 kinds of drug delivery devices, which are protected by 20 different patents. The devices come in two main categories, reusable and disposable. The Swedish team is now working hard on the development of numerous new types of disposable syringes, which are expected to become mainstream products in the future.

When we talk about manufacturing, the businessman stresses, we can say that Taiwan alone has internationalclass performance. He notes that especially for technology products, Taiwan not only has complete supply chains but, in mass production, also offers the standards in terms of quality control, effective control of costs, and combination of other factors needed to produce an overall effect giving the assurance he needed to decide to expand his production on the island.

In September 2004 group completed its Taoyuan First Factory and put it into operation. The 216,000-square-foot facility specializes in producing all kinds of safety syringes ordered by major pharmaceutical brands. It is the Scandinavian Health Group's sixth factory in Taiwan-the other five are in nearby Nankan-and gives a major boost toward achievement of the target of NT$1 billion in revenues per year.

Samuelsson points out that with chronic illness among modern man increasing every year, and with the corresponding steady increase in the demand for medical care products, his company is able to maintain an annual business growth of 50%. Even with our sixth plant in operation, he says, it will inevitably be too little to meet the need before long. The group's medium- to long-term planning calls for the addition of more production lines in existing factories in 2005 to fill long-term orders that already extend to 2009.

When a visitor enters the spanking new Taoyuan First Factory, a visitor must change to disinfectant shoes. The public relations manager explains that medical equipment, more than anything else, demands a dust- and germ-free environment. The process is done by German-made robotic arms.

Taiwan's First-rate Manufacturing Manpower

Thanks to the Scandinavian Health Group's strict control of product quality, Samuelsson claims, big pharmaceutical customers are willing to give their orders to him without trying to slash prices. We had this advantage from the first because we used specialized precision equipment from Germany. He explains. With the experience that the company has built up, he hopes to make use of Taiwan's skill in precision machinery and have senior masters lead vocational school students to carry out practical R&D a step at a time to develop production equipment exclusively for the group. One of the three members of the group, SHL Technologies, is currently engaged in this effort.

The group has brought in mold-making machines from Switzerland and is recruiting qualified local students for training through cross-field cooperation between government training centers, the precision extrusion-forming research laboratories of colleges and universities, and other organizations. The company hopes, within one year, to be able to send these students to the original manufacturer in Switzerland for even more stringent training with the aim of meeting the strict demands of the entire process, from R&D and mold-making to manufacturing and assembly, and thus assure world-class standards in the production of specialized medical equipment. It is only because our production lines are in Taiwan that we have a chance to make the best use of Taiwan's first-rate manufacturing capabilities, Samuelsson stresses.

Besides the technical personnel on production lines, Samuelsson also has deep faith in Taiwan's ordinary administrative people. Our customers are all large international companies, he says, so we can't allow the secretaries who handle our dealings with them to make any kind of mistake. The industriousness, loyalty, and stability of Taiwanese employees are the reasons why Samuelsson always feels that Taiwan is far superior to the mainland.

To meet the rapidly expanding market of the future, and the influx of orders to his company, Samuelsson has his eyes now on another plot of land in Taoyuan where he wants to build a plant that is five times larger than the new facility there.

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