Toshiba trims regions, boosts financing support

Toshiba America Medical Systems of Tustin, CA, reduced the numberof its U.S. sales and service regions from four to three, effectivethe first of this month. TAMS will expand staff in the remainingzones to provide more support for district managers. The changeswill not result in a net reduction in staff, said Ronald B. Schilling,TAMS senior vice president and general manager.

"We are trying to increase the business responsibilityof district-level teams, which include the district sales managerand district service manager," Schilling told SCAN.

TAMS plans to add new commercial managers at the regional level,who will provide district teams with support in areas such asequipment financing, he said.

The medical imaging vendor has also established a relationshipwith financing firm U.S. Concord. That firm will assign a representativeto each of the TAMS regions. Concord is a long-time financingpartner of Picker International and will maintain that separaterelationship, Schilling said.

The span of control of the remaining three TAMS regions willincrease with the reorganization, but not to an unmanageable degree,he said. Some of Toshiba's medical imaging competitors have reducedtheir U.S. zones to two, he noted.

The three remaining regions are:

• east central, with seven districts;
• southern, with five districts; and
• western, with four districts.

TAMS has just about finished consolidating the sales and servicestaff of the magnetic resonance imaging business purchased fromDiasonics a year and a half ago, Schilling said. During that period,personnel were shifted internally from one group to another. Withthis consolidation complete, expansion of sales and service staffwill once again occur through outside hires.

District managers are charged with selling three types of products:equipment, service and financing. The operational changes willgive district teams sufficient resources and autonomy to meetcustomer needs in all three areas, Schilling said.

BRIEFLY NOTED:

• Enertech of Monroe, OH, opened a sales and planning officein Milwaukee this month. Enertech builds modular medical imagingfacilities. The Milwaukee office will be headed by a new vicepresident, Thomas Fishler, who worked previously with MedFacs,GE Medical Systems' design/build facilities business.
  "(Fishler) has tackled virtually every type of MR installationand design challenge during the evolution of MRI technology since1984," said Thomas Zimmerman, Enertech vice president ofsales and marketing. "We expect rapid growth in this segmentof our business to complement our strength in modular buildingconstruction."
• Agfa announced plans last month to construct a finishingplant in South Carolina. The plant will be used to cut and packrolls of film for medical imaging, color photoprocessing and graphicarts applications. The facility is scheduled to start operationsin July of 1993, said Erhard Rittinghaus, Agfa president andCEO (see following story).